I stand by.
Then the gunfire starts.
Not from inside the warehouse. From the east side of the building, where the team wasn't, where no one was supposed to be, and the sound of it is wrong, too many weapons, too much of it, and my father's voice comes through the earpiece sharp and clipped saying something about a second team, Dominic's people coming from the other direction, the extraction team taking fire and falling back to cover.
I'm already moving.
"Phoenix." My father's voice. "Phoenix, hold your?—"
I pull the earpiece out.
CHAPTER 31- JADE
The guards change shifts sometime in what I think is the middle of the night.
Two new faces, same energy. My ribs have settled into a deep constant ache that sharpens when I breathe too deeply, and the left side of my face has gone from throbbing to numb, which is either an improvement or something worse. My wrists are bleeding. I discovered that an hour ago when I felt the warmth of it against my fingers, slow and persistent, the rope having done its work on the skin underneath over the course of however many hours I've been in this chair.
The binding is looser than it was.
Not loose enough. But closer.
I work at it in small movements, nothing visible from across the room, just the constant steady pressure of wrists rotating against rope while I keep my face forward and my expression blank and give the new guards nothing worth watching. The warehouse has settled into its nighttime sounds, the metal roof contracting in the cold, the chain above still tapping its patient rhythm, the low murmur of the guards' conversation near the door.
I think about Phoenix.
Not the Phoenix who is coming for me, though I know he is, I have never doubted that for a single second. I think about the Phoenix who looked at me through a phone screen with his face completely still and his eyes anything but, the effort of that stillness visible to me in a way it probably wasn't visible to Dominic. I think about what it cost him to say I need time instead of what he actually wanted to say.
He's going to do something reckless. I know it the way I know his coffee order and the sound of his breathing when he's pretending to be asleep.
I just need to not be tied to this chair when he does it.
The rope gives another millimeter. My wrists burn. I keep going.
The sound comes around what I estimate is the second hour of the new shift. Distant at first, the low growl of engines that could be anything in this part of the city at night, trucks or equipment or the ordinary machinery of a place like this going about its business. But then a second engine joins the first and the guards hear it too, their conversation stopping.
They exchange a look.
The broader one speaks into a radio, low and terse. The response that comes back makes his body tighten.
Then the first gunshot splits the night open.
It comes from outside and to the left, followed immediately by shouting, multiple voices, the controlled chaos of men who are trained for this and men who aren't colliding with each other in the dark. The guards move fast, the broader one drawing his weapon and positioning himself between me and the warehouse door, the other moving toward the side exit with his hand already on the latch.
More gunfire. Closer. The sound of it bounces off the corrugated walls and fills the warehouse and I feel it in my chest.
The side guard looks back once, then goes through the door.
Which leaves one.
He's good, the one who stays. He keeps his back to the wall and his weapon up and his eyes moving between me and the main door. He's not going to get distracted. He's not going to get close enough for me to head butt, and my hands are not free yet, and the gunfire outside is getting closer.
I rotate my wrists and feel the rope catch and pull and the skin underneath screams and I do it again.
The warehouse door comes off its hinges.
Phoenix comes through the gap with a weapon in his hand and blood on his jacket that I tell myself is not his.
He takes in the room in one second. The guard. Me. The distance between all three points.
