Summer of Jonnor

That Plaidboy Fragrance

She lowered her head. "I can't."

"They don't have to know. You can say you came in here and we were already gone. Please, I'm begging you. I'll even go with them if I have to. But let me get Miguel out of here."

She looked at him. Came over and took a knife out of her pants. Sawed through his ropes. "My daughter was raped," she said to him.

"I'm sorry," Connor said tenderly. He jumped up after being freed, and she cut Miguel loose. Miguel stood and looked at Connor hesitantly. "Let's go," Connor said. He went to the door and looked out, and seeing that the coast was clear, snuck out with Miguel following behind him.

***

Sophia, Jude and Taylor were continuing the sweep. They came a longer corridor with a closed door in the middle. Jude stopped outside the door. "Whoa."

"Pheromones?" Taylor asked. 

"Definitely pheromones."

Taylor nodded and fished something out of her pack that looked like a cubical, bizarre-looking camera. She jammed it up to the door. "Axion camera," she said to Jude. "It's able to take a picture of what's behind the door."

"Russian military surplus?" he asked dryly.

"No, it was a Kickstarter." She pursed her lips at his look. "I do have multiple sources for equipment."

"Obviously. And to think that James Bond needed Q, and you just do both jobs."

She grinned and looked at the results. "It's okay, we can go in."

Jude opened the door. There was table with some food on it. Chairs, including two that had ropes piled around the legs. Jude went over to one of them, knelt and inhaled. "He was here, probably for a long time. Pheromones are heavy."

"Maybe they're already moving him," Sofia whispered urgently.

They left the room. Jude sniffed the air. "This way, it's a fresh trail." They continued moving down the hallway, but froze as they heard footsteps coming towards them.

***

Connor crouched with Miguel under a desk and waited for the men to pass, aware that they would possibly come back in the same direction—and quickly—once they learned Connor and Miguel had escaped. Connor looked out the door. He wiped the sweat of his arm off on the wall next to the door. He ran down the hall and came to a stairway. He heard some noise down below and started going up, pausing briefly to again rub his sweat on the wall above the stair railing. He climbed up with Miguel following behind.

***

Crouching in the air duct, Taylor, Jude and Sophia listened as the men passed.

"Those are two of Rodriguez's known associates," Taylor whispered. Jude and Sophia heard her clearly in their earpieces.

Taylor peered through the duct. When the men came to the room where Jude had hit on the pheromones, they started yelling in Spanish came back, running past the place where the kids were hiding. "They were yelling 'they've escaped,' Sophia said. "Connor and Miguel?"

Taylor nodded. "Let's go before they come back and start searching for them." She kicked out the grill of the air duct and it clattered into the hallway. She crawled out with Sophia and Jude close behind. "We're gonna nix the sweep plan," she said. "From now on it's Jude and his nose." They continued down the hallway. "What does it smell like exactly?" Taylor asked Jude. "The pheromones?"