I examine it more closely and see there’s a bar of glass that should’ve broken. It would’ve triggered the alarm if it worked properly.
Fuck.
“What the hell are you doing?”
The security guard marches toward me. Nicolette stares at me in a panic. I smash at the alarm and break the glass. Sirens blare.
Nicolette pretends to fall straight into the lap of the man with the talisman. They both hit the floor as I race toward her.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Lyon reaches his hand back to slap her when I tackle him to the floor.
“Give that to me!”
“Oh!” Nicolette says with wide eyes as the people around us race past us to get outside. “I’m so sorry, sir! Is this what you’re looking for?” She hands him the dupe.
The people all around us push and shove, trying to get out. The security guard screams behind me. Nicolette runs but trips on those god-awful heels. Without thinking, I lift her, swing her up in my arms and race to the exit.
I move past everyone around us as I run with her.
I have to get to Thayer.
“The red door! He texted me, said exit through the red door.” I look around us and see it to the left. I put her down long enough to open the door and breathe a sigh of relief to see Thayer waiting in an idling car.
I open the door and lay her onto the seat.
“She okay?”
“I’m fine, the shoe is not,” she says. I slide in beside her and shut the door.
“Go!”
Thayer hits the gas.
Nothing but silence in the car for seconds.
Thayer finally turns around to look at us. “You got it?”
Nicolette grins, reaches down her shirt, and pulls out the talisman.
“Holy shit,” Thayer mutters reverently.
The two-hundred-year-old talisman sits in the palm of her hand.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Nicolette
Fabien answershis phone on the first ring and puts it on speaker so Thayer and I can hear him.
“Do you have it?”
“Of course I do. Do you have my brother?”
Lyam talks in the background. “Yeah, I’m here. I’m fine. I want this bullshit over.”
“Working on it.” Fabien grinds his teeth, likely biting back his threat to do something incredibly violent when he finds them, like pull out their fingernails with pliers or something.
They disconnect the call, likely because there’s no way to trace it.
