He’s not wrong to chastise me. The goal right now is to avoid as many security guards and people as we can. The goal is to get to the sixtieth floor with zero witnesses or confrontations.
We move around the block toward the loading dock on quick feet. The alley behind the tower is quiet. Empty delivery trucks sit by a bay that’s lined with dumpsters, and a steel door secures the back entrance.
Cal listens again.
“I’m only hearing three men inside. Pretty sure it’s a combination of maintenance staff and a security guard,” he updates.
I reach for the handle on the steel door, and it opens without issue. We slip inside and start the quiet trek down a concrete corridor that’s lined with fluorescent lights that buzz above our heads.
Footsteps approach before we’ve taken ten steps, and both Cal and I sneak into a utility closet. The footsteps pass us by, two men laughing and chatting about something innocuous, and then they disappear out the same door we entered.
“We’re clear,” Cal says, and we head out of the utility closet and finish walking the rest of the way down the corridor.
But just as we round the corner, heading for the staff elevator, we come face-to-face with a man dressed in all black. He’s looking down at his phone but still walking toward us.
“Vamp,” Cal whispers.
“Gofer,” I add.
Being raised in a world where we’re constantly surrounded by the elites’ fucking gofers, it’s really easy to spot them in the wild. We’ve been to school with these fucks. Played hockey against them in our Concordia rec league.
He looks up from his phone, and his gaze meets mine for a brief, shocked moment before he looks at Cal.
“Slater brothers,” he spits, and I feel his intention spike—gun, kill.
Of coursehe’s got a gun. The elites and their fucking gofers never play fair. Not in life. Not in battle. Not in love. Not in any-fucking-thing.
I move before he can draw. My hand closes around his throat, and by the time he reaches for the gun, Cal has already ripped it free from his holster and thrown it across the room.
Crack, I snap his neck with quick but brutal force.
His body goes limp in my hold, and I slowly lower him to the floor. Cal grabs his feet, and we scoot the dead bastard across the tile floor and discard him in a closet near the maintenance lift.
“Shit just got real,” Cal mutters as I tap the button for the elevator.
“Pretty sure shit got real the morning Rook kidnapped Kylie.”
Cal chuckles softly. “Yeah.”
The elevator doors slide open, and we step inside. Cal hits the number sixty on the wall, and the doors slide closed. The lift starts to move up the floors, and my brother studies me for a moment.
“You’re reading short-term intentions now,” he comments. “But, like, well before they act on them.”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “I guess I am.”
Before Blair, before the bond, I could read intentions, but it was more long-term, overall intention. Now, I’m starting to read short-term ones, even when they’re impulsive. And more than that, the intentions are becoming clearer. The bond is strengthening me.
The elevator continues its climb toward the sky.
Thirty floors.
Forty floors.
The fear spikes again as we pass the fiftieth floor, but it’s not my fear. It’shers.And the closer I get to her, the more I can feel her. The more I can sense her.
Fuck, I need to get to her!
My hands curl into fists as the cart comes to a stop on the sixtieth floor. The elevator dings softly, announcing our arrival to whoever is on the other side of the door, and both Cal and I brace ourselves for what’s to come.
