The Jackal (Black Dagger Brotherhood - Prison Camp 1)

The panel finally started to close. And as the boots got ever nearer, the fricking thing took twenty-five million years to lock into place. Just as it did, and the hidden passageway plunged into darkness, the commotion got much louder.

Directly outside the panel.

Nyx stepped back and put her free hand over her mouth. As she panted in and out of her nose, she told herself they didn’t know where she’d gone. They couldn’t know about the release. They weren’t going to find her.

In the choking sensory void, she screamed inside her skin.

“No, she must have gone this way!” one of the guards barked in a muffled voice. “The other tunnels are blocked—”

“She couldn’t have made it this far—”

“For fuck’s sake, stop yelling, I can’t hear my earpiece—”

And then a fourth voice, low and sinister: “I will shoot her the second I see her.”

“You can’t kill her. The Command wants her. You’ll get us all fucking killed.”

Nyx took another step back. And another. The idea that she was not going to get out of the prison didn’t just dawn on her. It submerged her, sinking her down into a terrible mental state.

Splaying her arms out, she moved to one side to orientate herself, and she connected with the wall when the muzzle of the gun in her hand hit the rock. As the clang of metal rang out, she froze, sweat beading on her forehead.

Her heart pounded so hard that she couldn’t tell what was coming from her chest and what might have been more guards racing to find her. Stumbling, tripping, she retreated in the darkness, the sound of her windbreaker shifting against her body under the tunic, the soft rattle inside the backpack, the shuffle of her boots over the ground, loud as bombs going off. Desperation and exhaustion drove her past the point of breaking into a state of numb despair. She tripped on something. Kept going.

After what was a lifetime, her ears perked to the sound of falling water.

The sweet, soft chime of the pool’s feed was such a relief, she worried she was imagining it. But as the water got louder, and the voices of the arguing guards disappeared, she was tempted to outright bolt for the sanctuary.

The possibility of tripping and falling was too great, and besides, there was no magic to the pool. It offered no special cover or protection.

When she finally stopped at the pool’s edge, she didn’t immediately will the candles on. She stood where she was, one hand going back to lock onto her mouth, the other keeping its death grip on her gun. Her lungs were burning even as she sucked in air through her nose, and she was aware of the cave spinning around her. Afraid she was going to pass out, she let her knees go loose and landed on her ass on the rock floor.

The ringing in her ears was not helping. She couldn’t hear properly.

And her shoulder wound hurt.

After a while, after a long, long while, she dropped the hand clamp from her mouth. When her heavy breathing eased up, she listened hard, and when she could hear nothing but the waterfall, she willed one of the candles to life.

The fragile yellow light did not carry in the dense darkness. It was more like a star in the galaxy, a twinkle far off that revealed nothing about its immediate environment.

Lowering her head into her hands, she was acutely aware of the nine millimeter’s metal across her forehead, cool and hard. With every breath she took, she smelled gunpowder residue, and it was hardly reassuring.

Prison on lockdown. Guards looking for her. No way out that she was aware of.

Jack was right. She’d been reckless and naive to come down here. Never once had she considered a mortal risk to herself. And now she was trapped—

Without warning, all of the candles lit and she jerked her head up, blinking in the glow. When her eyes adjusted, she couldn’t understand what she was seeing.

“Is it you?” she whispered.

Jack—or what her mind was telling her was Jack—seemed to be standing in front of her, dressed in a fresh tunic that was free of blood, his face clean, the scent of herbs coming off him. Something was in his arms, a bundle.

“Is it you?” he countered softly.

Bread, she thought. She was smelling bread.

“You brought food?” she said in a voice that cracked.

“I didn’t know . . . whether you made it. And I thought if you did . . .”

They stared at each other for a long moment, and she was aware of embracing him in her mind. She saw everything about the contact—from her jumping up and lunging forward, to his arms coming around her, to his chest, solid, strong and warm, up against her own.

But then she remembered what she had said to him.