Chapter Thirty-Three
Hailey
Six digits stand between us and whatever comes next.
The safe squats against the cave wall, frost crusted across its face. Five years since I programmed that code. Five years
since I walked away from everything I was.
Marlena’s staring at it like she’s found God. Her crew has us positioned in a loose semicircle, guns ready. Eight of us crammed
into this frozen chamber, plus her. I can feel Knox’s shoulder against mine, both our wrists still bound.
“The code,” Marlena says. Her breath fogs between us. “Now, Ms. Parker.”
I don’t move.
A guard grabs Knox from behind, forcing him down. His knees hit the stone floor hard. The guard presses a Glock to the back
of his head.
“Now,” Marlena repeats. No more camp counselor cheer. This is what lives underneath.
My throat closes. “Let me think—”
“One.”
Knox finds my eyes. Even kneeling with a gun to his skull, he’s calm. His left hand shifts against his thigh. One finger extended.
We’re on.
“Two.”
I let the panic show on my face. There’s a gun to his head and every part of me wants to scream. But the decision was made
days ago in a blind spot by a fireplace, and this is me following through.
“Three.”
I make my voice crack. “Three. Seven. Nine. Two. Five. Eight.”
Marlena watches me for a long moment, looking for the lie. I give her nothing but a woman broken by a countdown. She must
like what she sees, because her smile returns. She crosses to the safe, gloved fingers hovering over the dial. Each click
sounds like a gunshot in the silence.
The door swings open.
Inside, cradled in foam I installed five years ago, sits the Snowflake Diamond. Twenty million dollars of crystallized carbon,
smaller than people expect. About the size of a walnut. But the clarity is insane, flawless, throwing fractured light across
the frozen walls.
Marlena lifts it like she’s handling a holy relic. “Beautiful.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “Worth every tedious moment.”
She tucks the diamond into her parka.
Liam steps forward. “Take me. Give me to Kedrov, tell him whatever story you want. But let them go. They’re not part of this
anymore.”
Marlena laughs. “Oh, I’m absolutely giving you to the Russian. That was always the plan.” A wave of her hand toward me. “But
nowhere in our arrangement does it say I have to deliver you alive. Or her. You know how I feel about loose ends.”
Liam goes white. “No. You said—”
“I lied.” Her smile could freeze blood. “Did you really think I’d let you all live?”
The air in the chamber shifts. I feel it before I see it, that crackling tension before violence. Horror becoming calculation.
We planned for threats. Posturing. More negotiation. Not this. Not Marlena dropping every pretense with that smile on her
face.
Liam recovers before I do.
He moves.
He grabs the nearest guard by the throat, wrenches the man’s rifle free, slams the stock into his jaw. The guard crumples.
Liam shoves his body into Marlena, sending her stumbling backward. She hits the cave wall hard, the impact knocking the wind
out of her.
I’m already moving. In the chaos, with everyone’s attention on Liam and the falling guard, I close the distance between me and Marlena.
Her parka is still unzipped from when she tucked the diamond inside.
My bound hands slip into the interior pocket, fingers closing around cold stone, and I pull it free in one smooth motion.
The whole thing takes maybe two seconds.
I shove the diamond into my own jacket and step back before she even catches her breath.
Five years out of the game, and my hands still remember.
Then the cave erupts.
Liam fires into the ceiling. The shots are so loud in the enclosed space that my ears ring instantly. Rock dust rains down.
Guards scramble, their formation shattering.
Knox has his knife out. I don’t see him cut the zip ties but his hands are free and he’s pulling the ammonia rig from inside
my coat—his hands are steadier than mine and we planned for this part. He cracks the seal and hurls it at the two guards nearest
the entrance. The container splits on impact and the fumes hit them like a wall. They drop, choking, clawing at their faces.
I’m on my feet before I decide to move. The guard nearest me raises his weapon but I’m already there, my boot connecting with
his kneecap. He goes down screaming. His gun clatters across ice.
“Knox!”
I grab for the weapon but my bound hands won’t work the grip.
He’s already scooping it up, pivoting, firing. Another guard drops. One left plus Marlena.
The chamber is chaos. Too many bodies, too close. Bullets whining off rock. Someone screams. Blood spraying across frost.
Liam’s grappling with the last guard, using his rifle as a club. Marlena is pushing herself off the wall, one hand reaching
into her pocket. Her face twists when she finds it empty.
Her eyes find mine.
I smile at her.
Knox tracks her with his weapon as she backs toward the tunnel. “Don’t move!”
She stops. “You won’t shoot me. You need me to get out of here. My people control the transport.”
“Try me.”
His finger tightens. I can see how badly he wants to pull the trigger.
But she’s right. Even if we made it back to the airstrip, neither Knox nor Liam can fly a helicopter. We need her pilot, her
vehicles, her way out. Killing her strands us here.
One of the guards recovers, tackling Knox from behind. The gun goes flying. They grapple, Knox trying to break free, the guard
bigger, uninjured, not fighting with a handicap.
An elbow catches Knox’s ribs. I hear the air leave him.
