CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
TY
I n the chaos, everything calms. The world topples, but my brain quiets. Stills. Laser-focuses on the only thing that matters.
Her.
“Working on a body count,” Gage bellows over the comm.
“Do you have eyes on her?” I ask as I jump the last quarter of the drop and bolt for my bike. I’ll run every last one of these motherfuckers over to get to her if I have to.
This is why I sprang for the Kawasaki once we found out about the trials. It’s fucking fast. And sometimes, we need to vanish. We’re always one heartbeat away from disappearing. I won’t be surprised if the current thump in my chest is the one to force my hand. This has been one disaster after another.
“I’ve got her,” Liam confirms. “She’s about ten seconds behind you. Get ready to crank it.”
Ten seconds is a fucking lifetime in a battle. The difference between dead and alive.
People are running all over the goddamn parking lot, vomiting on the asphalt, choking from the gas. I have to weave through seven or eight to reach the bike, which is parked around the corner, shielded by another building.
As I’m slipping on my helmet, Rena comes barreling toward me. Liam was off. Thank fuck. That was less than five seconds, and she had farther to go. She grabs her helmet, jumps on behind me, and breathlessly yells into the comm as I’m revving the throttle.
“Is everyone out?” Panic threads that inquiry because before we can take off, we have to blow the place, and I’m holding the detonator in my hand.
“Looks like it,” Gage says.
“That’s not a fucking answer,” she retorts. “Ty, do not press that until we know.”
Liam grunts, plainly frustrated with the moral high ground—not that he’s in favor of killing innocents, but he’s engrossed in guiding us out of this, and based on the job, there’s a good chance these aren’t innocents we’re dealing with, or KORT would have been clearer about it. Still, it boils down to us not knowing.
“You’ve got less than thirty goddamn seconds before this place is crawling with five-O,” he grits out. “We’re tracking at least six cars right now.”
Six. Fuck .
Only one road out, and it’s the same that leads in.
“Give me a head count,” I demand.
“I got twenty-seven,” he replies. “Big Guy got twenty-eight.”
“It was twenty-eight. There were twenty-eight. Not counting the one who left,” she mutters. “You have to be sure.”
“Get me the all clear ,” I insist, intent on keeping both her body and her soul intact.
“Fucking hell,” Gage grumbles as I cruise the alleyways between the warehouses, ready to hightail it. “I’m verifying with thermal imaging through the windows, and we’re doing another count.”
That will be tentative at best. The parking lot is a madhouse .
“We’ve got two cars less than ten seconds out,” Liam barks, and those seconds tick by, my heart thrashing in time. “Five, Tytan. Goddammit!”
“Hold on tight, Little Moon,” I order, and she fastens her arms snug around my waist.
“Got ’em,” Gage hollers. “Go!”
In a single breath—similar to the heartbeat between here and gone, then and now, erased and remade—I press the detonator and fly with my girl through the pandemonium. Swerving around shrieking, terrified souls, beyond the backdrop of billowing clouds of dirty-gray smoke and the thunderous roar of crumbling brick and mortar, and between two police cars with flashing lights and deafening sirens, hurtling toward us, head-on.
There’s a third car rushing onto the street as I charge off the warehouse road, but I easily careen around them, the bike leaning low into a sharp left. A victory against gravity. Unfortunately, there’s another squad car racing toward me on this road and a few civilian vehicles, which have me zigzagging between them, the weight of the bike rocking side to side like a ship encountering turbulent waves.
“Get me a goddamn route,” I spit. “They’re fucking everywhere.”
“We’re trying. We had to wait until they took off after you to follow,” Liam states in a tone that wrenches my stomach. “Jesus, they’ve got every cop in the goddamn city after you. Who the hell did we fuck over?”
He might be a passenger in Gage’s truck for this fiasco, but he’s in the position I’m accustomed to—hovering in the sky with eyes on it all through tracking and scanners and satellites, hoping to guide us all home.
“It was the girl who saw me. She pressed the panic button,” Rena squeals, her arms cinching firmer around my waist. “Seven minutes. I did this.”
“Doesn’t fucking matter,” I assure her.
And Gage chimes in with, “It reads like a motherfucking setup,” as I switch off our lights in the hopes that this matte-black bike will fade into the night. But they’ve got me surrounded, emerging from every fucking which way.
“Jesus, fuck,” I hiss, zipping between two heavy-traffic lanes on a main road, right up the middle through the slapping wind, before veering off to another side street. “I’m clocking nearly two hundred in the dark. They’re coming out of the goddamn pavement.”
“I got us a route,” Liam wheezes. “The bed cover is off. You’ll have a minute to do a high-speed transfer. Maybe more if we do it right.”
“Motherfucker,” I spit out as I bolt past another police car, whose tires screech in their attempt to switch direction and chase after me. I lose them without an issue—the gravelly asphalt spewing remnants in our rear—but need to cut off a sedan in order to do so, causing them to fishtail and ram into the curb.
This is definitely tempting fate.
“What’s a high-speed transfer?” Rena asks.
I whip around in a loop through a vacant strip-mall lot, my thighs gripping the tank as I take a turn so low to the pavement that it has Rena chirping a strained giggle before I guide us back to the road and explain, “They want us to meet them and jump into the truck bed while moving.”
“It’s either that or we’re gonna end up in a goddamn shoot-out with cops,” Gage growls.
“I can do it,” she declares, and when I don’t object because I’m out of fucking options, Liam belts out the instructions.
