Page 81 of Power of Shadow

Swish, swish, swish...

The muscles in my jaw twitch.

“What the fuck?” I squint. I pull out my binoculars and look at the house sinking into darkness. My eyes scan every inch of the place.

The sound of my heart pounding like a hammer is interrupted when I see a shadow. It emerges from behind the east wall and rushes down the hill between the trees.

Shish, swish, swish...

And then it hits me what that sound is.

“Fuck. It’s a helicopter!”

In the next second, Ash is already on her feet and running toward the house.

“What the hell are you doing, Ash?” I run after her. Her reckless behavior could cost us our lives. While my life doesn’t mean much to me, I can’t let anything happen to her.

What if the security guards are still here? What if the changing of the guard is about to take place? What is she thinking?

Oh, girl, your ass is going to be so red from my hand when I punish you for this, you won’t be able to sit down for a week!

I can’t believe she’s acting so reckless.

A memory of a dream flashes through my mind.

Once, I let someone walk away from me, and I just watched. It ended badly once. Not this time.

With my dagger at the ready in case of emergency, I catch up with her and grab her waist. We’re already a dozen steps from the house.

“Let me fucking go,” she growls, struggling.

“Jesus, Ash, calm down.”

“He’s in there!”

“Calm down. This is dumb and dangerous!” Before I finish speaking, Ash leans down and sinks her teeth into my arm. Instinctively, I loosen my grip, and that’s enough for her to break free from this cage.

Ash takes off again. This time I catch up with her—not because I’m fast, but because she stops on the terrace right next to the pool.

I glance around to make sure there’s no danger, and when I’m sure, I approach her.

My gaze follows hers down the hill. On the shore of the lake, on the platform we saw earlier, there’s a helicopter. A man dressed in a black suit, accompanied by four other men, is walking along the bridge leading to it.

Even from a distance, I can see that these men are the senator’s personal security, and the man in the suit is the one we’ve been looking for. A few steps further, he halts, his head tilting slightly as though he feels our gaze upon him. Maybe that’s the case because he turns with a single movement.

Ash takes a sharp breath.

His eyes rest on us with little trouble. He sees us, which means we’re screwed. The guy knew beforehand that someone might be looking for him. Now, however, he’s certain of it.

Maybe if we’d set off a little earlier, we would have made it. We would have had the former senator in our grasp!

I want to run down the hill the same way they must have come down, but Ash grabs my arm without taking her eyes off the senator.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. We’re too late,” she says, nodding toward the lake.

Indeed, when I look in the same direction, the senator is climbing into the helicopter. Ash is right; we’re too late.