“At your service. And since you swear on your fucking life that you destroyed the code and shared it with no one else—” He steps away from the door and gestures toward it in a sweeping motion. “It’s time for me to do what I do. Get you out, put you away, keep you safe. It would befareasier for me to shoot you both in your fuckin’ faces and call it a day, but Ry never shut up about his baby sister in all the years we knew each other. If I hurt you, I’ll never see a moment of peace until I’m dead. And it’ll only get worse when we meet up in the afterlife.”
“How do you plan to get her out?” Lincoln stalks forward a half-dozen steps, pulling me along in his wake.
He doesn’t know that my knees knock. That my heart aches, and my head swims. He doesn’t know I’m half a breath away from falling and sabotaging our escape.
“We’re in his fortress, and someone’s gonna take issue with you leading her out the front doors. What’s your plan?”
“We walk.” So simple. So insane. He purses his lips and spies me leaning around Lincoln’s broad shoulders. “She’s our prisoner. You work for Aster. Same way we got in here, we get out. Then I’m putting you in a fucking car and bringing a couple of bodies and the fifth set of bogus codes to Aster. You disappear, get yourself a new name and a cute little house on the river, and I get to fuck the old man over just like Conroy did decades ago.”
“He’s your grandfather,” I whisper, drawing a long breath and releasing it on a shuddering exhale. “All this time… hiding Arabella, hunting down the codes… and you’ve been right here under his nose.” I shake my head. “If she faked her death to get away, there’s no way she’s okay with her son coming back.”
“We lie to those we love,” he shrugs. “Arabella Aster fought for her freedom, and now I’ll do the same. But you’ve gotta walk.” He lifts his gun higher, racking a bullet and pointing it my way.
Lincoln releases a feral snarl and steps between us.
Tank chuckles. “You’re gonna have to be okay with me poking this in her back, or we aren’t going anywhere. Aster’s in his private suite for dinner. We have an hour, at best, to haul ass out of here. But once we start, we have five minutes to get from this door to the other side of the gates, because once word spreads you’re being moved, he’s gonna get curious.”
“Why did you bring me here?” I step around Lincoln, swallowing a hiss of pain when his hands squeeze my aching ribs. Nausea rolls in my stomach, tickling my windpipe. “If you are who you say you are, and if you already have the codes, why bring me here? You could’ve taken me straight into protective custody. You could’ve killed me. You could have done literallyanythingexcept bring me to this house.”
“Despite what you think, I’m not actually your friend, Nova. I’m not even your hero. I’m here for Arabella, which means ensuring that your portion of the coordinates remains safe. I needed to know if Castro had them, and until I’d secured all five sets, my role within Aster’s world needed to be maintained.”
“Which brings you back to killing us now.” Lincoln lifts his gun once more. “We know your secret, and if you walk us into that hall, we might start singing. A smart man would neutralize those kinds of threats.”
“Luckily for you, I’m more concerned with the things Ryan Nichols will do to me from the grave than I am with whatever you might say between here and the gates. After that, it doesn’t matter anyway.” He tilts to the side and meets my eyes. “He told you to trust me, kiddo. You might not realize it, and you may be really fuckin’ skeptical right now, but you know it’s true. And if I were a betting man, I’d say he told younotto trust whatever random douchebag showed up at your door after his death.” He brings fiery, firm eyes back to Lincoln’s. “If you can stand behindhim, confidenthisaffection for you will keep you safe, then you can stand behind me and know my respect for Ry will do the same. If you can’t do that, then you’ll see your brothersoon. He’ll say he told you so. Now shut up, act afraid, and if I hit you again, know it could be so much fuckin’ worse.”
27
LINCOLN
TRAITOR
“This way.” Tank drags Nova along faster than her tangling feet can manage, manhandling her delicate body until I know her cries of pain are real. With every hiss of agony exploding from her chest, mine grows tighter. Every time she stumbles, too weak to stay up on her own, his unforgiving hold bruises her too-pale skin.
He hurts her without hesitation. Without remorse.
For all I know, he escorts us to our slaughter, and I just… I allow it.
Because there is no third option.
I flex my fingers around the handle of my gun and walk just two feet behind the pair. That makes me their security, I suppose. To anyone on the outside peering in, I look the part, doing the job Aster pays me to do. But when we pass a guard on duty, his automatic rifle hugged to his broad chest and his beady eyes staring Nova up and down like she’s tasty and he’sstarving, I hold my breath and wait for him to realize we’re a bunch of fucking traitors.
I wait for the alarms that don’t come. For the demands that we turn around. I wait for the white-hot sting of a bullet in my back, and another nestled somewhere in my spinal cord.
“I said walk!” Tank yanks Nova taller when her knees grow weak, snapping her head around with his rough treatment. He snarls in response to her cry of despair, the sound echoing from one concrete wall to the next. “If you go any slower, I’ll pick you up and toss you over my shoulder. Open the door,” he barks at the guard waiting ahead. “She’s going into the field.”
“Th-the field?” Nova’s panic turns up a thousand notches. She’s the world’s best actress, or terrified, like I am, that we’ve made the wrong choice. “No, I don’t?—”
“Shut up.” Tank pulls her closer, catching her when she stumbles and wrenching her back rather than allowing her to careen toward the floor. He brings her to a stop by a pass-coded door and stares down at the guard standing an easy foot shorter. “I said open it.”
“T-Tank,” the guard stammers. “I don’t?—”
“I’ll take her.” I jerk her free of Tank’s grip and smirk like I’m doing him a favor. Then I meet the guard’s gaze and turn my grin higher. “You received an order, son. Where I come from, we follow those, or we find out firsthand the punishment for disobedience.”
I want to scoop Nova up. Hold her, because she already gives me so much of her weight. Help her, because she already struggles to stand. But I need a free hand, and she needs to walk out of here on her own.
One last time.
“Where the fuck is my phone?” I release Nova and force her to stand on her own, then I pat my pockets in search of the device. “I’m calling Aster. Letting him know he’s got a weak fucking link down here.”
