Chapter 35
Vanya
Paige came to save me. Me. I was supposed to be protecting her. Now we’re creeping down dark paths she’s so familiar with. She’s gripping my hand and leading me to safety, only the occasional emergency light giving me a dim view of her back.
Then again, it’s just like Paige to upend everything.
I can’t help the smile that tugs at my lips.
She charges forward without hesitation, her hand wrapped around mine as she drags me into passages I had no idea existed.
I’m lost, but at least I’m with my favorite archivist.
Behind us, muffled through layers of wall and door, the rumblings elevate to shouting. The chaos we left behind spreads, leaking toward us.
I squeeze her hand.
Two figures stumble into view, illumination from their phones painting the way and reflecting off the white walls. A man in an expensive suit, his tie askew. A woman in a cocktail dress. Guests who got spun around in the mayhem. Their eyes are wide, their faces pale in the dimness.
With the lights out, they don’t see us.
Paige holds her breath, pulls me close behind her, and blends into the shadows. If I didn’t have her warm hand in mine, I’d think she disappeared. I get the impression we’re inside a narrow… hall? I can’t tell. Maybe we’re traveling between bookcases.
I just know that Paige is taking smaller steps, and I need to twist my feet to avoid the barriers on either side of us.
Paige maintains a steady, confident gait. She’s following a mental map, extracted from her memory with perfect clarity.
I fucking love that brain of hers.
I follow where she leads, placing my trust in her entirely.
Even after I tried to cut her loose, after I left her with money and a cruel note designed to fuel her hate toward me, she figured out I was walking into a trap before I even realized, then came up with a plan, brought in the cavalry, and returned to save me.
Saved me despite what I did to her.
My chest pounds with an emotion I hardly recognize. Pride. Not for myself but for her. How the hell did she charm Max, of all people?
As soon as we get out of here, I plan to make up for my idiotic behavior.
We round a corner, and panicked voices echo ahead.
Paige stops so suddenly that I nearly slam into her. She squeezes my hand once in warning, then let’s go. “Stay close.”
Shuddering sobs echo moments before a figure appears. In the glow of her phone screen, her white shirt, black vest, and the mascara running down from her darkened eyes become visible. A server—probably barely in college and terrified out of her mind—presses against the wall.
She screams when she sees us, then claps a hand over her mouth. “What’s happening? I heard gunshots. People are fighting. I don’t…I don’t understand—”
Paige glides forward and gently rests a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “There’s been an incident. Security’s handling it. You remember how you came in? Through the dock doors next to the loading platform?”
The server nods, hiccupping on a sob.
“Good. Go down this hall and keep your hand on the right wall. At the end, you’ll come to a y-intersection.
It will be dark, but just follow the wall to the right.
In ten, maybe twelve steps, you’ll find a door.
Go through that. Then follow the left wall.
That will lead you to the same door you came in through. ”
The girl doesn’t even ask how Paige knows all that, simply pushes past us at a run, her footsteps fading into the void.
As my eyes begin to adjust, I find Paige’s profile, her pale hair swaying in the murky shadows.
“I hope she gets out.” Paige glances over her shoulder, then sighs and continues forward.
A slice of cool worry eats at my chest. I know Paige has trauma from what happened to her on Chaos Island. Considering she stumbled on her mother’s body while surrounded by screams and gunshots and fire, this has got to be triggering for her.
She pivots to face me. In the faint emergency light, I can barely see her features.
No fear or panic lurks in her eyes. Nothing like what I saw at the firing range when she fell apart, right before I broke her down.
Just focus and determination. The archivist, the woman who color-coded her life, has vanished.
This woman is a survivor, and she’s only here because of me.
The thought twists in my gut, guilt and pride tangled together until I can’t distinguish them.
“I’m sure she’ll be fine.” I squeeze her hand. “You told her how to escape.”
“I hate making her go so far, but it would be worse for her if she went with us. None of the bad guys should be heading for the door I sent her to.” She smiles up at me. “We’re almost out.”
She’s right, of course, and in just a few more turns, we reach a hall illuminated by the faint glow of a red exit sign.
Footsteps pound from a side corridor.
Paige pushes me back—into the darkness and out of sight—and lurches forward to give off the appearance that she’s alone. Ahead of us, a figure bursts into the tunnel.
The tall man has dark hair, black pants, and a vest with a white shirt underneath. Another member of the waitstaff. Blood streams down his face from a gash above his eyebrow. “Help!” He staggers, catches himself against the wall, then straightens. “Please, someone!”
Paige tenses.
He’s staring right at us.
No, not me. He doesn’t see me.
But this is wrong. This scene is so similar to my recurring nightmare, I almost feel sick.
My instincts kick in. I start to lunge, to put myself between Paige and this stranger, but his words stop me.
“Ms. Kisner, thank God. There’re men attacking people. I don’t know what’s happening…” The way he moves is too controlled, despite the blood on his face. Keeping his weight on the balls of his feet, he shifts his head to the side just enough for me to search for the glint of an earbud.
When I find one, I open my mouth to shout a warning—
A gunshot cracks through the hall.
My ears ring with a high-pitched whine that drowns out everything else.
The man drops before the hole where his face used to be even starts to bleed.