I scan the floor. My fingers close around a chunk of broken timber, rough and heavy.
The guard rears back for another hit and I swing with everything I have.
Wood meets skull with a wet crack.
He drops.
Knox rolls away, blood dripping from his split lip. His eyes find mine. Thanks. Relief. Something else.
“Ties,” I say. “Off. Now.”
Liam pulls the steak knife from his waistband and cuts my zip ties first, then his own, flexing his fingers to get blood back
into them.
“Marlena.” Liam nods toward the tunnel. “She’s running.”
Her silhouette is disappearing into the darkness.
Knox grabs his dropped weapon, sighting down the passage. The angle is bad. Too many curves. He lowers the gun. “We need to
move.”
I look at Liam. “Can we trust you?”
“I understand why you wouldn’t.” His gaze doesn’t waver. “But I’m all you’ve got.”
Knox meets my eyes. Nods once.
We run.
Marlena ripped the work lights off their stakes as she went. Smart. The tunnel is treacherous in the dark. I lead because the path is still burned into my memory. Left at the fork. Right at the rock that looks like a fist. Sideways through the narrow section where the walls close in.
Behind us, footsteps. The guards regrouping, coming fast and better equipped. It’s only a matter of time.
Daylight hits us like a slap. Gray and blinding after the darkness. The cold seizes my lungs on the first breath.
Marlena is already outside, screaming orders. “Get the girl! Find her and bring her to me!” The snowmobiles wait in a loose
row, but guards are taking defensive positions around them. Six more, at least.
“Outnumbered,” I say.
“Outgunned,” Liam adds, wiping blood from his eye.
Knox scans the terrain. “The snowmobiles. If we can reach them—”
“We’ll be dead before we get close,” Liam finishes.
A bullet sparks off the rock near Knox’s head. We duck back into the tunnel entrance.
“Ideas?”
Liam’s quiet for a beat. His eyes track upward, past the entrance, to the slope above us. Steep. Fresh powder piled heavy
after the recent storm.
“The mountain,” he says. “Look at it.”
I follow his gaze. A massive cornice hangs near the top, overhanging and precarious.
Knox catches on. “You want to trigger an avalanche.”
“It’ll bury the entrance. Cut us off from pursuit.”
“And trap us in the mountain.”
“Not if we’re already moving.” Liam’s voice is steady. “We trigger it, but we’re on the snowmobiles first. Use the chaos.”
I study the cornice. The way the snow hangs, ready to break. “How do we trigger it?”
“Gunfire. Enough shots in the right spot.” He points. “That section. It’s already cracking.”
“Who’s our best shot?”
Knox doesn’t hesitate. “Me.”
“Then you shoot.”
It’s insane. The kind of plan that kills people more often than it saves them.
Knox meets my eyes. “Go.”
Liam and I burst from the tunnel, sprinting for the snowmobiles. Bullets kick up around our feet. I hear Liam grunt as one
grazes his arm, but he doesn’t slow.
We reach the machines. I throw myself onto the nearest one, hands shaking on the ignition. The engine catches. Liam’s already
slashing fuel lines on the others, gasoline spilling across the white ground.
The guards are closing in. Twenty yards. Fifteen.
I look back at Knox in the tunnel entrance, rifle raised, sighting on the cornice.
“Now!” Liam yells.
Knox fires. Once. Twice. Three times.
Silence.
Then a crack so loud it vibrates in my chest. The cornice breaks. A massive chunk of ice and snow separates from the slope.
And the whole mountain starts to move.
Knox runs.
The avalanche is faster. A wall of white roaring down behind him. I gun the engine, pulling around, reaching.
He launches himself onto the back of my snowmobile as the slide hits.
The world disappears. Snow in my eyes, my mouth, everywhere. We’re racing ahead of it, barely staying in front. Liam beside
us on the second machine. The roar drowns out everything.
We burst free and keep going.
Into the forest. Engines screaming. Trees closing in around us.
Five minutes. Ten. No sound of pursuit.
I finally stop. The engine idles, ticking. My hands won’t stop shaking.
Liam pulls up beside us and cuts his motor. For a long moment, nobody speaks. Just breathing. Just being alive.
Knox’s arms tighten around my waist from behind. “We need to keep moving. Get as much distance as possible before she regroups.”
“She won’t stop,” Liam says. “Not after five years of hunting for that thing. She’ll tear these mountains apart looking for
us.”
I reach into my jacket pocket. Cold metal. Crystallized carbon.
“She can look all she wants.”
I pull the diamond out, holding it up. Even in the dim forest light, it throws rainbows.
Knox goes still behind me. “How?”
“When Liam tackled her, everyone was looking at him. Her coat was unzipped.” I turn the diamond over in my palm, watching
it catch the light. “Old habits. You can take the girl out of the game, but apparently you can’t take the game out of the
girl.”
Liam stares at it. Then at me. Then he laughs, broken and exhausted and real.
“You magnificent thief.”
Knox’s breath warms my ear. “That’s my girl.”
I tuck the diamond back into my pocket.
“Let’s go.”