Page 37 of Hayes
Tapping out her message once more, she waited for a reply.
Understood.Continue comms.
“Holy shit,” she whispered to herself. Connecting the device to a remote battery, she programmed it to continue the tapping, signaling the location. It would repeat every forty-five seconds until someone turned it off.
Now she had to get creative and kill time. Kill time or be killed. That seemed simple.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Standing over the maps, praying for something that would lead them to the right area, the men talked about plans to find the entrance in the marketplace.
“But if someone there tells Aamani we are there or searching for him, we’re putting Victoria in more danger,” said Hayes. “We can’t know who works for him and who doesn’t.”
“That’s true,” said Mo. “In a place like this, with a man like Aamani, we need to just think of everyone as being on his side.”
“This is crazy,” said Hex. “We’re looking at miles of possible tunnels stretching in a hundred different directions. Do we have the data back from the Lidar scans on the drones?”
“Not yet, but once those are back, we should be able to identify clear routes and possible alternative entrances and exits,” said Luke.
“Hey!” said Jak, running into the room. “We just got a message from Hiro. Our girl truly is a genius. The equipment Aamani gave her to make functional was an older machine. She repaired it, connected it to our system, and tapped out Morse Code.”
“Are you fucking serious?” grinned Hayes.
“As a heart attack, dude,” he laughed. “It’s going to give us the chance to get a hard read off of it and a location. She even programmed it to tap out every forty-five seconds. She’s going to make it functional for Aamani to use, allowing whatever he’s trying to do to be fed back to our team. Fucking incredible!”
“I love her so much,” said Hayes. He winced as he wiggled his fingers, and Cruz frowned at him.
“Let me take a look at the hand,” he said.
“No. No, it’s okay,” said Hayes.
“Give him your hand, or I’ll fucking sit on your chest,” said Eric.
Hayes nodded, swallowing his fear. As Cruz unwrapped the hand, every man in the room sucked in a breath, realizing how painful it must have been for Hayes to hide.
“It’s infected,” said Cruz. “You really don’t give a shit about using this hand again.”
“We should get you back to Belle Fleur and the pond,” said Hoot.
“No!” yelled Hayes. “No, I’m begging you, Dad. Please don’t force me to leave. I’ll do whatever Cruz tells me, but I’m not leaving until I see Victoria’s beautiful face in front of me and I can tell her I love her and I can ask her to marry me again and…”
The entire room smiled at him, shaking their heads.
“Marry you, huh? I think you already asked her that,” frowned Mo.
“Yes, sir. I’m a little confused and fuzzy. But I swear to God, I will never hurt her like this again. I don’t know what will happen with my hand, but whatever it is, I will deal with it, with her by my side.”
“So, are you asking for my permission?” said Mo with a serious expression.
“Yes, sir. I guess I am.”
“Well, then. I guess I’m giving you permission,” said Mo. “She loves you, Hayes. She always has. The two of you weremeant to be together, and the world, as fucked up as it is, threw you two together in those damn schools. God help us all, you’ll have mega-genius children.”
Hayes could only laugh as Cruz extended the hand onto the table, carefully removing all of the dressings to see fully the extent of the infection.
“I think you got lucky,” he frowned. “I’m going to drain the wound, debride it, and I’ll need to re-suture it. I’m going to give you another antibiotic and some pain meds as well.”
“No. No pain meds. I need to be alert,” said Hayes.