Paige stands with her arm extended, a Makarov in her hand. Red light glints off the deep scratch on the barrel that runs from the front sight to the ejector port.
Wait. That’s the Makarov from my room.
How’d she break into my room at the compound?
That’s a worry for later.
Right now…
Paige just killed for the first time. Pointed a gun at a man and destroyed him.
For me.
Her arm trembles, but her grip on the gun stays firm. Her eyes, while wide, aren’t panicked, and her chest rises and falls with steady, quick breaths.
She’s incredible.
I reach over her heaving shoulders to grab the Makarov. “Damn. Let me—”
“No.” Her fingers tighten around the grip.
Okay, now’s not the time to rush her. I don’t want her to freak out, but I’m also not sure she needs to keep holding a weapon.
I reach again. “It’s all right. You don’t have to—”
“These are my gunshots.” She pulls the PM back, close to her chest, and spins to pin me with those sea-dark eyes. “Not yours. Mine.”
The words slam into me like a physical blow.
My gunshots.
That’s what I told her to help her handle the triggering noise of guns in the first place.
Now she’s using my words against me in an actual gunfight.
I don’t know whether to be horrified or proud that my advice aided her in killing a man when she’s spent half of her life terrified by the mere thought of one.
I shake my head, forcing myself to focus. “How’d you know he was one of Falcone’s men?” I’m sure she didn’t see that knife falling out of his sleeve.
“Roman showed me photos.” She lowers the gun but doesn’t holster. “After I told him about how you were going to walk into Gio’s trap alone, he showed me pictures of every known Falcone associate. Names. Faces. Criminal records.”
Roman? My Pakhan? How’d she meet him?
What the hell is going on?
“That guy’s Vincent Calabrese.” She nods toward the body without glancing over. “He’s a Falcone lieutenant with two counts of murder, one of assault with a deadly weapon. Out on bail pending trial.”
I don’t have time to ask her to explain more since I know it’s going to be complicated. Instead, I decide to tease her. Just a bit, to take her mind off what happened. “You’re sure?”
“I’m always sure.” In her scowl, a ghost of her old, bun-wearing self appears. “Besides, he had an earbud. And he called me Ms. Kisner. I was fired this morning. No one on the catering staff should know my name.”
I frown. “Fired?” I ensured that we covered her absence.
She’s already pivoting and heading toward the exit. “We need to move. They’ll have heard the shot.”
I follow, stepping over Calabrese’s body without peering down.
I’ll have to have a word with Dr. Abernathy, I suppose.
After she slaps the push bar, cold hits us like a fist. A sheet of rain pours down and soaks through my jacket in seconds, plastering my hair to my skull.
Once again, I think of Chaos Island. There’d been rain in her story as well.
A tropical storm that night compounded the confusion and deaths.
I peer over at Paige, expecting to see her freeze as her trauma resurfaces.
That’s not what happens.
She marches into the storm without hesitation. Her hand finds mine, and she pulls me across the open lawn into the tree line. The ground is slick with wet leaves and bare branches spread out in an unseen tangle.
Paige knows where she’s going, though, and because I’m incapable of doing anything else, I follow.
We crash through underbrush, ducking under limbs that trickle cold rainwater down my collar for what feels like miles but is probably only a few hundred yards. Then the trees thin, and we arrive at an overgrown, forgotten driveway. Or maybe just a path?
She puts two fingers in her mouth and whistles.
My heart stutters, knocking against my chest. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack, woman?”
“Shut up.” She smirks in the moonlight. My beautiful witch.
Before I can scold her, a hulking figure emerges from the shadows.
Max.
Despite the cold, warm relief floods me. They coordinated all of this. Things just keep getting stranger and stranger.
He meets us halfway, a cold smile on his face that softens slightly when he looks at Paige. “You picked one hell of a woman, brother.”
I swear I’m in the matrix.
“What the hell is going on here?” I look between the two of them, who now walk side by side.
Max points forward. “We’re following Paige’s plan.”
I stoop under a branch to see what he’s pointing at.
My car parked next to an SUV that screams Max.
“I used your spare key and had one of my guys move yours up here right before shit went down. Things at the library are already over, which means we should scram.” Max marches toward his SUV. “Let’s go.”
I glance at Paige, who’s soaked to the bone with that gun still in her hand. “You’re insane.”
“Probably, but so are you.” She walks to the passenger door of my car and opens it. In the glow of the dome light, I catch her smile. “Now hop in. You’re driving.”
I can’t argue with that. “Why? Even after I tried to leave? Even after that note?” I slip behind the wheel and wait as she settles in.
“Especially after that.” She reaches over, her hand finding mine on the gear shift. “Because I know why you did it. You were trying to protect me. To save me from yourself.”
Of course she figured me out.
She reclines in her seat but doesn’t release my hand. “I came for you because you’re mine. And I protect what’s mine, the same way you tried to do for me.”
The words shudder their way to my heart, kick-starting it.
Lifting her hand, I press a kiss to her fingers. She accepts it as her due, like the queen she is, rewarding me with a brilliant grin.
She’s right. We’re both insane.
But maybe that’s precisely what we need to be to survive what’s coming.