I pull her legs higher, draping them over my shoulders so I can get deeper, so I can hit the very back of her. She’s sobbing now, her hands splashing the water as she reaches for the peak.
“Jex… oh god… I’m going… I’m going under…”
“Let go,” I command, my own breath coming in ragged, freezing hitches. “Drown in it, sweetheart.”
She shatters. I feel the tremors start deep in her core, a series of violent, rhythmic pulses that milk me ofeverything I have. She’s shaking so hard I have to hold her against the piling to keep her from slipping back into the deep. I follow her a second later, a white-hot explosion of release that makes the cold water feel like it’s boiling.
We hang there, tangled together under the rotting wood of the pier, the only sound the lapping of the waves and the distant, dying crackle of the fire above.
The salt water is stinging the fresh scratches on my back, but I don’t give a damn. We’re breathing like we just ran a marathon through hell, our forehead pressed together, the only two living things in a graveyard of sunken timber and old secrets.
“Hear that?” I whisper, my voice barely a thread over the rhythmic slap-slap of the tide against the pilings.
Blue and red lights are strobing through the gaps in the floorboards above us, cutting through the thick, oily smoke. The sirens are a discordant wail, a funeral march for the Mayor’s career and the funhouse both.
“They’re looking for bodies, Jex,” Hallow breathes, her fingers digging into the wet leather of my jacket. She’s shivering violently now, the adrenaline dump leaving her cold, but the fire in her eyes hasn’t gone out. “They’re looking for us.”
“Let ‘em look,” I rasp. I shift my weight, the water swirling around my waist as I reach into the hiddencavity of the piling. I pull out a dry, vacuum-sealed bag I stashed here two nights ago.
I rip it open with my teeth. Inside isn’t just clothes. It’s two heavy-duty diving rebreathers and a waterproof GPS.
Hallow stares at the gear, then at the black, churning mouth of the harbour. “We’re going under?”
“The police boats have thermals, but they aren’t looking at the drainage pipes three miles out in the salt-marshes,” I say, a slow, jagged smirk cutting through the soot on my face. “There’s a duo of Ducatis waiting in the tall grass. By the time they finish counting the teeth in that funhouse, we’ll be across the state line.”
I press a rebreather into her hand. I don’t just want her to survive; I want her to be the ghost that haunts every dream our father has left.
“You ready to be dead to the world, sweetheart?”
She doesn’t hesitate. She bites down on the mouthpiece, her eyes locking onto mine with a terrifying, beautiful clarity. She reaches out, her hand sliding over my wet chest one last time before we submerge.
“I’ve been dead a long time, Jex,” she mumbles through the silicone. “This is the first time I’ve felt like a haunting.”
I pull my mask on, grab her waist, and we slip silently beneath the black surface. No splash. No trace. Just two shadows moving through the deep, leaving the burning city to scream at the sky.
Chapter
Twenty-Three
JEX
The transition from the freezing, black sludge of the harbour to the stinging, open air of the salt marshes is a violent birth. We crawl out of the drainage pipe, gasping, the rebreathers clattering against the concrete. The smell of sulphur and rotting peat is a godsend compared to the suffocating smoke we left behind.
Three miles of shoreline are burning in the distance, a jagged orange scar on the horizon.
“There,” I rasp, pointing toward a thicket of sawgrass where the shadows are just a little too solid.
I rip the camouflage netting off the two Ducati Panigales. They’re matte black, stripped of everything but the engine and the rage. I toss Hallow a leather jacket—heavy, armoured, and smelling of the cedar chest where I’ve kept our real lives stashed.
She’s shaking, her wet gown clinging to her like asecond, ruined skin. She doesn’t put the jacket on. She just stands there, looking at the bikes, then back at the fire.
“He’s still alive, Jex,” she says, her voice a low, vibrating chord of hate. “I felt the explosion. It wasn’t enough. A man like that… he has too many souls to burn in one fire.”
I swing a leg over the lead bike, the engine turning over with a predatory, mechanical bark that sends a cloud of marsh birds screaming into the air. “I know. That’s why we aren’t going to the mountains.”
I reach into the saddlebag and pull out a tablet. The screen flickers to life, showing a moving red dot on a digital map of the interstate.
“Private medical transport,” I growl, the HUD reflecting in my eyes. “Code 3. Full security detail. They’re moving him to the private wing at St. Jude’s. They think the hospital is a fortress.”
