Maybe he’d done the wrong thing leading them up here, where they might end up cornered. But with Jax down there, he’d soon be organizing his guys into search teams using a grid pattern, and discovery would be inevitable because there was nowhere for them to go. He wasn’t going to put Bryce’s life in danger like that.
Bryce, who’d come for him only because his pack had put Tom in this position to start with. He mustn’t forget that was what Bryce had said. The way he’d grabbed Tom and held him so tight hadn’t meant any of the things Tom’s traitorous heart had wanted to believe.
He swore as his foot slipped on the broken edge of a step and his knee banged down onto hard stone. Bryce, so close behind him, nearly got kicked in the face, but instead of complaining, he supported Tom’s leg until he got his footing back.
“Watch that one,” Tom said, his knee throbbing.
“Uh huh,” Bryce said, sounding rather breathless. “But seriously, secret staircases? This place is straight out of Scooby Doo.”
Tom grinned and kept climbing.
“You know you have quads of steel, right?” Bryce said a while later.
“You tapping out on me?” he tossed at Bryce, feeling able to tease because they’d come up at least a hundred steps and he hadn’t heard a thing behind them. Maybe it was reckless of him, but he was beginning to believe they were going to make it, and the thought had him lightheaded with relief. Unless it was the lack of oxygen from the fast climb that made him feel that way.
“Let’s just say this is not how I usually get my cardio.”
Tom realized the darkness ahead of him was thinning. He paused for a moment, holding his breath to see if he could hear anything. He could hear voices, he was sure—quiet and distorted as if coming from a distance—but there was no suggestion of disguised movements or withheld breath as if someone lay in wait for them. He turned off the light and continued to climb, more slowly and carefully.
The staircase curved one last time to the left, and then, without warning, opened out into a low, narrow corridor. The space was tightly enclosed, but not in the way Tom expected. The curved wall on their right arched upward and inward, close enough to brush their shoulders. To the left, the wall sloped away from them at the same angle, creating a narrow walkwaybetween what Tom swiftly realized must be the inner and outer shells of the building’s great dome.
The interior wall had a series of small round windows, almost like portholes, through which light fell, illuminating the passageway. Tom leaned toward the nearest window and jerked backward in shock.
Bryce was next to him. “What is it? Where are we?”
“See for yourself,” he said, and stepped back to swap places. No matter how grim their situation, he couldn’t let Bryce miss this.
They were suspended above the vast expanse of the Council chamber. Council was in session and the councilors seated at their places looked like nothing more than ants from this high up.
“What thehell?”Bryce stepped back fast, pale and shaking, his hand groping for the wall behind him. “Where—how—Are we in the roof?”
“My guess is we’re between the inner and outer domes,” Tom said.
“Which means we’re standing on what, precisely?”
“Given that the dome curves away beneath us, that would be support struts and pretty much nothing else.”
“Ihateheights,” Bryce muttered, the nausea on his face suggesting that was an understatement.
Waiting things out here didn’t seem like a good option anymore, not with Bryce disabled by his phobia.
“Let’s find out where this goes,” Tom said, and encouraged Bryce to move forward by putting a hand on his shoulder. He left it there, despite the fact it made walking rather awkward, because Bryce wasn’t kidding—the guy who’d faced deadly assassins in the dark without turning a hair was rigid at the thought of all that space beneath his feet.
The passageway curved around and upward, until finally they reached some worn stone steps and a small door.
“Oh, thank God,” Bryce said, and opened the door before Tom could warn him that what lay beyond was almost certainly the outside of the dome, hundreds of feet in the air.
The brightness was blinding after the gloom of the passage. Bryce clung to the door, frozen at the sight in front of him as a brisk wind whipped his hair. Tom gently pushed him out and followed.
He closed the door behind them. There was no way of locking or bolting it, but at least that would give them a moment’s warning if anyone followed them.
There wasn’t much space to fight off a pursuer, Tom thought, scanning the area with a critical eye. They’d emerged from a small, arched door set into the base of a round structure—a cupola, perched at the very top of the dome.
A narrow stone walkway circled the cupola’s base, bounded on the outer edge by a waist-high balustrade of old, weathered stone. Immediately beyond the balustrade, the great curve of the dome swelled outward beneath their feet.
Satisfied that he could hold their ground if necessary, Tom turned and looked at the view. Capitol Hill was spread out below them, beautiful, graceful buildings gleaming in the late afternoon sun. Tom pressed his palm to the lichen-covered balustrade and wondered how something could look so peaceful and perfect from up here, when down below it was all guns and running and betrayal.
He turned back to check where Bryce was, and saw him pressing back against the recess between the cupola’s ornamental pillars, his hands clutching at the surface behind him. Tom’s breath caught in his throat. How could someone so strong look so breakable?
