His Absolute Assignment - Elise's Love Story: The Billionaire's Continuum (#1) (A Contemporary Romance Novel) (16 page)

Lucent froze.  He'd said something he didn't want to say.

"You built this?" I asked.

"We don't have time to talk," he said.  "Come."

Grabbing my hand, he led me away from the LCD screen and down the hall.  We walked at first, then jogged, but time was of the essence and we didn't have any to waste.  I stopped him for a second, kicking off my heels and gathering them in my hands, then we ran.  Lucent ran faster; he was in shape and better at it.  I followed, though.  My feet padded against the floor, moving as fast as I could, chasing after him.

This was why Lucent exercised, I thought.  This was why he kept in shape, made his routine into religion.  It wasn't to look good, it wasn't to keep healthy, it was to be prepared.  He obsessed over it, let it control him in ways that I never knew possible before.  I understood, because... well, I understood.  I didn't want to judge him.  There was nothing to judge.  He had his reasons for everything.  His purpose.  Resolve.  Lucent over-analyzed everything sometimes, but having knowledge was better than having nothing.

It was a part of our story, too, a part of our past, but also the present and hopefully the future.  A pang of guilt clenched at my heart when I remembered that this was something I wanted to write down, to tell the world, create a book out of.  I couldn't just tell all of the good things, I needed to tell the bad ones, too.  I didn't know if I could, though.  I could tell all the rest, I could tell them about the library.  What about the fact that Lucent did some things to me that weren't quite ordinary?  He never hurt me, but they... they didn't seem like good things.  Did I mind?  Was I scared?  More importantly, should I have been?  Love was an obsession in a lot of ways, but not every obsession led to love.  I needed to keep this in mind.

I didn't have time for this.  I hurried after Lucent, running as fast as I could.  He didn't just want to save people, he needed to.  It hurt him and consumed him.  Attempting to put out this fire wasn't about doing the right thing, or at least not exactly.  It was the only possible thing Lucent could do, because if he did anything else, took any other action, it would destroy him.

The realization made my heart skip a beat in panic.  He said we would leave if nothing could be done, but did he actually mean it?  I knew he wanted me to leave.  He never thought of himself, never considered his own safety, though.  I knew this, and yet somewhere deep inside of me I felt like Lucent was invincible somehow.  Silly, really, because he wasn't a superhero, some man made of steel.  He was regular even if he didn't seem it.  He had his flaws, despite how hard he tried to hide them.

Lucent wanted to keep me safe, to keep everyone safe, but if I didn't help him, if I didn't keep him safe too, he would let the world consume him.  Adrenaline and mental pain pushed me forwards.  My body moved without thinking and I chased after Lucent, unsure what I would do if I lost him.  He sprinted around a corner in front of me, slipping out of view.  My heart stopped.

I followed Lucent as best I could, but not only was he faster, he knew where he was going.  The tunnels stretched and split every so often, leaving me lost and alone.  Disoriented, more than confused, I chased him, only able to keep up because of the echoed sounds of his footsteps and the fleeting glimpses I caught as he dashed through these secret tunnels.

I thought I had lost him.  I thought I would lose him.  My lungs strained and my chest pressed in against me, holding my body captive, refusing to let me keep going.  I hurt.  Everything hurt.  My panic provided fuel and a desire to continue, but I could only go so far, only move so much.  Lucent went, though.  He never stopped.

I struggled to stand upright but my body fell over, hunched, and my hands dropped to my thighs.  I breathed hard, listening, hoping to figure out where to go next.  Lucent's footsteps eluded me and I could no longer hear him.  What if I was trapped down here?  Lost and confined, stuck?

The idea sent my mind reeling, thoughts filled with panic, fear, and depression, but it vanished as soon as it came.  How could I be trapped?  While running, I saw exits scattered throughout the tunnels.  Innocuous doors leading to who knew where?  Sometimes ladders, or stairwells, twisting upwards into blank nothingness.  They must go somewhere, and I assumed they went into different parts of the mansion.  I could get out, no matter what, I just didn't know where I'd be afterwards.

It shouldn't matter.  The worst case scenario was even worse than that.  What if Lucent died?  What if the flames wrapped him up with their loving, deadly embrace, while he tried to save the day and act a hero?  His body, scorching, blazing incandescent, smoldering into cinders... I forced myself to stop thinking about that before it drove me mad with unnecessary grief.  It hadn't even happened; it wouldn't happen.

