He steps into the hallway. The door closes behind him, and the lock clicks firmly in place.
And I sprint into the bathroom and throw up.
I fear that I might not leave this place alive.
Kane
Manhattan doesn’t sleep. The city hums—engines, voices, footsteps, a thousand overlapping intentions bleeding into the air. Greed. Impatience. Hunger. Desire.
Normally, I can ignore it.
But right now, it presses against my skull like a hammer.
Cal leans against the brick wall of the small alley we’re standing inside. His eyes are half closed, and he’s focusing hard, trying to let his ears pick up anything he can. Across the street, the fancy skyscraper rises sixty stories high. It’s the kind of place filled with residential penthouses that are built for men who believe money makes them untouchable.
And Damien Snow lives at the very top.
Cal tilts his head slightly, and I can only imagine what a fucking maze it is filtering through all this noise to identify conversations that will help us get to Blair.
“Front desk rotates every twenty minutes,” he murmurs. “Two guards in the private lobby. Keycard elevators only.”
I keep my eyes on the tower.
“Service routes?” I ask.
“There’s a loading dock on the west side,” he says. “Maintenance elevator. No cameras inside the shaft.”
I nod once.
“Damien’s penthouse has two guards outside his door,” Cal adds after another moment.
All of it’s good info to have when I’m planning on barreling through that slimefuck’s place like the Kool-Aid man, but the words barely register because something else hits me hard.
It’s fear, but it doesn’t stem from confusion or anger. It stems from clarity, and behind it sits outright terror and the desperate need to escape.
Blair.
The closer I am to her, the more I can feel her. The more I can sense her intentions and her emotions and every beat of her heart. Her pulse is racing. Her breaths are short and choppy. She’s not just scared; she’s terrified.
Real, visceral panic rips through my chest like a blade.
“I need to get to her now. Right fucking now.”
Cal looks at me.
“I can feel her, man. She’s scared shitless. She wants to escape. And her intentions aren’t from naïveté. They’re from pure fucking realization of the truth.” I meet his eyes. “Do you know enough to get us inside?”
“Well, I can never be certain. But I don’t think we have time for certainty, do we?”
I shake my head and swallow hard against the urge to burn this whole fucking city to the ground just to get to her.
The distance between us feels unbearable.
And her fear is making it impossible for me to temper my rage.
“Is it safe to say this little road trip is going to end with a body count?” Cal questions, and I don’t hesitate to respond.
“Yep.”