“Take the next right. You’re gonna encounter two more paddy wagons. Lose them. Then, you’re cutting through the Shell station, dipping onto the four-lane road for about a quarter mile—expect mild traffic—and taking the on ramp. Two exits down, you’ll veer to the right, take the second left, third right, first left. We’ll be there.”
“Christ,” I mutter. “Fucking leapfrog across the whole damn state.”
“It’s all I got,” Liam groans. “They’re fucking everywhere, and they won’t be expecting that crossover. ”
“It’s fine. Got it.” With that, I play chicken with the oncoming squad car until they end up smashing into the other that was dashing for us.
“That was one way to fucking do it,” Rena sings, and while she’s enlivened, there’s still a hint of fear in her tone that I hate.
After cutting the corner through the gas station parking lot and narrowly avoiding a van unloading a horde of drunks, I glide back out onto the road, noticing a racing patrol car on the other side. They can’t hop the median to reach me, so I’m in the clear, zooming full throttle up the on ramp and scaring the shit out of the civilian drivers as I weave in and out like a fucking ghost.
Lights out. No warning. Just a sonorous vroom preceding a blur of black.
And a melody of honking horns in our wake.
For the two minutes it takes us to reach the second exit, I breathe.
Inhale. Exhale. Tighten my hold on my entire fucking world.
The wind whistles. The freckled night twinkles in deception. And traffic parts as though we were kings, owning this nation.
We sway back and forth in a comforting cadence, hanging on for dear life and drifting along the open road at once.
A nothing left to lose drenching of freedom with everything at stake.
“Listen, baby girl,” I rasp out, my throat like sandpaper as I maneuver the turns— right off the exit —with the romping red-and-blue lights hot on our tail again. “When I sidle up alongside Gage, you’re gonna hold on to my shoulders, stand on the seat, and jump into the bed. Got it?”
Second left. Low to the asphalt.
There’s a brief pause before her response, but I think it’s less her reluctance and more her absorbing the moment. Something tells me, even in her fright, she’s soaking it all in. Committing every brush and smell and harrowing turn to memory—one of her most admirable attributes .
Her quick wit is another.
“Remember that time you said no more circus climbing?” she jeers as I lose our shadows again.
Third right. Almost there.
A half-amused, half-stressed-to-the-point-of-insanity chuckle huffs out of my mouth on the first left. “Yeah, well, all sense is on hold until we’re back on the ground. This is your time to shine, Little Moon.”
As I spot the truck, I slow my speed and cruise up beside him, so we’re both trekking along this secluded side street at about one hundred miles per hour, my gut knotting so tightly that I swear it’s coiling around my spine.
“You make that easy, hubby. Don’t take all night about joining me,” she says, clutching my shoulders and seamlessly standing on the seat without any further instructions, as if she’s fucking done this a thousand times.
The sirens still blare in the not-so-far distance. The flashing lights are drawing nearer, strobing into the dark, puffy clouds. They don’t know which way we’ve gone, but they’re closing in nevertheless. My teeth gnaw at the fleshy inside of my cheek, heart battering my sternum, breath a painful bubble at the base of my throat.
Crunch. Squeak.
No. Not now.
Her leaping is our only choice. Our only way out.
“You got this, Moonshine,” Liam encourages. “One big jump over the bed wall. Land on your knees.”
Without hesitation, she springs off the seat, soars through the air, and lands on her feet with a tinny thud in the truck bed, gripping on to the cab roof for support.
Always intent on putting her own fucking spin on things.
“Jesus Christ,” I hiss as Gage and Liam both croon celebratory whoops .
“The Navy’s got nothing on the fucking circus,” Gage exclaims. “Breathe, Tytan. Our girl is safe. It’s time to trash that crotch rocket. ”
My jump is a bit more precarious because I have to steady the bike in the process and because I have about sixty seconds before the cops catch up to us. I hop to my feet on the seat, steering like that for a few beats while Liam, Gage, and Rena all dole out encouragement. Or taunts. Depending on your perspective.
Either way, in the span of yet another gifted heartbeat, with the monotonous drone of our humming engines as my soundtrack, I bound from the bike to the truck bed, landing on my knees with a thud while the motorcycle spins out into a crashing burn.
Sparks and roars and shrilling clanks.
“Not bad, old man,” Rena quips as we watch the bike shatter and bounce.
“You two stay the fuck down,” Liam orders. “They’re headed this way, so they’ll be looking for a transfer vehicle soon enough.”
We both lie flat, and I rip off Rena’s helmet and ski mask, then my own before dragging her into my arms and breathing in her scent of deliverance—blueberry fields and butterscotch. Life renewed and dreams realized.
Her just-do-it approach to living is certainly an asset, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it sent me into cardiac arrest at some point. Although, no matter how unhinged our moments, I’m more alive in her presence than I’ve ever been.
She lifts her chin to me, beaming as if she’s privy to my thoughts. “You feel fucking high, don’t you? Imagine if we had risked it all and taken an Uber.”
A hushed laugh spills out of me, and I press my lips to hers, kissing her with abandon as the pursuit carries on around us and wondering how she does it. How does she bleed joy into even the most distressing circumstances? Cloak affliction in hope?
Rena is the essence of the moon—seizing the light and sharing it with the dark.
But as I release her lips and she nestles against my chest, her defenses wither. She trembles, finally coming down after all her nonchalant daredevil feats. And here, in the sounds of our silent cocoon, I hear that she’s hiding something. That she’s afraid. That, as perilous as this was, what lies ahead will most certainly be more treacherous.
It has me wondering about something far less uplifting than how my girl harnesses glee within tribulation. Now that I found my reason for living, how the fuck do I keep us alive?
Crunch. Squeak. Blood.