by Stone, Kyla
Like he realized she might be a threat. Like he feared her.
“You don’t want to do this.”
“I do.”
“If you kill me now, it’s murder!”
“I don’t care.”
“You’ll be a murderer!”
“I already am.”
“What about your friends?” he snarled. “You think I’m going down quick or easy, even beaten and bound? Even if you murder me, how much will it take from you? I get one good shot in, you’re done. And you know it.”
That reached her. She hesitated, looked at the tiny knife in her hand, at him, back at the knife. Her insides black and trembling.
“Maybe you do manage to kill me. But I’m taking you with me. You’ll die, too.”
“I don’t care,” she whispered, but it was a lie.
“What happens to your people then?”
As much as she hated it, hated him, he was right. The people she loved most in the world were in danger.
Love won.
With a growl, she spun away from him and hobbled toward the opened door.
“It’s dark,” he said from behind her. “This place is a maze. This building alone is two hundred thousand square feet. You have any idea where you’re going? How to get out of here?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“In the middle of a gunfight? A killer around every corner? You need me to get out. There’s a hundred of them, one of you. You need me.”
Acid clawed at the back of her throat. “I don’t need you. You’re a killer!”
“To get out of here, you’re going to need to kill.”
Panic surged through her anger. She spun, her ribs white-hot fire, and pointed the knife at him. “Don’t tell me what to do!”
“Look, I’m not a psychopath. I’m not like Pike or this Xander Thorne hooligan, those crazies out there. I only kill when it’s in my best interest.”
Wrists zip-tied, he splayed his hands, palms out in a conciliatory gesture. “Right now, it’s in both of our best interests to work together.”
“When hell freezes over.”
“For instance, I know there are two armed guards stationed at the end of the corridor. Did you know that? Or would you have walked right into that trap?”
She hesitated for a fraction of a second, doubt gaining a foothold. She was hurting, scared, disoriented, with a cracked rib and concussion to boot.
Unarmed but for a flimsy little knife.
Which you know how to use, Liam’s voice whispered in her head.
No way in hell was she joining forces with Sutter. He’d strangle her without a second thought. Smash her skull against the wall or floor. One punch to her chest would stop her heart.
And yet. A hundred armed, crazy thugs also wanted her dead. She was trapped inside a humongous warren-like complex she had no idea how to escape.
The odds were not in her favor.
Muffled screams echoed. More gunfire sounded, closer this time. Boom! Boom! Boom!
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Sutter said, a shadowy shape in the darkness.
“From the bottom of my heart, go to hell.”
She needed to run, to take her chances and hope—
Through the din outside their cramped room, the sound of approaching footsteps pounded the floor. Two people at least, running straight toward them.
Quinn froze.
“They’re coming,” Sutter hissed, pushing himself off the wall. “They’re coming to kill us.”
“I thought you said they wouldn’t hurt you—”
“I was wrong!” A thread of panic in his voice. Real fear. “They’re going to kill us both right now. Are you in or not?”
She was out of options. Time running out. Her window of opportunity rapidly closing.
The words were like glass shards in her mouth. “I’m in.”
59
Quinn
Day One Hundred and Two
Quinn pressed her spine against the cinder block wall beside the opened doorway, her body tucked into the sliver of space between the wall and the unhinged door she’d hidden behind.
Though she couldn’t see him, she knew Sutter was a hulking black shape crouched on the other side. Even with his hands bound, he made a formidable opponent.
It was simultaneously terrifying and reassuring. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the absurdity—and utter foolishness—of it. There was no time, anyway.
Gunfire blasted the night. Shouts and screaming. She strained her ears for the oncoming footsteps, timing her move as the two guards entered the room.
“What the—?” one of them said, startled by the lack of a door to unlock.
Quinn launched off the wall and lunged, shoving into the door with every ounce of her weight. It smashed into the two figures, knocking them sideways, right into Sutter.
With a crash, the door fell backward. The first guard staggered beneath it and landed on his back. An object went skittering across the floor—a hatchet.
Sutter seized the second guard by the throat with his bound hands and hurled him into the wall. A wet thud followed the scuffling sounds of a swift violent struggle.
Seconds later, the thug was on the floor, unmoving.
The first guard tried to maneuver his rifle into position to get a shot off, but Quinn was faster. She fell on top of him, knife in hand.
He blocked her with the gun held sideways across his chest, shoving her back. A blur of hands and feet in the dark, elbows and fists, clawing at flesh, at hair, striking at anything she could reach.
An opening appeared and she sank the knife into his belly.
A shriek of agony. Not hers. That’s what mattered. Not hers.
She ripped the knife out, fingers slick, everything turning slippery, and stabbed again and again. Frantic hot tears stinging her eyes, the blade slicing her fingers but she didn’t feel it.
The human being beneath her went limp.
Shaken, she staggered to her feet, breathing hard, hands dripping with blood black like oil. Her stomach roiled.
She never saw his face. Didn’t know who he was, who she’d just murdered.
