“Here.” The guard brushes his hand over the scanning panel and releases a door that’s not the same as the one we entered through earlier. We’re going a different way, and fuck knows, I was already struggling to remember the first path.
“Make the call,” Tank grinds out, stalking through the door. “That dude is new. He’s on a low-level exit for a reason. He’s useless.”
“Why are we going this way?” I don’t even have to pretend my question is a decoy. It’s one I’d ask even if I really was Aster’s man escorting Nova outside to die. I slip my phone back into my pocket and take her arm to help her along. “This isn’t the way we came in.”
“You don’t trust me?” He glances back with a taunting smirk, that fucking look he gave on the way in, back when I was planning his death. “You don’t know this house, Castro. But I do. So why don’t you mind your fuckin’ business?”
“I need to sit down.” Nova sways and turns a nasty shade of green. “I feel sick.”
“If you puke in here, you’re cleaning it up with your tongue,” Tank snarls, lifting his chin as we come upon the next guard. Every twenty fucking feet. That’s how far apart Aster has them. “Step aside and let us through. She barfs in your hall, it’s your problem.”
With dizzying speed, the guard plasters his back to the wall and provides an opening at the door he’s supposed to block.
“I need to lie down.” Nova’s head lolls forward, her weight tilting off balance. “I can’t walk anymore.”
“If you fall, I’m leaving you there.” Tank slaps his palm to the next scanner, this one unmanned. “Girls like you, lying on the floor in a short dress with no one to defend her honor?” He pushes the door open and cruelly chuckles. “You won’t like how that feels, kiddo. These men are animals, and you’re ripe to be mounted.”
I gnash my teeth and swallow the poison spreading through my veins. The rage I want to unleash. The retribution I want to dole out. I’m unaccustomed to shutting my mouth and playing second fiddle to any man, ever. But he’s our ticket out, and his viciousness, it seems, is the price of admission.
“Last hallway.” He steps back, gesturing for us to go first.
His willingness for us to precede him brings me up short, my desire to flee bristling against my suspicious nature when he grins that way he does. I pull Nova to a stop and stare up at the guy who may be Arabella Aster’s child.
It’s possible he’s the reason she fled. The life she saved by faking the end of her own.
Or maybe he’s full of shit.
“Why don’t you go first?” I eye the dark hallway leading into the unknown. Leadingdown, where the temperature drops the further we come away from Nova’s prison. “If we’re going outside, why are we heading below ground?”
“You’re a cynical motherfucker, aren’t ya?” He sweeps an arm around Nova’s stomach, startling a cry of surprise from the depths of her chest that travels back the way we came. “I said move.” He tosses her across the threshold so she lands with awhimper, the side of her head rapping against the floor and fresh blood spraying from wounds never allowed to heal.
In less time than it takes my heart to beat, I bring my gun up and point it between his eyes. “You’re a liar, aren’t you, Tank? A fuckin’ loyalist who thought it would be fun to make us walk toward death.”
“This you singing?” He peeks over at Nova, like he intends to cross the threshold and go to her. But I step first, viciously aware we have enemies on both sides of the door.
Which is worse? I have no fucking clue.
Notbeing separated from Nova is the only thing I’m sure of, so I move backward, shielding her heaving frame and blindly navigating the raised threshold.
“You should probably stay here.” I glance over Tank’s shoulder and spy a curious guard as he steps away from his post. Then I bring my eyes back to the man in front of me.Richard Aster’s fucking grandson.“We don’t need you anymore.”
“You’re cocky,” he sneers. “The exact kinda douchebag Ryknewshe’d pick. You think he actually believed she’d get in a car and drive east just cos he said so? You think he wasn’t terrified,knowingwhat a pain in the ass she was, so he made damn sure his bases were covered?”
“Tank?” the guard calls out hesitantly. “Is everything okay?”
“You die without me.” He angles to the left and stares down at Nova with dark, scorching eyes. “Shedies without me. So, turn your ass around, pick her up, and keep walking.”
The boom of a handgun echoes along the hall. The dangerous ping of metal slapping concrete before whizzing past my ear comes second. But it’s the breathtaking fire piercing mythigh and tearing out the other side that has me spinning. Not because I was hit, and not even because of the electrocuting pain sizzling beneath my skin. But because of the horrifying fear that my bullet might pass through me and hit Nova.
I scoop her up and take her weight in one arm, and as gunfire chases us into the next hall, I sprint. I catch her when her feet tangle, hold her up when her knees give out, and, dropping my head, I pump my free arm to push us faster.
“Wait!” She stumbles, scissoring her legs and fighting to turn back. “Lincoln! What about Tank?”
“We have to go!” Bullets fly through the hall and make it impossible for us to go back. Men grunt. Some fall. Nova trips and cries out, so I sweep her up and toss her over my shoulder. My leg burns, blood soaking my jeans and pooling in my boot, but as we come across our first enemy on this side of the door, I squeeze off a round and send him flailing back against the wall. “I’ll get you out!” I shout above the din of fighting men. “I’ll come back for him when you’re safe.”
“Lincoln! I can’t—” She chokes on her pain, crying out with every bounce of my limp-run. “Let me down.”
“Can you walk?” I flip her off my shoulder and sweep her behind my back, shielding her with my body and latching onto her wrist. Pricking my ears for whatever’s coming next, I drag her deeper into the dark halls. “We’re close, Nov. We’re nearly there.” But then we come upon a corridor with two separate halls. It’s a Y—left or right—and I have no fucking clue which to choose. “Nova?” I yank her forward, my breath racing on fast, dizzying exhales. “Which way?”