I looked up, finally feeling like I could at least take a few steps more, and saw a light near the roof.  A ladder a little ways ahead of me climbed up to an opening in the ceiling.  It shouldn't be open if no one had used it.  I hoped Lucent was there.

Struggling, crippling pain clenching at my side whenever I tried to move, I hobbled towards the ladder, pushing past my cramped muscles.  Holding my shoes tight in one hand, I latched the other hand onto the rungs of the ladder, and climbed.  Climbing was easier than walking, different muscles working at different speeds, and I made it into the room above faster than I'd expected.

The room was a furnace, heat blaring at me from the other end.  Near the windows, a wall of fire crackled and roared.  It wasn't spreading much yet, though.  I watched it, entranced, both fearful and captivated.  The smell of burnt computer equipment brought my mind back to reality; the fire crackling and crisping at the walls of the mansion and the window panes, the tiled floors and computers.  I looked out the fire-blocked window, staring into some other world entirely.  People gathered on the lawn, staring in at me.  Could they see me?  And, if so, what would they think of it?

Someone bowled into me and I crashed to the floor, nearly toppling down the hold by my feet.  My head came dangerously close to the rungs of the hidden ladder, but the body of the man who tackled me prevented my injury.  I didn't recognize him.  He stumbled, pushing against me and the floor, trying to stand.  My gaze flickered from him to something farther in the room.  Lucent stood there, staring at the both of us.

"Miss Tanner," Lucent said.  "Move."

The man next to me gained his ground and got to his feet.  He held something in his arms, but I couldn't see what it was exactly.  I glanced towards Lucent, fully intending to do as he asked, but then I saw him staring hard at the man; or more specifically, what the man had in his grip.  Instead of moving, I threw myself into the man's legs and held tight, arms circling his shins and his calves.  The man kicked me, or he tried, but with my tight hold, he only managed to wobble side to side.  To save himself from falling again, he tossed his weight against the nearby wall, propping himself up.

Lucent rushed towards us.  He seemed slow, though; reticent.  Why?

Me, I realized.  Lucent didn't want to hurt me, which was why he wanted me to move.  The man's foot pulled up, aimed at my face, ready to crush my nose.  What kind of idiot was I?  I wasn't a fighter, not even close.  I didn't know who this person was, nor why he was here, but he shouldn't be.  Lucent knew this and I trusted Lucent.  Whatever the man had in his arms, Lucent wanted it, so it must be important somehow.

I let go of the man's legs and flung myself away before he stomped on my face.  His foot landed near my ear, the shock and sound of the vibration making me wince hard, eyes clenching shut.  Instead of trying to stop the man, I grabbed for what he had in his arms instead.  Reacting brutally, his fist slammed into my shoulder, but I didn't let him go.  I didn't need him, though, I just needed what he had.

I didn't know what to do.  I'd never done anything like this before.  If someone mugged me on the street, I'd give in.  I wouldn't even have time to give in.  If I had a gun pressed to my back and a man growling at me to give him my purse, what else should I even try to do?  I'd give him what he wanted, shocked into submission, and only later would I even begin to think of what else I could have done under the circumstances.

The difference now was that Lucent was here, and I didn't feel afraid.  I probably should have been afraid, but I wasn't.  I wouldn't bend to anyone else's will.  I was mine, my own person, belonging to myself, and sometimes I gave myself to Lucent, too.  I wouldn't let anyone else bend me to their will and force me into submission.

It was probably a really foolish thing to do, an idiotic thing to think.

The man reached towards his side, grabbing for a gun.  Eyes wide, my mind reflecting on my ideals and how maybe I should have figured them out a little better before this, I no longer knew what to do.  I didn't know if I was strong or weak, or if I would die or live.  I didn't know anything, except that Lucent was right next to me.

I bit hard on the man's hand, making him shout.  His hand slipped away from the gun holstered at his side and he dropped whatever it was he had clutched in his other arm.  I pulled it away, claiming it as mine; a box, small and rectangular, gleaming, metallic.

