Submission Impossible (Masters & Mercenaries Reloaded 1)

He started up the first flight. Ernie would head for her lab, probably stopping to talk to whatever guard worked that floor. He was sure they had some serious security. He prayed the gym wasn’t at the freaking top of the building.

“It’s on seven,” MaeBe announced.

He could handle seven. That was a painful but doable number of stairs. Still, he was going to spank Noelle if he ran up seven flights of stairs only to find her drying her hair. Or fixing the world’s helium problems. Yep, he’d spank her for that, too. Hard. She would cry and beg forgiveness and he would think about it. Hard.

Sprinting upstairs was fucking hard.

“Okay, I’ve got them up on my tablet.” MaeBe’s voice was steady in his ears. He’d made sure she had the schematics to the Genedyne building and to Noelle’s apartment building just in case. “Are you going through security or trying to avoid it?”

“I’m going to break down a fucking wall if I have to.”

“All right. The easiest way there is to take a left when you hit the seventh floor. The gym isn’t far, but it’s got keycard access into the locker rooms. The locker rooms open to the gym. The women’s locker is on the right about halfway down that first hall.”

In the background he could hear the sound of MaeBe’s microwave pinging. At least she was home and was working on her own system. That meant she would have access to some of Noelle’s data. “I need you to get into her smartwatch and tell me if you see anything weird.”

This was the part he hadn’t exactly told Noelle. When she’d given him permission to track her phone, he’d kind of let himself in the back door to pretty much everything in her cloud. He could see every piece of data her phone and watch collected, and it was a shocking amount.

“I think you’re right about her being at the gym. She logged thirty minutes of exercise about fifteen minutes ago, but then it gets weird. Her heart rate goes crazy up, like way more than the exercise, and then it drops.”

He upped his pace even as his quads and hamstrings started to burn. The smartwatch had health components and tracked the user’s heart rate and minutes of exercise. “What do you mean by drops?”

“I mean her heart rate was in the seventies and then it shot up to almost a hundred and thirty, and now it’s sixty. And all in the course of two minutes.”

Shit. “But we’re still getting a heartbeat?”

“Yes. It updated thirty seconds ago. Now it’s fifty beats per minute. I would bet she’s not conscious,” MaeBe said, tension coming into her tone.

He hit the seventh floor and blasted through the door. The hallway was quiet, almost eerily so. “I’ll call you if I need anything else. Keep monitoring her.”

Before she could reply, he shut the phone down and dialed Noelle again. “Come on, pick up.”

Panic was starting to get to him as he reached the women’s locker room door and was confronted with the first security he’d had to get through. He didn’t have a keycard. He didn’t have his kit. He should take the box apart and connect to it, but he didn’t have what he needed and there wasn’t time to MacGyver anything.

“Hey, you okay?” A tall man walked out of the men’s locker room, a gym bag in his hand. “Aren’t you the guy Noelle was with earlier?”

“I think she’s in trouble.” He didn’t care who this guy was. If he’d been in the locker room, he had a keycard. “Can you get me in?”

A brow rose but he seemed to get that this was an emergency. “Uh, sure. What’s going on? I saw her in the gym a couple of minutes ago and she was fine.”

“I know this sounds crazy, but I monitor her smartwatch and her heart rate dropped. Like a lot.”

The man moved forward quickly, pulling his card out and swiping it. “Here you go. I work in her lab. I hope she’s okay.”

He was in the minute that door opened. He slammed through and didn’t care that he might walk in on a bunch of women changing. They could scream at him later.

Then nothing mattered but the fact that Noelle was on the ground. She was still dressed in her gym clothes, her hair in a ponytail. She was limp on the floor of the locker room, her face away from him. He dropped to his knees as he heard the man behind him start to dial 911.

He reached for her arm, needing to feel her pulse.

Her eyes fluttered open. “Hutch?”

Relief flooded his system and he clutched her hand. “It’s okay. You’re okay, but we’ve got someone coming to check on you.”

“Pete?” She started to sit up, but Hutch settled her back down.