"Come. Feed," she encouraged. "Drain me dry. I don't want Dressler to hurt even one more person."
Domitian was creeping through the strip of jungle between the bluffs over the beach and the fence around the labs when he heard a pssst.
Pausing, he peered around until he spotted a woman in a white lab coat, crouched about ten feet ahead, behind a tree. He was sure he'd seen her come out of the labs several moments ago and walk down to the gatehouse to talk to the guard there. Apparently, she'd made her way around here afterward.
Domitian eyed her warily, but when she gestured for him to go to her, he considered his options. He'd searched the jungle for Sarita first. He hadn't been surprised when she wasn't there, but he'd had to make sure and glancing around as he moved through it hadn't slowed him much. He'd reached the edge of the jungle to find the men all gathered on the lawn getting instructions on searching the island for him. Using their distraction to his advantage, he'd moved along the inside edge of the jungle until he was parallel to the back of the house and then had quickly snuck across to the back corner.
A glance through the window in the first door had shown him a kitchen with a woman pottering around, apparently oblivious to or unconcerned by what was happening outside. Domitian had moved on without disturbing her and used a set of French doors that had led into an empty games room. Other than the woman in the kitchen, the house had seemed completely empty. Domitian had searched it quickly, but there had been no sign of Sarita. As he'd feared, she'd been taken to the more secure labs with their towers and gatehouse. He'd spent the last hour or better, moving through the woods that lined the back and sides of the fence, looking for a weak spot, or a place he might enter without anyone noticing. But while he could control the guards in the corner towers and make them look away, the cameras everywhere ensured his approach would be seen.
He'd just been taking one last look around, hoping for inspiration on how to save Sarita before resigning himself to giving himself up to Dressler, when he'd heard that pssst. Now he crept to the woman, hoping against hope that the angels had sent a solution to his problem.
"You have to save Sarita," the woman hissed the moment he stopped in front of her. "I can help."
"Who are you?" Domitian asked, eyeing her warily. "And why would you help?"
"I'm-My name is Asherah."
He stilled at the name, recognizing it. Sarita had said the woman had been present when Dressler had injected her with a knockout drug. This woman had done nothing to help her.
"Again," he said coldly. "Why would you help?"
"Because if you don't get her away from here, El Doctor is going to use her to make you turn him immortal," she said grimly.
"And you do not want that?" he asked dubiously.
"Damned right I don't," she snarled, glancing resentfully toward the labs. "He's tortured us long enough. You need to get Sarita out and away from here to somewhere he can't get his hands on either of you."
Domitian glanced toward the buildings again, debating whether to trust the woman or not. Sarita had said Asherah hadn't seemed to like her much, but she might have mistaken the rage obviously boiling under the surface of this woman as dislike of herself. Either way, it didn't really matter. He didn't see a way to get in without help. If the woman betrayed him and delivered him to Dressler, than she was simply doing what he'd just about decided he'd have to do anyway and turning him in.
"How?" Domitian asked finally, still eyeing the grounds inside the fence. "I can control the guards and make them look away, but I cannot control the cameras."
"There's a blind spot between two of the cameras," Asherah said at once, and he turned sharply to look at her.
"Where?"
"Right here," she answered, nodding toward the fence. "If you stay on a straight line from this tree to that third light on the building, the two cameras on this side of the lab will not pick you up."
Domitian eyed the light she was talking about and then glanced at first one camera and then the other on the corners of the building and thought it might be possible they were angled in such a way as to miss a three-foot-wide strip of the grounds. But then he glanced to the next building behind this one and frowned. "What about the cameras on that building? Won't the one pointed this way catch me?"
"It's not angled right," Asherah assured him and then added, "I use this blind spot to slip away from the labs and go down to the beach for a swim when El Doctor makes me stay all night to watch over one of his horrible experiments. I've never once been caught."