CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
SYLVIE
My pulse batters everywhere, a muffled drum dictating my steps with a solemn dirge.
My lungs are scorching from the strenuous exertion.
And my muscles, joints, and bones ache as I blast back through the steps I took to get here—hallway, transom window, coal room—and then through the other transom window and into a dank, ancient corridor.
It’s not the physical strain causing me pain. It’s the realization that this is the kind of day that sunders time with a before-and-after identity. The quake of that truth vibrates in the depths of my marrow. Maybe none of us will be quite the same.
The route blurs to brick and dirt, bygone etchings and silent screams.
No way out and the point of no return.
The faint smell of chimney soot lingers in the air, directing my steps with a haunting vision of the fallen souls who trudged through here, escaping some horror perhaps. But all I care about is Tessa and getting to her in time.
And Cash. I need Cash, like I’ve never needed anything or anyone in my life. His citrus and comfort and mystical ways of handling everything.
As if he can hear my internal pleas, he calmly reassures me, “We’re almost there, Sly.”
His deep rasp is like a lifeline—the promise of peace and tomorrows that propels me forward.
When I make it to the storage room, I burst inside, tromping over barriers formed out of old fences and gates, benches and pottery.
Eventually, I make it to the frosted-glass window, glimpsing Tessa digging her heel into the riser of the step as the guard manhandles her.
She’s doing a hell of a job, making it difficult for him, but he’s still stronger and dragging her up the stairs.
Keeping my voice low, I share what I’m seeing into the comm. “I’m here. He’s trying to move her.”
“One minute out,” Gage responds.
One minute? A lot can happen in a minute.
“Coming your way too,” Zara adds, but she doesn’t say she’s any closer.
A shiver rockets down my spine. I can’t just stand here and watch.
Without much thought, I grab the liquid nitrogen from my backpack, hold it down at my side, and pull open the door.
The guard clocks me immediately, spinning in confusion as he spots me exiting.
He stalls for a beat, then lunges in my direction, which is when I note the pistol in his hand.
That’s why Tessa wasn’t fighting him. The fraction of a second when he hesitates is my saving grace.
Since he’s holding Tessa around the throat, I leap over the steps separating us to meet him head-on, plunge the nozzle into his ear, press down, and spray.
He immediately releases her, and Tessa and I both take a relieved breath as he wobbles and crumples to the concrete steps in slow motion.
Odd crackling and bursting sounds pop from his skull.
The skin on his ear, jaw, temple, and cheek instantly reddens and blisters and blackens before his head clonks against the landing with a sickening thump—like hollow plastic. Shattering.
Tessa and I share a hushed shriek.
“Oh shit,” I hiss, stunned by whatever just happened. “I didn’t know.”
Tessa grabs me and ushers me away from the body, which seems to have exploded with what I’m guessing is swollen brain matter—yellow and glossy and fragmented. “What the hell made him shatter?”
“I, uh,”—I flip my gaze between him and her, both of us panting like we climbed a mountain—“I thought it would stop him. Maybe burst his eardrum. Possibly kill him. But … it, uh … it froze his brain. It was liquid nitrogen.”
“Oh my God,” Tessa gasps, wrapping me in her arms as our bodies shake through a unified tremor.
Acid sears my esophagus, and my flesh prickles with panic and terror.
“You took out a guy with liquid nitrogen? Christ. Fucking slick,” Liam bellows as our guys burst through the door with Tatum Riesling—who will undoubtedly never forget his time with the Noires.
Although I guess they’re hoping to curb some of that.
“What are we doing now?” Tatum howls because Jax has Tatum’s shirt pulled over his head as he lifts him and runs past us.
“She sure as fuck did,” Gage husks out, confirming my murder method as he rounds the building in a Mafia-esque suit with an assault rifle at his side. “One tango down.”
This just got real. My heart clambers to my throat.
Will we be battling our way out of this?
I spot Zara from afar, but she retreats when she sees Gage handling it.
Cash is on me in a blink, sweeping me into his arms and palming my head. “Christ, baby. I couldn’t breathe.” A ragged breath showers over my neck from the man who hates to show emotion but seems to be full of it with me. “You’re a goddamn force, Palmer. Brilliant.”
“Not really. I was so scared. I just wanted you,” I mutter, so grateful to be in his embrace again, even if we have a harrowing path out of here. “My refuge.”
“Always,” he breathes into my hair, his chest rumbling against mine.
Maddox and Tessa share a similar reunion, though this isn’t the best place for us to be canoodling.
I glance around the sun-soaked corner of the grounds, curtains of wisteria decorating the walls and the thundering babel of conversation emanating from the eatery around the corner. We’re twenty yards away from being discovered.
“Guards are circulating,” Liam warns. “Combing the other side and spreading out.”
“We’re positioned on the nearby terrace,” Zara tells us. “Prepared to move in.”
Axel piggybacks that with a demand. “Get Little Bandit out of here. Now.”
“The helicopter is waiting,” Ty informs us. “The tender is docked where discussed, and there’s a rescue vessel waiting near the reef.”
“Take her on the chopper,” Wells orders. “Gage is cleanup. Ty on overwatch. Everyone else to the tender.”
Cash pecks Tessa’s temple and starts to lead me away, but Maddox stops him, pulling me back.
He grips the sides of my face and kisses my forehead. “A goddamn queen,” is all he chokes out, but every morsel of his poignant appreciation coils around me.
Tessa wipes a tear from the corner of her eye, nodding at me and reiterating her earlier claim. “Sisters.”
The heartwarming exchange solidifies inside me, as frozen as the cryogenic brain. God, that’s sick. I’m freaking sick. But I’ll have to dwell on that later.
Cash drags me away. Jax closes in on my other side. And we bolt for the helicopter with Kratos’s treasure trove tucked in my backpack and the hope that we can outrun them.