Chapter 26 #3
Part of the ceiling collapsed in the adjacent room—a crash of concrete and metal that sent flames billowing through the doorway. The fire was closing in. They had minutes at most.
The exit was right there. A loading dock door, night air visible beyond. Ten steps and they’d be out, they’d be safe, they’d be—
“No.” Randall lurched to his feet. His face had twisted into something barely recognizable—greed and fury stripping away the professional mask he’d worn since Lincoln first saw him.
He moved toward them. Not toward the exit.
Toward Morgan. “She’s mine. My investment.
My filing cabinet. You don’t get to take what’s mine. ”
“It’s over.” Lincoln dropped the useless weapon. “The building’s coming down. Get out or die here.”
“Then you and I will die together,” Randall sneered. “Taking out some computer nerd shouldn’t be a problem. If I can’t have her, nobody can.”
Randall lunged for Morgan, one arm reaching past Lincoln, trying to grab her even now, even with his shoulder destroyed, even with the building burning down around them.
Lincoln intercepted.
He got his arm up to block Randall’s grab—too slow, too sloppy, but enough.
Randall’s hand caught his vest instead of Morgan.
Lincoln swung with his other hand, aiming for the wounded shoulder, but Randall saw it coming and twisted.
The blow glanced off his arm instead, and then Randall’s fist was in Lincoln’s face, snapping his head sideways, filling his vision with sparks.
They crashed into the shelving unit. Metal buckled. Lincoln’s bad arm hit the edge of a shelf, and the pain whited out his thoughts for half a second—long enough for Randall to hit him again, a body shot that drove the air from his lungs.
Lincoln threw a punch that missed entirely.
Threw another that connected with Randall’s ear—not where he’d aimed, but Randall grunted and stumbled sideways.
Lincoln tried to follow up and took a knee to the thigh that deadened the muscle and nearly dropped him.
He calculated angles, but it was coming too slowly for him to do true damage.
He wasn’t winning. He was surviving. Trading damage he couldn’t afford for damage Randall couldn’t afford either.
In the end, it was going to get them both killed. Mutually assured destruction.
Trust your instincts, turn off your brain, and fight.
The voice sounded like a mixture of everyone he’d ever known—his dad, Bear, Uncle Finn, even Morgan—but more than that, it was reinforced by everything he’d ever lived through.
Every time he’d had to focus so as not to say something inappropriate. Every time he’d held back because whatever he was about to do or say was too much. Every time someone had to remind him to use his inside voice.
For the first time in his life, he turned off his brain and let his body move purely on instinct.
Randall swung wild. Lincoln slipped the punch, stepped inside his guard, drove three rapid strikes into his ribs. Felt something crack under the third blow. Randall doubled over, and Lincoln brought his knee up into the man’s face.
Blood sprayed. Cartilage crunched. Randall went backward, arms pinwheeling, and Lincoln pressed the advantage—following him, not letting him recover, not letting him think.
An uppercut lifted Randall off his feet.
He landed hard, skidding across concrete, coming to rest directly beneath a support beam that had been shedding dust and concrete chips since the explosion. The beam was bent, stressed, held in place by nothing but friction and failing bolts.
Randall looked up. Saw Lincoln standing over him. Saw Morgan behind Lincoln, alive and free.
“Do you know—” Blood bubbled on his lips. His eyes found Morgan, and even now, even broken on the floor, that proprietary hunger was still there. “Do you know how much time I invested in her? How much she’s worth? She’s not a person, she’s a—”
The beam gave way.
Steel and concrete crashed down on Randall. He disappeared beneath the debris, one hand still reaching toward Morgan, still grasping for what he’d lost.
Then the ceiling followed.
Not just over Randall—the collapse spread outward, a chain reaction of failing supports and crumbling concrete. The floor shook. Cracks raced across the walls. The entire section was coming down.
Lincoln grabbed Morgan. He didn’t think about the pain in his shoulder, his leg, his everything. Didn’t calculate distances or model trajectories or analyze optimal escape routes.
He just wrapped himself around her and ran.
The loading dock door was ten feet away. Five. The world was falling behind them—roaring heat and crashing metal and the scream of a building dying. Something hit Lincoln’s back, sent them both stumbling, but he kept his feet, kept moving, kept Morgan shielded against his chest.
They burst through the door into the night air.
Cold. Clean. Impossibly sweet after the smoke and fire and chaos.
Lincoln didn’t stop until they were clear—thirty feet, forty, far enough that the collapse couldn’t reach them. Then his legs gave out, and they went down together on the cracked asphalt of the loading dock lot.
Behind them, the building surrendered. The roar of it filled the night, flames and smoke billowing into the sky, sparks rising like inverse stars.
They lay tangled together on the ground. Coughing. Bleeding.
Alive.
Voices cut through the roar of the fire. Lincoln lifted his head, body tensing, reaching for a weapon he no longer had—
Bear. Emerging from the north side of the building, Theo beside him, both of them blackened with smoke and limping but upright.
And behind them, moving slower, Derek with Callum’s arm over his shoulders, the two of them leaning on each other like they’d drag themselves through hell before leaving anyone behind.
They’d made it. All of them.
Bear saw Lincoln and Morgan on the ground. Even from thirty feet away, Lincoln could see his cousin’s shoulders drop with relief. Bear raised one hand—acknowledgment, reassurance, we’re okay, stay where you are—and then turned to help Derek with Callum.
Lincoln let his head fall back to the asphalt.
He couldn’t find words. The part of his brain that processed language seemed to have shut down, all resources dedicated to the simple miracle of Morgan breathing against him, her heart pounding where her chest pressed to his.
She didn’t speak either. Just held on. Her fingers twisted in his tactical vest, gripping so hard her knuckles went white, like she was afraid he’d disappear if she let go.
Sirens from the fire trucks wailed in the distance. Growing closer.
Lincoln pressed his face into Morgan’s hair and breathed.
They stayed like that—holding each other, saying nothing—while the building burned and the night filled with smoke and the world slowly, finally, went quiet.