Chapter 20 | Kincade
I’d spent the last three hours trying to get my fucking wrist out the iron cuff. Blood helped. It made it slick enough. I needed to break or dislocate my thumb. I’d been considering this—skin was already wrecked, what was one more thing?—but was actively trying to avoid the worst possible scenario.
The pain didn’t matter. Pain was information. The body reporting on your decisions. I’d made mine.
If I was going to get out of here with her, I had to do something extreme.
I twisted. Pulled. The iron bit deeper into skin and tissue. I angled for the thumb joint. Ready to commit to the damage.
I was deciding whether to do it when the lock clicked.
I froze.
Not the rotation. Wrong timing. The guards weren’t due for another hour.
The door opened. Slow. Deliberate.
Silas stepped inside, moving like a shadow, dressed in black. His one good eye tracked to my wrist, the blood, the angle I’d been working.
Something flickered across his face. Gone in a second.
He crossed to me without a word, pulling lock picks from his jacket.
“You’re five minutes from doing permanent damage,” he said. “We don’t have time for this.”
He worked the first lock. It clicked open in seconds. The cuff fell away. My wrist screamed, but I shoved it down. I’d deal with that later.
“The guard?” I asked.
“Handled.” He started on the second cuff. “Fifteen minutes once the alarm sounds.”
“Where is she?”
“Medical wing. Recovery floor.” The second lock gave. Iron dropped. “They’re moving her soon.”
I pulled my hands free. Flexed my fingers. Everything worked—enough.
“Which room?”
“Don’t know. You’ll have to find her.” He handed me a guard jacket. Dark. Unmarked. “She’s sedated. Attacked a nurse a few hours ago. They had to put her under.”
I went still.
Anna didn’t attack unprovoked. Not unless she’d been pushed.
“What did they do to her?”
They’re trying to weaponize me, she’d said. Had they succeeded?
“I don’t know.” He removed the knife sheath from his belt. Extended it toward me. “But she’s unconscious. You’ll have to carry her out.”
I took it. Clipped it to my belt.
“Carrying an unconscious woman through a hostile fortress,” I said. “That’s the plan?”
“You have a better one?”
I didn’t.
“Fire alarm. East wing. Draws the guards that direction. You go west to medical, find her, maintenance corridor on the lower level. Car waiting outside. You have three days at the safe house. I don’t contact, move.”
“And you?”
“I disappear.” His mouth twisted. “They’ll hunt you. Not me.”
I pulled on the jacket. Tight across the shoulders but it would work in chaos.
“How long?”
Silas checked his watch. “Three minutes.”
He slipped into the corridor. I followed, stepping over the guard slumped against the wall.
Three minutes until chaos.
And then we’d see if the Brotherhood had taught me well enough to steal back what they’d taken.
I was halfway to the medical wing when the alarm hit.
Lights flashed red. The sound was piercing, designed to drive people into motion. It worked. Doors opened. Guards poured into the corridors, most of them heading east like Silas predicted.
Most. Not all.
One guard came toward me, moving against the flow. He noticed something—the jacket, my face, the way I moved. His hand went to his radio.
I closed the distance fast. He blocked, went for his sidearm. I got there first. Took him down with an elbow to the throat, knee to the ribs. He dropped. I pulled the gun from his holster, checked the magazine. Full.
I left him gasping and kept moving.
The medical wing was chaos. Staff running, patients being evacuated, doors hanging open. I moved down the corridor checking rooms. Empty. Wrong patient. Empty. Wrong patient.
One door at the end was closed. Locked.
That was her.
I tried the handle. Solid. I’d need a keycard or—
Footsteps behind me. Heavy. Fast.
“Hey! Stop!”
Guard. Young. Nervous. Gun already drawn but his stance was off, weight too far forward.
I turned. Raised the gun. Fired.
His kneecap shattered. He went down screaming, gun clattering across the floor. I stepped over him, took his keycard from his belt.
Swiped it. The lock clicked green.
I pushed inside and locked the door behind me.
Anna was on the bed. Pale. Unconscious. Breathing steady but shallow. There was blood seeping through the gauze on her cheek. Fresh. From the fight with the nurse.
An IV line ran into her left arm.
I crossed to her. Pulse was strong. Sedated but stable.
A door opened to my right. A nurse stepped out of the adjoining supply room, froze when she saw me. Her eyes went to the gun. To Anna. To the guard bleeding in the hallway visible through the door window.
“The IV,” I said. “Take it out.”
She didn’t move.
I raised the gun. Not pointing at her. Reminding her it was there.
“She needs fluids,” the nurse said. Voice shaking but steady enough. “She’s been sedated. You can’t—”
“Now.”
She moved. She released the line with trembling hands, withdrew the needle cleanly, applied pressure to the site. She grabbed medical tape, secured the cotton. Stepped back.
I lowered the gun. “Stay here. Don’t follow.”
She nodded. Smart enough not to argue.
I shoved the gun into the small of my back, tucked under the jacket, then lifted Anna over my shoulder. She was dead weight, heavier than she looked. I adjusted her position, kept my right hand free.
Confusion in the corridor still when I stepped out. I locked the nurse inside and moved toward the stairwell.
Two guards were coming up from below. They saw me. Saw her.
The first one shouted something. Went for his weapon.
I pulled the gun from my back and fired. Kneecap. He went down, blocking the stairs. The second guard tried to climb over him. I dropped his knee, too.
I stepped over them and kept descending.
The lower level was quieter. Most of the response was concentrated upstairs. I moved fast, her weight pressing into my shoulders, wrists burning where the cuffs had torn skin.
The maintenance corridor was ahead. Fluorescent lights. Concrete walls. A janitor stood near a utility closet, mop in hand, eyes wide.
He looked at me. At her. At the gun.
He stepped aside.
Smart man.
I kept moving. The exit was ahead. Metal door, no guards. I kicked it open.
The car was there. Engine running. Driver’s door open. GPS screen glowing with a route already queued.
Silas had come through.
I got Anna into the back seat, positioned her carefully. Checked her breathing again. Still steady.
I slid into the driver’s seat. Put the car in gear.
A shot cracked. The side mirror exploded. Close. Too close.
I gunned it. Tires squealed as I pulled out of the lot and onto the access road.
In the rearview mirror, Anna lay unconscious. I didn’t know what they’d done to her. Didn’t know if she’d wake up as herself or as something else.
But she was out. She was breathing.
And I was driving toward a safe house I’d never seen, following directions from a man who’d burned his cover to get us this far.
The escape was over.
Now came the hard part.