Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
GRACE
The alarms were shrieking—red strobes pulsing across the concrete corridor, splashing over Bones’ skin like blood. He was half-naked, torn to hell, covered in bruises, burns, and cuts that looked like they’d been made just for pain. But he was upright. He was moving.
Barefoot. Shirtless. A wreck.
But moving.
I had one arm around him as we stumbled along the basement hall of the museum, passing crates of artifacts and shattered security doors.
My strapless dress stuck to my side with sweat, and every step in these goddamn heels was a death wish.
The only weapon I had was the baton O’Rourke had yanked off a guard and shoved into my hand like it was enough.
Ahead, O’Rourke motioned with a closed fist—stop. Then a silent point. Hostiles up front. Thank you, Legend and Voodoo, for the tactical shorthand lesson.
Heavy boots. Movement. At least three or four, probably more, coming at us from the opposite hall. It was hard to count with the screaming alarms.
“Left side—tango team, suppressing fire,” Legend's voice crackled in my ear.
“Two more flanking from service stairs,” AB added.
“Don’t stop moving, Firecracker,” Voodoo said. “They’re trying to trap you.”
Too late.
The hallway behind us erupted far footsteps loud enough to carry past the yowling siren of the alarm. Shouting. Light beams slicing through the shadows.
“Shit!” I hissed, spinning.
Three—no, five—men in black combat gear were charging down the rear corridor toward us. We were pinned. No exits. No cover.
“Take front,” O’Rourke barked, stepping toward the advancing squad. “I’ve got them.”
Before I could say anything, Bones tore himself out of my grip.
“Bones—”
He didn’t look at me. Just pivoted—barefoot on cold concrete—and stared down the oncoming men behind us.
And then he moved.
Not staggered. Not limped.
He moved like a damn weapon finally unsheathed.
The first man raised a gun—too slow. Bones was already inside his guard, one arm slamming the barrel away as his elbow cracked the guy’s nose. A flash of blood sprayed. He spun the man into the wall like a puppet and drove a knee straight into his spine. He dropped like dead weight.
Two more came in from the sides. Bones ducked under a swinging baton, caught the second man’s wrist and twisted—a sickening snap, then used the man's own body as a shield.
Gunfire erupted. Muzzle flashes lit up the corridor.
Bones shoved the shield into the next attacker and disarmed the one behind him with a precise, brutal strike to the throat.
Another one grabbed for him—he pivoted, dropped low, swept the legs, and brought the baton down on the man's head with a crack like a hammer on bone.
I stood frozen, breath caught in my lungs, watching this broken, barefoot man move like something out of a nightmare—precise, fast, merciless. Blood streaked his face and chest, but he didn’t hesitate, didn’t flinch.
He flowed from one attacker to the next, never wasting a move. Each strike was lethal, clean, surgical. He wasn’t just surviving.
He was erasing them.
I shook myself and raised the baton just as one of the stunned guards staggered toward me, half-conscious. I cracked the stick across his jaw with a grunt, then brought it down on the back of his head. He collapsed at my feet.
Bones turned toward me—blood dripping from his knuckles, chest heaving. His face was stone.
“Still with me?” he rasped.
“Yeah,” I said, breathless. “You?”
He gave me a crooked smile—barely there. “Let’s go.”
O’Rourke’s voice cut through the cacophony like a scalpel. “Hallway clear. We’ve got maybe ninety seconds before the next patrol sweeps back around. Move now.”
I nodded instinctively. “Coming,” I said, grabbing Bones by the hand. His skin was hot under my fingers—fever-hot—and slick with blood, but he didn’t flinch. Just moved with me.
We jogged down the corridor, shoes slapping against concrete—well, my shoes. Bones ran barefoot, silent. Every step had to be agony, but he didn’t make a sound.
“Three hostiles coming up on your two o’clock,” AB warned in my ear. “I’ll draw ‘em off. Wait for the cue.”
A thundering bang echoed from somewhere above us—explosives, maybe, or a breaching charge. Real human screams joined the racket from the security system. Then gunfire. I’d never realized just how distinctive that sound was. I’d never mistake fireworks for it again.
The feed in my comms flared with updates—Voodoo’s voice sharp and low, Legend barking orders. They were tearing through the hidden compound and the museum like a storm.
Distraction successful.
Too successful. O’Rourke was gone.
“Come on,” I hissed, dragging Bones into a side alcove. He pressed back against the wall, sweat and blood glistening under the flickering emergency lights. His eyes were wild—flicking down the hall, up at the ceiling, then back to me. He was scanning for threats even now.
