𝗜𝗧𝗖𝗛 ✔

𝟓𝟓. 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃

"We're going to go down the second passageway and figure out why Taelyn was caught so easily," said Cara as they walked briskly down the tunnel.

"No, that's a recipe for disaster. We'll just end up in the same place as her," Aiden shook his head.

"Fine. We'll go back to the office, that place where the officers were? We take down the officers and use their office to figure out what room the second tunnel leads to." With that, Cara turned on her heel and started walking in the other direction, heading back to the end of the tunnel.

"Are you su- Cara!" He had no choice but to run after her. "Cara, let's be careful. How are you going to take down those officers? They're probably armed and-"

"I have my ways," she smirked before looking down at the handgun hanging on her holster.

"You-"

"I-" Cara teased before quickly rolling the stone aside, her new energy spurt now working in her favor as her strength seemed to have doubled.

They rushed into the empty room before stopping right outside the opening that leaded to the office, hearts pounding.

"Ready?" Aiden whispered.

"As I'll ever be," she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek. "Let's go."

And with that, she rushed into the room, handgun drawn and held at the ready as she quickly looked around for her surroundings. Sure enough, two men dressed in black whipped around as soon as she set foot, shocked expressions on their faces.

Before they could even draw their guns, Cara bit her lip, narrowed her eyes, and pulled the trigger. One of the shots went straight to one of the men's calf, and the other narrowly missed the second guy.

The first man yelped, dropping to the floor and cradling his leg. A pile of blood rapidly piled underneath his calf as he moaned.

A shot of adrenaline pursed through her as she watched him whimper in pain. She did that. She shot him. And though the thought of shooting someone would have nearly made her throw up a few months ago...now it didn't seem too bad.

Yes.

"Damn, that's hot," Aiden remarked, giving her a look.

Cara shook her head and rolled her eyes.

"You could do that all this time and you never-" He didn't get to finish his sentence before a hot, deadly bullet narrowly flew by his ear and exploded on the wall behind him.

"Shit!" Cara pulled Aiden's arm to the side and behind her. "Duck!"

She took hold of her gun and started to rapidly fire, dodging the bullets that were being thrown at her by the second man.

"Damn it," she cursed as a bullet barely missed her - that was happening a lot today. "Aiden, could you-"

"On it." He ran up to the pre-occupied man and caught him off-guard with a punch to the stomach before kneeing him harshly.

The man yelped and fell over. Cara immediately took this moment of weakness and swiftly kicked his gun across the room before aiming her handgun at him and firing at his arm.

She lowered her gun, breathing heavily as she smiled at Aiden.

"Thank you for that."

"No problem."

"Take that," she motioned towards the gun laying on the other side of the room. "Maybe I can teach you how to use one. You're a fast learner, right?"

"I-"

"Wait, knock them out first."

He nodded and went up to the two men on the floor and swiftly knocking both out with a smack to the head with the gun he was carrying.

Cara was already at work in the next room, the office booth, searching through endless written papers, trying to find a blueprint or some kind of map of this entire underground area.

"Wait - there," Aiden pointed to a blue piece of paper that was sitting at the bottom of the stack. "Is that a blueprint?"

She shuffled it out from the pile of papers and her face immediately lit up. "Yes! It seems to be the entire underground complex they have down here. This will help us so much!"

He walked over and took out his phone, taking a picture of the blueprint before nodding. "Can you find the second passageway and where it leads to?"

"Yeah, trying...it's kind of complicated." Cara scanned over the map, eyebrows furrowing confusedly. "So here's the trapdoor.."

Aiden leaned over her shoulder, trying to help, but all she could now think of was his scent and how close he was.

Stop.

"Wait - here. These are the stairs that lead to the two passageways..here's the one on the left. Then we go deeper, here's the tunnel.." he traced two fingers down the lines on the map. "And then here's where the tunnel ends. And this-"

" 'Main meeting room'?" Cara read out loud before freezing. "Oh shit. Oh crap, that's not good. Oh no..."

"She stumbled right into where a handful of thugs were conversing," Aiden shook his head, sighing. "No wonder she got caught."

"We have to find a way to get to her without going through the main meeting room," she said. "But where even is she? How can we figure that out if we don't even know where she is?"

He furrowed his brows as he looked at the map closer, scanning over each room. "Where would they have taken her? What's logical? Hm...not the kitchen, not the personal chambers, not the medical room, definitely not the showers..."

In the midst of all this thinking, they never noticed that one of the men in the other room was now getting up despite his leg injury.

"Two fugitives in the office," the man whispered into a walki talki. "One girl with red hair and one boy with golden. They shot us, we need backup."

"Girl? Red hair?" the person on the other line repeated.

"Yes, why?"

"Yes. Yes!"

"What is it, commander?"

"Officer, get you and the injured out of there, there will be a medic soon, and backup will arrive. Send a message through all of the talkis that we've found the girl."