“Nice kill.” Sutter squatted over the second body, scavenging it for weapons, his movement awkward with his wrists zip-tied. “You’re vicious. You need to be.”
“I hope you choke on your own entrails.”
He grunted. “Get the gun. Search for extra magazines.”
With a shudder, she wiped her hands on her pants and gingerly skimmed the body—a female—with her fingers, searching for something useful while trying not to retch.
She squinted at the corpse’s face in the shadows, making out a pair of pigtails and delicate features twisted in an agonized grimace.
Dahlia. Dahlia had volunteered to march in here and put a bullet through Quinn’s skull. For no reason other than spite.
Her chest went tight, her guts turning watery. No time for that. No time for anything but getting the hell out.
She retrieved the rifle, stuffed a spare magazine in her coat pocket and ejected the magazine to find it fully loaded.
It was an AR-15, the same rifle she’d used to make her first kill the night of the battle with the militia. The night she’d killed Rosamond and Sutter had gotten away.
Biting her tongue so hard she drew blood, she rose to her feet.
“Do you mind?” Sutter said.
She stared at the shadow of him in the dark, caught a quick flash of teeth. He thrust out his arms. “The zip ties.”
“No freaking way.”
“We don’t have time!” he snarled. “Taking that guy by surprise was one thing. I can’t fight like this, can’t shoot. You want to live or die? Make the choice, girl!”
Live. She wanted desperately to live.
For a long tense moment, they stared at each other. Enemies. Nothing but enmity and hatred and cold calculation between them.
She wanted to eviscerate him with a rusty spoon. He wanted to kill h
er, too. She saw the flicker behind his eyes. The hungry look of a predator examining his prey.
Every cell in her body screamed at her to stab him while she still could. The instant she dropped her guard, she was done for.
Truth was, he needed her to get out of here, just like she needed him. Two were better than one, especially armed with AR-15s.
He was ruthless, but he wasn’t insane. He wanted to live, too.
Which meant he wouldn’t kill her while he needed her.
The second that reality no longer held, she was dead.
Unless she got to him first.
“Deal?” he asked again, a smirk in his voice, like he knew what she was thinking, and why.
With a sinking sensation, she leaned in, sliced the plastic zip tie from his wrists, and scooted back out of his reach, her heart about to jump out of her skin.
Sutter bent over the body at his feet and came up with a rifle and an extra magazine. Cursing, he kicked the mace out of his way.
The second assassin had been Jett, then. Jett used the mace.
The crackle of gunfire outside sounded louder, closer, exploding like fireworks.
Sutter paused at the doorway. “I take right, you take left. I go high, you go low. Follow me, watch my back, shoot anything that moves. You do that, and you get out of here alive.”
Quinn nodded mutely.
They ran headlong into the hornets’ nest.
60
Quinn
Day One Hundred and Two
Down the long narrow hallway, footsteps pounding, Quinn’s pulse a roar in her ears, the adrenaline surge the only thing keeping her upright, dulling the pain, pushing her through.
Get out, get out, get out.
Quinn and Sutter reached the end of the hallway. Muzzle flashes strobed the darkness, flashlight beams flailing. Tipped lanterns threw writhing shadows upon the walls.
Ahead of them loomed row upon row of kitchen appliances wrapped in plastic, stacked on towering pallets. Sleek stainless-steel refrigerators to her right, stoves and ranges ahead, washers and dryers to the left.
Among the maze of appliances, dozens of fighters engaged in a vicious shootout. Bodies lay in the aisles. She couldn’t tell who was fighting whom.
Sutter jutted around the corner and fired a shot. A maelstrom of return fire strafed the corridor all around them.
Ten yards to their left, several thugs turned toward them. Fighting panic, Quinn fired blindly as she darted back behind the cover of the hallway wall.
Sutter brought the rifle around with a precise sweep and fired into three of Xander’s men huddled beside a pallet of wrapped microwaves.
With deafening booms, the rounds tore into their bodies. They dropped like stones.
Sutter laid down cover fire and motioned for her to run to the right, toward a long row of refrigerators. On the opposite side, far down the wall, an abandoned flashlight on the floor highlighted a pair of double doors.
Heart in her throat, she staggered across the expanse of the warehouse, legs pumping through the pain, gun up and shifting back and forth, searching for the next threat to pop out of the shadows and pounce.
Bullet holes peppered the walls. A haze of smoke permeated the air, the dimness thickening like fog. A metallic, sulfuric taste bit at the back of her throat.
At the far end of the warehouse, maybe forty yards away, several dark figures prowled in the shadows.
They wore black fatigues, outfitted in combat gear with helmets configured with night vision goggles. Their high-tech weapons glinted wickedly.
They moved like professionals, real soldiers or close enough. They blended into the darkness like ghosts.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Rounds strafed the metal shelving above her head.
Quinn dove and took cover behind a matte black refrigerator, pain jarring through her, a round pinging off the surface inches from her left leg.
One of Xander’s guys near the dishwashers was caught on open ground. He swung his weapon toward Quinn. Before she could react, he popped off two shots. Both went wide.
