Chapter 23
Alarms screamed through the chopper, lights flashed, and sparks and smoke belched from the control panel against my face. I roared, jerking the stick up and hauling us up away from the windows as we started to spin.
I could hear the screech of shattered metal, and started to choke on the acrid smoke pouring into the cockpit. I glanced behind me, my face grim.
“We’re going down.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Ash hissed.
I slammed the sick left to right, fighting the loss of control as we started to veer wildly around the rooftop of Ryan’s penthouse.
I’d gotten one look at her — one fleeting glimpse of her tied to that chair in there before we’d been hit. And her face was the only thing flashing through my mind as the whole thing started to spin out of control. Not the fortunes we’d made, not the life we’d built.
Her, and the life we could have had with her.
I gritted my teeth, muscles straining as I yanked the stick hard, keeping us away from a neighboring building.
Mia.
Mia who was everything, for one quick flash of a second.
And then something in me snapped.
Fuck this.
Fuck going down like this. Fuck her tied up and in the hands of that monster being the last image I had of her.
I whirled back to my friends. “Fuck it. You ready to make this count?”
Ash grinned like a maniac, as Oliver nodded. “Fuck yeah.”
The helicopter veered wildly as I yanked the rotors down. “I’m gonna try for the roof!” I bellowed behind me.
“If we miss?”
I glanced back at Ash. “Then it’s been an honor—”
“Shut up.”
I grinned. “If I miss, it’s gonna be a long drop and a quick stop at the street thirty stories down.
He nodded grimly, and Oliver leaned forward. “Here’s a wild idea, what if you don’t miss?”
I laughed, feeling the rush of this — the danger and the adrenaline pulsing through me.
The helicopter started to disintegrate around us as I aimed us right at the roof at an insane angle.
“It should go without saying that this is going to be a rough fucking landing,” I roared at them as the city lights blurred around us and the roof came screaming towards us.
I jumped from the cockpit, lurching for the open side door along with my friends.
“Lock and load,” I muttered to myself.
It was go time.