Across the room, Dani had nearly reached the other door when one of the bullets smacked into the door frame. The girl dropped to the floor and skittered out of Orbits’s direct line of sight. Another shot boomed, this time the bullet piercing the stairwell door itself.
As the sound of the shot subsided, Orlando could hear Orbits running down the hallway toward them. Without looking, she pointed her gun around the opening and let off three quick shots.
Orbits fired again, his bullet hitting the jamb, inches from her muzzle. She shot twice more and then moved her gun back.
She glanced over to check on Dani. The girl was moving along the wall, heading away from the stairwell door. Orlando heard a soft scrape from the hallway, closer than before, Orbits trying to sneak up. She sent another shot inside and heard him scurry backward.
She was about to shoot again when she grabbed her belly.
Oh, crap. Not now.
The cramp threatened to bring her to her knees, but she pressed against the wall and willed herself to remain standing. She looked back at Dani and saw that she was pulling at something embedded into the concrete.
Doing her best to ignore her pain, Orlando sent another shot into the hall. When she glanced back across the room, Dani had disappeared.
By the time Dani saw the woman, it was too late to stop. She crashed into her and stumbled to the ground. But hearing Orbits’s voice was all she needed to push back to her feet.
She sprinted across the silo, her eyes locked on the door to the stairwell.
When the first bullet flew past her, she looked back, thinking the woman had tried to shoot her. But instead, the woman was firing into the hallway to keep Orbits back.
Several more bullets sailed into the silo. She’d almost reached the door when one ripped into the frame less than a foot from her head. As she dove for the floor and moved to the side, another bullet punched into the door.
Orbits had the stairwell entrance covered. There was no way she was getting out.
She huddled next to the wall, frozen by panic.
Remember, Marianne whispered. Remember.
Dani almost said out loud, “Remember what?” Then she realized she knew what her sister meant.
The details.
The sequence to open the top hatch. The exact number of spiral steps to the silo floor. The metal-lined tunnel to the storage area. The four floors packed with weapons procured by their illegal-arms-dealing father. The four special items contained in the secret level below the others, where also waited the true treasure, the one she had come to retrieve.
There were other details. Lights and wiring and plumbing and…
The service tunnel.
She had noted its entrance when she initially entered the silo, but had thought no more of it. Until now.
It was her only chance.
After jumping to her feet, she ran along the wall, bent at the waist. When she finally reached the hatch, she knelt down and pulled up on the long lever that would unlock it. For a moment, it seemed stuck in place, but it finally gave way and the hatch swung open.
She climbed in and took one last look back. The woman was shooting into the hall again. For the first time, Dani sensed something odd about her beyond the fact she was there in the first place, but there was no time to think about it.
She closed herself in and began crawling through the darkness.
Orlando moved backward through the silo, toward the spot where Dani disappeared. Twice, she fired at the hallway, the angle only allowing the bullets to hit the wall a few feet in.
When she reached the metal plate, she sent off two more shots, one making it through the doorway, and the other hitting the wall right outside it.
She saw now that Dani had been pulling on a long handle mounted to a hatch. She moved the handle up and yanked the hatch open. On the other side was a dark tunnel, large enough for a person, but only if on all fours.
She fired off the remaining bullets in her mag and then moved into the tunnel, closing the hatch behind her.
Using her penlight, she looked for a way to lock the door but found none.
After replacing the empty magazine in her pistol, she shone the light down the tunnel. No sign of Dani, but there was only one way she could have gone. With her belly just an inch above the floor, Orlando began to crawl.
Who the hell is out there? Orbits wondered.
It couldn’t be The Wolf’s people. She would have needed to be right behind him all the way from the gas station, and he knew for a fact that had not been the case.
It also wasn’t Danielle. He’d seen her running across the silo just a moment before another bullet had flown his way, and besides, the way the shots were angled, the shooter had to be somewhere outside to his left.
The first time he tried to get in closer, he was forced to retreat by a shot that had almost clipped his shoulder. When the shooting died down, he tried again.
He heard two more shots, but held his ground as one of the bullets hit the right wall three feet from the door, and the other seemed to have missed the hallway completely.
He was about to move all the way to the opening when several shots rang out. He pressed himself to the floor, wanting the shooter to pull his trigger again so Orbits could get a better idea of the person’s location.
Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Thirty.
Maybe the asshole needs a nudge.
Orbits aimed as far left as he could and fired into the room.
There was no return shot.
He slid along the wall until he was right at the door, and fired again.
Still nothing.
He peeked into the silo.
No Danielle. No shooter.
He’d had a view of the stairwell door the whole time, so how was that even possible?
As he stepped through the doorway to take a better look, he heard the pounding of feet approaching the stairwell door from the other side. He jumped back and pulled the hallway door shut just as the other one opened.
For a moment, he panicked.
But then he remembered. He had a whole arsenal at the other end of the hall.
Quinn yanked open the door at the bottom of the stairs just as the only other door in the room beyond slammed shut with a loud thunk. He took a second to scan his new surroundings before sprinting across the circular room toward the other exit.
Pressing himself against the wall, he cracked the door open an inch. Someone was running but the steps were distant. Quinn motioned for Nate and Ananke to cover the door, and then he pushed it all the way open.
The moment Nate whispered, “Clear,” Quinn swung around the jamb and raced into what turned out to be a tunnel, his friends following. There was another thunk from farther down. They ran around a bend and down to the door at the far end. Once more, Nate and Ananke covered it while Quinn pulled on the handle, but it didn’t move.
“It’s jammed,” he said. “Give me a hand.”
Nate grabbed the handle and pulled with Quinn. It wouldn’t move at first, but then there was a pop from the other side and the handle gave way. Nate stepped back as Quinn pushed the door open.
The room on the other side appeared to be a storage area. Wooden crates were stacked in rows on either side of the door. More were straight ahead on the other side of a central aisle. No one in sight, though.
Quinn and Nate crept out, each sticking close to one of the rows. With each step they could see more of the room.