Chapter Three
I’M READY FOR EVERYTHINGthe moment the short hand strikes three.
Bang!
Or at least I thought I was.
Until fireworks explode from everywhere, both real and digital, the noise made more deafening by the roar of the crowd. Champagne corks pop like gunshots. Confetti rains down in glittering gold. The masked figures below are on their feet, cheering, clapping, their excitement sharp enough to slice through the glass between us.
And then the curtains slip closed on their own, plunging me into darkness...just as a hand clamps over my mouth from behind.
“Follow my lead and do exactly as I say—”
I don’t scream. I don’t even flinch. Maybe I’ve already used up my quota of terror for the night, or maybe some part of me has been waiting for this, the other shoe finally dropping.
“—if you want both of us to get out of here alive.”
My rescuer’s voice is low.Male. Cold as a blade pressed to skin.
He also doesn’t think there’s any point to waiting for my response, since he’s already pulling me through a door I hadn’t even noticed was hidden behind the velvet curtains, andoh.Just like that, we’re in a hallway that smells like dust and old wood and something sharper underneath.
Gunpowder, maybe.
Or fear.
Gunfire erupts somewhere to our left, the sound making me flinch while my rescuer remains unperturbed, his stride remaining stealthy and unbroken. He moves like he was born in chaos, like bullets are just weather he’s learned to dress for. His grip on my wrist is iron, dragging me along, and some traitorous part of my brain notes that his hand is warm. That it fits around my wrist like it belongs there.
We duck through doorways and cut through rooms I barely have time to register.
A man in a suit rounds the corner ahead of us.
My rescuer shoots him in the chest without slowing down.
The body drops. I try not to look, but my artist’s brain catalogs it anyway: the way he crumples, boneless, like a marionette with cut strings. The red blooming across his white shirt like watercolor on wet paper.
More gunfire behind us. Shouts. The pop-pop-pop of it almost rhythmic, almost musical, drowned out by the ongoing explosion of fireworks outside.
We keep running.
Bodies are dropping at a faster rate than the last ten minutes of a George Romero zombie movie. Blood everywhere, splattering the walls, the floor, and now my face, warm and wet, and who knew blood would taste so metallic?
I want to gag.
