Thorne was dead. Alexander was dead. Also—the thumb drive. It sat there on the bed. It seemed to be the only thing in my real surroundings that I could make out or latch to. Thorne’s parting gift; all my horrors recorded. The longer I focused on that drive, the more I pulled away from Viktor and Halden. It took hours, maybe days, before I could curl my fingers around the cold, grey drive. It was smaller than my palm and light as a tiny stack of papers, but I knew it contained the weight of four broken, bleeding hearts.
Then I saw the note next. It was folded on the bedside table and had my name scrawled on it. It took another hour to grab it, unfold it, and read Heath’s words.Gone to bury Alex. Mickey is next door on bedrest.
It took everything I had to make it there, the thumb drive tucked in one hand, Heath’s note in the other, and my good ear prickling with the noise from Mickey’s TV. “Mick?” I asked hoarsely.
With bloodshot eyes he looked over at me, “Get over here, bella. You need to see this.”
“This is an on-going situation,” the reporter on the TV said. She stood outside a hotel, the news headline ticking across the bottom of the screen:SIXTY-SEVEN BRUTALLY ATTACKED AND SHOT AT HOTEL VIKTORIA.
My eyes slowly rose to the hotel’s sign, the ‘i’ and the ‘a’ bulbs out so that only a cruel VIKTOR stood out in bold red light. “Kane,” I whispered.
“Rafe went after him,” Mickey confirmed just as the news reporter continued.
“Two suspects are now in custody and being questioned. New York citizens can rest assured that justicewillbe served.”
“Arden… no,” Mickey said, but I was already placing the thumb drive on his thigh, crumpling Heath’s note, and striding down the hall back to my room. “Arden!”
I ignored him, prying up my floorboard and grabbing everything I needed, chucking it into a duffel bag. I kept pushing forward, not thinking, not feeling, just knowing. The motions were familiar. I had a job, the most important job—saving Creed.
“Arden, please,” Mickey begged. He was trying to chase me down the hall, but he couldn’t with his injuries.
“Go back to bed, Mick,” I muttered and yanked open the panel in the hall where the weapons cache was, sliding a Glock into my waistband.
“You can’t just go shoot up a police precinct!”
I turned and looked him dead in the eye. “I’m not going to. I’ll blow it to pieces first. Then I’ll shoot up the rubble and anything twitching that thought it could lay its hands on my family.”
“Cazzo,” Mickey cursed. “Did Dr. Sable give you cocaine to wake up? Put the bomb duffel down, Arden.”
I stared at him for a long moment, Viktor’s and Halden’s voices filtering back through my skull. My fingers twitched. “Do you know the only thing Alex truly asked of me when it came to his legacy?” I threw open the apartment door, my voice breakingaround his nickname—something he deserved to have heard me say and never got to. “To be explosive, Mick. To take it all fucking down. People have to be watching first to make that happen. Even if it’s innocent people.”
“Arden,” he said one final time. “This path Creed is choosing…you can’t come back from it. If they lock you up, there will be only so much the Ravens can do to get you out.”
I turned back to him, some of the hardened pieces of my heart softening at his distraught look. I closed the distance between us quickly and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Then I cupped his face and locked my eyes with his. “Make sure that thumb drive remains safe until my signal. Then I want it everywhere, Mick. Anywhere with a screen should have that footage playing.”
“Thorne was the only one who could do something like that,” he argued.
My heart re-hardened at his name. “And he’s the one who stole the drive. If I had to guess, if you go to his office in Hong Kong, you’ll find what you need to make it happen.”
“You really want the world to see you like that?” he asked.
“No.” I stepped into the hall and cast him one last long look. “But it’s not about what’s happening in the recording. It’s about the fact it was being recorded at all, that the compound existed, that S.I.N. exists.”
“And how will I know when to show it to the world if you’re all behind bars?” He insisted.
I managed a grim smile. “Look for the flames.”
The police precinct was across from the cemetery and I found that convenient in the grand scheme of things, but I also knew I was going to need to be quick. I was sure Mickey had called the Ravens by then, telling them exactly where I was headed, but the fucking thing was…I had nothing to lose except two very important people, and both of them were locked up in that building. I genuinely would have rather sentenced myself to jail time with them than risked losing them again.
But first, the bomb. It had to be big enough to draw attention but small enough that it wouldn’t hurt Creed. I needed all eyes on it and not on me when I slipped into the precinct.
I crouched out back in the shadows, twisting wires and holding my lighter between my teeth for good luck. Finishing the final touches, I sprinted down the alley, crouched and hit the detonator.
Nothing.
I stood with an aggravated shout, charging toward the thing in rage—before it exploded and I flung backward.
My good ear rang so badly the world came back warped, like I was underwater, shapes swimming in and out of focus as I rolled onto my side and coughed. Pain registered slowly, blooming in waves instead of spikes, my skull throbbing like it had been split. I forced myself upright, swiping at my mouth, my fingers coming away gritty and red.
