Lila lifts her head, her voice groggy and thick. “What?”
Shit, this isn’t good. I need to keep her conscious.“He wants them to storm in,” I whisper quickly. “He’s got something waiting upstairs.” I strain against the zip tie, feeling the plastic bite deeper, slick with my own blood. “We have to warn them. If they come down that stairwell…”
“They’ll walk right into it,” she finishes, eyes widening in the dark as they catch the faint glow of my cracked phone. “Can you…do your tech thing? Hack something? Send a signal?”
“The screen’s locked. Biometric,” I say, gesturing at my swollen eye with my chin. And my face is currently compromised. Plus, he’s got a jammer running. I can hear the hum in the vents. No signal in or out.”
“Then we get loud,” Lila says, suddenly fierce, struggling against her bindings. Her blond hair is matted with blood I’m trying not to focus on. “We fucking scream. We make noise. If they’re close…”
“Then the fucking guards come down here and shut us up permanently,” I cut in, keeping my voice low and urgent. “Lila. No. We wait for the right moment.”
“I don’t want to wait.” Her voice breaks, raw and trembling. “Cam, I can’t… I can’t just sit here and let him use us as bait for Kiera. She’s already lost so much. If something happens to her because of me…”
“Hey.” I shuffle closer, ignoring the way my ribs scream, until our shoulders touch. “Look at me. Kiera’s not some damsel—she’s the fucking cavalry. And Sterling…” I think about the look on my best friend’s face every time Kiera Hawthorne walks into a room. The way he watches her like she’s the only thing that exists. “He’d burn the whole damn city down to get her back. He’s not walking into a trap blind. Not with her.”
The light bulb flickers. The timer is counting down to the next cycle. Footsteps overhead. Multiple heavy sets. Lila goes rigid against my shoulder. I can feel her heart hammering through the thin fabric of her shirt. My fingers finally work the razor blade free from my boot. Hands shaking, I start sawing through the zip ties.
The door at the top of the stairs groans open. Yellow light spills down the stairwell like a blade slicing through the dark. I squint against it, shoving the razor up my sleeve and shifting to shield Lila with my body as best I can. Two figures descend, silhouetted against the harsh glow. Tall. Armed. Moving with that military precision that makes my gut clench. The leadfigure pauses, tilting their head. I know that posture. I’ve seen Kiera Hawthorne stand exactly like that in doorways—sizing up rooms, calculating exits. “Cam?” The whisper cuts through the dark.
I exhale hard, the tension flooding out of me so fast my vision swims. “Down here,” I rasp. “Two guards upstairs, east wing. Asher’s got a jammer and a secondary exit through the…”
“Through the ventilation shaft in the northwest corner,” Sterling finishes, voice low and steady as he appears behind Kiera, weapon raised, covering the stairs. “Already mapped it. Cam, you good?”
“Been better,” I manage, voice laced with pain. “It’s a trap. The whole building.”
“We know,” Kiera says. She’s at my side in three strides, blade already in hand. One clean motion and the zip-ties fall away. Her hands are steady, but her eyes are wild when they meet mine in the dim light. “Asher thinks he’s hunting,” she says, her voice lethal and low. “He forgot what happens when he corners prey that has claws.” She moves to Lila, slicing through her zip ties with one quick motion, then pulls her into a fierce, almost desperate hug that makes Lila gasp. “I’m sorry.” Kiera breathes into her hair. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Took you long enough,” Lila mumbles, but she’s gripping Kiera’s jacket like a lifeline.
Sterling crouches in front of me. His eyes sweep over my face, my ribs, cataloging injuries in that cold, detached way he has. “Can you walk?”
“Can I walk?” I snort, then immediately wince as pain lances through my ribs. “Fuck you, Ster. I can run.”
“Good.” He hands me a spare gun. Heavy. Familiar. “Because we’re going out the front door, and we’re burning this place down behind us.”
Above us, something crashes, followed by shouting. The guards must have realized the basement’s been breached. Kiera pulls Lila to her feet, then turns to me with a look I’ve never seen on her face before. Not the ice-cold predator. Not the broken daughter. It’s something new. Something righteous. “Stay behind me,” she says. And for the first time since I woke up in this basement, I actually believe we’re getting out alive.
The alarms scream as we climb the stairs into the fire. The stairs are a death trap: narrow, no cover, every step echoing like a gunshot. I grip the gun Sterling gave me, trying to remember the basics he drilled into me last year:Front sight, trigger press, don’t anticipate the recoil.My hands shake so badly I’m more likely to shoot my own foot than someone coming at me, but the weight of the gun still helps. Kiera moves like smoke ahead of us. Sterling has our back. Lila’s between us, her fingernails digging crescents into my forearm. The door at the top of the stairs explodes inward before we reach it. Splinters rain down like shrapnel. I throw my body over Lila, turning my back to the blast. Wood shards pepper my back like buckshot. Kiera doesn’t flinch. She fires three times—sharp, precise.Pop.Pop. Pop.Someone on the other side starts screaming. “Move!” Sterling roars, shoving us through the gap.
The main floor is worse than the basement. An open warehouse with forty-foot ceilings and rusted gantry cranes hanging overhead like skeletal fingers. Emergency lights paint everything blood-red. I can see the jammer immediately–a black suitcase-sized box bolted to the central support beams, LEDs blinking angry green. “Asher!” Kiera’s voice cuts through the chaos, loud and carrying, echoing off the metal walls. “You wanted me? Here I am!”
Silence, except for the low hum of the jammer. Then, from the catwalk above, a calm, almost amused voice drifts down. “You brought him.”
I look up. Asher leans casually against the railing, like a man waiting for a bus. He’s not alone. Three armed men flank him, rifles trained down on us.His gaze flicks from Kiera to me, then lingers on Lila, huddling behind us. “And you’ve reunited the whole family,” he says, voice smooth and mocking. “How nauseatingly sweet; it makes me want to gag.”
My phone buzzes against my hip, the vibration sharp and insistent. I risk a glance down. The shattered screen still shows the notification:Signal lost. The jammer. It’s blocking everything, but the phone is still trying to connect, still sending out desperate pings. An idea cuts through the pain fogging my skull. “The jammer,” I whisper to Sterling, lips barely moving. “It’s directional. If I can get to the panel on the west wall, I can loop the feedback. Blind them for thirty seconds.”
“Thirty seconds isn’t enough,” Sterling mutters back, voice barely a breath against my ear.
“It is if you’re as pissed off as I am,” Kiera says. She doesn’t look at us, eyes staying locked on Asher, but her hand finds Sterling’s and squeezes once. A silent promise. “Do it, Cam.”
“I need cover,” I rasp, voice rough from inhaling dust.
Lila lifts her head. Her eyes are red-rimmed, but her jaw is set. “I’ll cover you.”
“You don’t have a gun,” I hiss, heart slamming against my ribs. “Stay with them.”
Lila bends down, snatches a fallen two-by-four from the debris, and hefts it like a baseball bat. “I don’t need one.”