Lucent's tight knuckles slammed into the man's jaw.  Staggering backwards, the intruder pushed against the wall, fleeing.  Staring up, I saw Lucent following his escape with more aggression in his eyes than I'd ever seen.  The only thing stopping him?  Me.  My body lay in the way, blocking Lucent's path to the interloper in front of us.  The man seemed to sense this, too.  I moved to roll away, to stand and regain my footing and... I didn't know what I would do after that, but it seemed like the best thing to do.

I barely made it to my knees before the unknown man escaped, though.  He stared after us, assessing the situation with a callous, frustrated glare, and then he fled past the stacks of computer servers that created makeshift aisles in the room.  His dark clothes and hooded face disappeared behind a stack of computer servers.  His feet pounded against the floor, adding drumming strength to the sound of the hissing fire at the other end of the room, and a moment later he was gone.  He found a door, no doubt, fleeing through the halls of the mansion to somewhere unknown.

Lucent helped me up.  His eyes moved from me to the flames, passing lightly over a fire extinguisher confined to a glass case between us and the heat of the fire.  The extinguisher looked disgustingly inadequate, more for a small disturbance than the growing inferno.  My cheeks grew warm, warmer, hot and now burning.  Smoke crashed into my mouth and I choked.

Lucent clutched me close to his body and directed me towards the ladder.  Slow and careful, he lowered me to the floor, helping me press my feet onto the rungs in the secret entryway.  I held onto him tight until he carefully eased my grip from his protective arm to the ladder beneath me.  I half climbed, half fell, stumbling to the secret tunnel below.  Lucent followed after me.

I toppled to the floor.  Leaning my back against the wall, I stared up at the ladder and the opening.  Dark smoke filled the room, thickening and curling, pressing its way downwards and into the free space above Lucent and I.  Before it could gain more ground, Lucent stepped towards a panel in the wall and tapped something into the pad of numbers and letters.  The opening vanished, sealing shut.  It looked like the ladder led to nowhere now, a climb towards a ceiling of white nothingness.

"Are you alright?" Lucent asked.

I nodded.  Still gripped tightly in my arm, somehow, I held the box the man had tried to steal.

"Where are your shoes?" Lucent asked.

Shoes seemed like the last thing I needed to worry about, but I looked for them anyways.  I found them on the floor, discarded.  I made to crawl to gather them, but Lucent stopped me and collected them for me.  Treating me like Cinderella, acting like my prince, he placed them reverently on my feet.  I just watched him, caught up in the moment.  The entire situation seemed out of control and unwieldy, nearing on impossible.

It should have been, and yet...

I didn't know about the Landseer estate, but hidden within Landseer Tower there was at least one secret room.  It seemed funny in a way and I laughed despite myself, filled with manic fear.  Why shouldn't a billionaire's mansion hold secret passageways?  A saferoom, yes, but what more?  Landseer Tower had at least one room like this, and apparently Asher's mansion had... how many?  My throat clenched and I cackled and choked uncontrollably, some witch in modern times.  The fear, panic, the adrenaline, it all raged through my body, bubbling sickly out of my mouth, becoming this cacophonous sound.

Then I wretched.  Coughing, suddenly sobbing, I leaned to the side and threw up onto the concrete floor next to me.  I heaved and almost fell down, face first, but Lucent bent low to grab me.  He held my hair back, keeping me from throwing up on myself.  It was a kind gesture and I appreciated it, but it was difficult to say so.  My body felt numb, filled with anesthetics, and my mind blurred into static like a broken radio transmitting white noise.

"What's going on?" I finally managed to ask.  I didn't know how long Lucent and I stayed there, how long we were running through these hidden tunnels.  It seemed like the party ended forever ago, yesterday or the day before.  I didn't want to be here anymore.

"I don't know for sure," Lucent said.

"Why did he want this—"  I stared at the box resting at my side.  "Why would anyone want this box?" I asked.  "Did he start the fire just to steal it?  I don't understand, Lucent."

"It's not just a box, Miss Tanner," he said.  "It's a computer hard drive.  That particular one contains—"  He stopped, brow scrunched up, tongue stiff in his mouth.

"I want to know," I said.  "I don't understand what's going on but I want to know."

"It's complicated."

"Don't you trust me?" I asked.

He stifled a searing cough.  "It's not that.  I do.  It's something else.  It's—"