I wanted to stop. I wanted to look at him, take in what they’d done. The lashes across his ribs. The mottled bruises. The burns that peeled in places, raw and angry. But we didn’t have time.
“Can you keep going?” I asked.
“I’m already gone,” he said, voice like broken glass. Any other time, he might have deadpanned it. Right now, he was just breaking my heart. “You just haven’t caught up yet.”
O’Rourke reappeared in the corridor like a ghost—no warning, just there. His tuxedo was splashed with someone else’s blood, and his expression was ferocious. Far angrier than I’d ever seen him. His glare seemed fixed on me.
“I said ninety seconds,” he snapped, glancing past us. “You’re down to thirty.”
I met his eyes. Cold. Calculating. And yet—still here. Seriously, I didn’t know what to make of him much less what to do with him.
I didn’t trust him. Somehow, I doubted I ever would.
The animosity between him and the guys was just too palpable.
No matter what decisions he was making at the moment, he’d betrayed them in the past. Forgiveness, much less trust, seemed like a real stretch.
Thankfully, right now, I didn’t have to rely on him for much. We just had to use him.
After looping Bones’ arm over my shoulder again, we moved. He leaned on me more than before, though he didn’t want to. I felt the tremble in his arm, the slip of his foot when the concrete turned slick. I tightened my grip.
Frankly, I’d never been so glad for all the runways I’d walked in ankle breaker heels. I could keep us both balanced.
Mostly.
Another corner, another stretch of hallway. Lights flickered—some shattered from the blast above, others barely holding on. Overhead, the ceiling groaned with weight and movement.
“Stairwell ahead,” AB said via comms. “Two contacts. I can give you ten seconds. No more.”
“We’ll take it,” O’Rourke said and was already moving before he finished speaking—knife out, fast and low. No hesitation. No mercy. He flowed from one guard to the next, a blur of precision. One throat slit, one temple stabbed. No wasted motion. No sound, either.
Like Bones earlier, he wasn’t just clearing opposition, he was exterminating it.
The wet slices and meaty thunks were enough to penetrate the tumult.
My stomach rolled, but I focused on moving again.
The smell of sweat and blood that clung to Bones was overpowering, but breathing through my mouth helped.
We pushed past the bodies and hit the stairwell. Bones staggered against me, and for a split second I thought we were both going down. I shifted to use the wall to brace us both. His grunt shivered with pain and I grimaced.
“Look at me.” My voice was sharper than I meant it to be, but I needed him here.
A harsh exhale.
A second one.
Then his eyes locked on mine. Bloodshot. Too wide.
“Don’t you leave me now,” I said. “We didn’t come this far to die in a stairwell.” My heart sank at the very idea.
That ghost of a smile flickered again. “Dollface,” he said on a wisp of a pained chuckle. “Always so romantic.”
Tears burned in my eyes and I sucked in a deep breath to keep from crying.
We so did not have time for me to cry right now.
“Look, Boney Boy.” I tried to inject as much snark as I could into my voice.
We were good at the sarcasm and the picking on each other.
Really good. I leaned on that heavily right now.
“I broke a nail for this escape already. Don’t push your luck. ”
A ghost of a smile creased his mouth and his eyes actually seemed to soften. “You really have a problem with keeping your nails done. Maybe you should just cut them short and keep it them that way.”
The roughness of his voice robbed the flip comment of its impact, but I made a face at him anyway. “No one asked you,” I muttered, then shoved his arm over my shoulders again.
“Are you two going to make out or get the hell out of here?” O’Rourke reappeared in the stairwell door and I glared at him.
“Get out of our way,” I ordered and the other man just shook his head before he took the stairs two at a time. Bones and I were a hell of a lot slower, but he gripped the railing with his bloodied hand to help stabilize himself as he climbed.
We were leaving his blood everywhere.
I really hoped the guys were right about this not being a real government operation.
Because we were leaving DNA and fingerprints behind, and Bones was not light on his feet despite his spectacular show of physical prowess downstairs. Still, we kept moving. I was hot, sweaty, and panting by the time we made it to the ground level.
We were gonna make it out. We had to.
Or we were going to burn this place to the ground trying.
Once we made it to the ground floor of the museum’s grand storage area, the damage was—catastrophic. Smoke thickened in the air. Scorch marks blackened one of the walls. A door that had been there earlier was literally blown off its hinges.