“Hold on, let’s have some fun.?
??
He slowed, planted his foot in the dirt, whirled the bike around and roared toward the oncoming bike. Mike shot the guard center mass.
More shouts now. Another bike came up from around the curve behind them. Nicholas started again down into the darkness. “They’re bloody hydras, every time we take one out three more pop up.”
Mike was twisting around in the seat, trying to look behind them and not fall off. “There’s three more behind us. They’re gaining. I need to reload. Can you circle back around?”
A fourth bike appeared ahead of them, speeding toward them.
“Down there, down there,” Mike shouted, and Nicholas took a hard left, so sharply they both hit the wall with their right shoulders before he could plant a foot and straighten the bike out. He gunned it and they flew down the tunnel into the darkness.
This tunnel was very old. It had a deep rut down the middle that wasn’t dirt, it was ancient stone. Etruscans had walked down this path.
The bikes behind them were gaining, and Mike could have sworn she heard one of the men laughing. And then she saw why. There was a wall ahead. A solid wooden wall. They were finally trapped.
Nicholas shouted, “Hold on, Mike, hang on tight! Keep your arms around my waist.”
Nicholas was shooting at the wall, emptying his entire magazine. She held on for dear life, felt the heat of the bullets from the men behind them pass close to her head. Her heart caught in her throat as Nicholas revved the engine and drove directly toward the wall. His bullets had splintered the ancient wood.
Nicholas slammed the bike into the wall, and through it.
She felt a cold rush of air, they were flying through the dark sky, but they were falling, falling fast, and Nicholas was shouting, “Jump! Jump!” in her ear. She saw a shimmer of water in the moonlight, then she was twisting in the air. She had a moment of clarity, realized they’d burst out of the side of the mountain over the lake, then something hard smacked her head. She saw stars, felt wetness, a sickening dizziness, and then she hit the water, hard. She didn’t feel anything more.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Nicholas took a huge breath in before he hit the water. He went deeper than he’d expected, the momentum of the dive off the cliff driving him farther down. He thought his lungs were going to burst before his face finally broke the surface.
He dragged in as much oxygen as he could, treading water. The water was cold, dark. Where was Mike? She was an ace swimmer. “Mike?”
No answer. He shouted her name again, once, twice. “Where are you? Answer me!”
Silence.
“Mike!”
He started to swim, looking for her, but there was nothing around him. The bike was gone, sunk to the bottom. He grabbed the Maglite from his pocket—he couldn’t believe it hadn’t fallen out—and shined it over the water, looking for her.
Nothing. No blond ponytail, nothing. She was still under.
He dove, blindly, searching for her, coming up for breath only when he thought he might die if he didn’t. One minute passed. Two. Three. He was getting frantic, she was nowhere to be found.
Four minutes now.
Adrenaline pumped hard and fast, kept him together, kept him moving. Impossible to imagine Mike dead, drowned, and all because of him. He dove again and again, and he knew he was crying but it didn’t matter, all that mattered was finding her.
Finally, his hand brushed up against something that felt like hair. He closed his fist tight and started to rise, heaving with relief when her weight nearly dragged him down.
He got her to the surface and supported her so she floated on her back. She wasn’t breathing. Her face was covered in blood from a nasty wound in her scalp. Her skin was pale gray in the moonlight, her lips blue.
He swam to the closest bit of land, counting the seconds, taking the breaths she couldn’t.
It had been five minutes since they burst out of the mountain and off the cliff into the lake before he got her on dry land.
Nicholas started chest compressions, counted to thirty, checked for a pulse, got nothing. Her legs lay still and relaxed in the water, her hands palm up. He started again. At thirty, he checked once more. Nothing. He tilted her head back, pinched her nose and gave her two deep breaths. He felt her chest rise, willed it to do so again, but there was nothing.
He kept going, silently yelling at her to live, to breathe, cringing when he felt a rib give under the pressure of his hands. He drew her up and began pounding on her back, then shoved her back down and pushed again against her breastbone, again and again and again. He tilted her head back and breathed for her. On and on it went. Panic, fear, the impossible began creeping in, but he didn’t give up. He knew it had been too long, she’d been under too long, and then he felt it.