Several yards behind her, Sutter fired twice. He didn’t miss.
A second thug huddled behind an extravagant range the size of a steam engine, popping shots at Sutter, who crouched across the aisle. The muzzle of an AR peeked over the top of the range.
Quinn knelt, peeked around the edge of the fridge, and squeezed off three shots. None of them landed near their target. Her hands were shaking.
Damn it! She tucked the stock into the small of her shoulder, pressed her cheek down, and steadied herself. She aimed with care, exhaled, and squeezed.
This time, the top of the range sparked as a round struck inches from the guy’s face; he and the gun disappeared.
She kept her sights locked on the range as Sutter broke cover and ran across open concrete to reach her aisle. He dove next to her as the thug’s head popped up again.
This time she was prepared and took him out.
“Go! Go! Go!” Sutter grabbed her arm and dragged her to her feet.
He pointed for the door, shoving her in the back, and they were up and running. Sutter swung right, Quinn to the left.
She zigzagged through aisle after aisle, crouching to stay low. Going too slow, much too slow. Gunshots and shouting behind her, ahead of her, on all sides.
The inside of her head felt like a struck bell, a ringing reverberating through her bones. Her skull thick, stuffed with rags.
A muzzle flash to her left. She spun and fired, not knowing whether she had hit anything, too terrified to slow even further. Spent cartridges dropped and rolled at her feet.
The men in black appeared and disappeared like wraiths. A muzzle flash and a thug went down. Another muzzle flash and a shriek of agony rang out.
She didn’t know who they were, but they were skilled and dangerous. Far worse than Xander’s misfit group. Better to avoid them altogether.
They reached the metal doors. Sutter yanked them open. They plowed through, Quinn hot on his heels.
Ahead of them, an empty corridor ran the length of the entire building, with several hallways branching off either side.
Sutter sprinted right. She had no choice but to follow him, racing through an office complex. The fetid reek of ammonia—urine—slapped her in the face.
She hobbled down the hall, boots smacking carpet as she passed several glassed-in corner offices, the glass shattered, furniture hacked to pieces.
And then more open spaces crowded with cubicles, laptops, mugs, folders, pens, and picture frames strewn across the carpet.
“Change your magazine,” Sutter hissed, already doing a tactical reload as he jogged ahead of her.
She wasn’t as skilled and had to stop, heart hammering, fingers clumsy as she traded out the spent magazine for the new one.
She kept glancing toward Sutter, distracted, dread a lead balloon in her stomach.
They’d be out of the labyrinth soon.
He’d turn on her any second now. And she didn’t have a plan.
61
Quinn
Day One Hundred and Two
On the move again, Quinn shuffled past an elevator alcove. Then they were through another door, pounding down a set of stairs, exiting into open air.
Moonlight highlighted a brick walkway lined with trees, smaller office buildings to her left and the manufacturing plant looming in front of them.
Sutter turned left, toward a huge parking lot area at the end of the walkway.
Relief shot through her. Were they out? Had they made it—
A barrage of gunfire rang out. Rounds blasted chunks from the wall behind them.
Sutter whirled and returned fire. From the parking lot, two dark shapes collapsed and didn’t get up.
More shots sounded. Figures crouched behind parked cars, the glint of weapons rounding the corner of the building.
Panic twisted her guts. They weren’t clear. Not yet.
“This way!” Sutter gestured toward a
side door to the manufacturing plant only a few yards away.
She tightened her grip on the rifle, hands still sticky from Dahlia’s blood, and fired a few times to cover Sutter as he yanked open the side door. They darted inside into pitch blackness.
No light. No windows. Just a sense of enormity, a yawning vastness, a ceiling soaring high above her and walls so distant she had the sensation she was balanced on the brink of a cliff, about to fall.
Gunshots exploded. Jagged flashes of muzzle fire. Smoke drifted, the smell of gunpowder sharp in her nose, spent cartridges flying.
There were no faces. She couldn’t see the enemy, couldn’t see anything at all.
She nearly shot at the muzzle flashes, but to fire would reveal her own position. Quinn ran.
She fled into the blackness, weapon in front of her, sweeping back and forth, praying she wouldn’t run smack into the enemy, either Xander’s thugs or the dangerous soldiers in black.
Instead, she smashed into something cold and hard. Pain burst bright behind her eyes, radiating through her bruised and battered body.
Stumbling back, she realized she’d run straight into a mammoth support column.
In the strobes of muzzle fire, she glimpsed large looming objects—huge mechanical contraptions with metal pieces jutting like octopus arms, like giant robots frozen in place.
In the dark, the manufacturing plant was like a garish haunted house, a death maze of machines.
Terror gripped her. She longed to retreat to the light, though that meant more men with guns.
The only way was forward.
Ducking, half-bent, she staggered deeper into the building, slower now, mindful of all the ways she could run headlong into death.
A muzzle flash lit up feet away from her. Adrenaline surging, she skittered sideways and smacked into something large and metallic.
A second flare and a massive machine vaguely shaped like a dragon towered above her, a mechanical beast poised to strike.