Chapter 119
Emily Windsor's POV
It was Lawrence's voice.
It cut through the gunfire and the chaos, through the layers of walls between us, drenched in possessive fury—a hook driving straight into my spine.
"Find her! Alive! Anyone who loses her is dead!"
My feet faltered for half a second.
Marco felt it. His grip on my wrist tightened instantly, wrenching hard enough to pull my arm from the socket.
"Don't look back!"
I didn't look back.
At the bottom of the stairs was a fire door. Marco shoved it open one-handed, and cold air flooded in, reeking of gasoline.
The underground garage was dimly lit. Guests' luxury cars sat at haphazard angles throughout, and somewhere in the distance, footsteps scattered and echoed between the concrete pillars.
By the third pillar, a gray van flashed its headlights twice.
Marco yanked the door open. "Get in."
I had one foot on the running board when the area near the estate's rear entrance erupted—
A tremendous crash of forced entry. The synchronized thunder of combat boots on concrete. The sharp ring of metal on metal. Then short, precise bursts of gunfire, nothing like the wild shooting that had torn through the ballroom earlier.
This was a trained tactical assault.
A unit in full tactical gear poured through the rear entrance, their black kit catching the sickly green of the emergency lights in brief, sharp flashes.
My body locked up.
Because in the gaps between the gunshots, I heard a voice.
Far away. Barely there. Shredded by the noise and the chaos into a few broken syllables, dredged up like something pulled from deep water—faint enough to be mistaken for a hallucination.
But my heart recognized it.
Faster than my brain. Before my mind could catch up—the blood in my veins reversed course.
Luke.
I spun around, feet nailed to the running board.
"Wait—"
Before the word was fully out, Marco's hand came down on my shoulder and shoved me bodily into the van.
The back of my head caught the edge of the seat. White light detonated behind my eyes.
"What are you doing?! Let go of me!" I fought against him, trying to twist upright. "Let me go back—there's someone in there—"
The door slammed shut. The engine roared and swallowed everything else.
The van launched forward. The force of it threw me to the floor of the cargo bay.
I crawled to the rear window and pressed my face against the glass—fogged and streaked with anti-shatter film—and watched as the Lowe estate blazed back to life.
The backup generator had finally kicked in.
The mansion lit up all at once, like a great beast jolted awake, wrenching itself out of the darkness.
Black figures swarmed the courtyard. Muzzle flashes strobed in the windows.
Then came a fresh volley of gunfire.
One shot. Two. The sharp, deliberate sound of a standoff.
I pressed my fingers into the edge of the rear window so hard my nails snapped. The pain shot clean up to my wrist.
The van swung out of the estate's perimeter drive and onto a quiet street lined on both sides with sycamores.
In the side mirror, the mansion shrank smaller and smaller, until the dark swallowed it whole.
I pulled myself up from the floor and dropped into the passenger seat. My voice came out scraped raw, barely my own.
"Stop the car. Let me out."
Marco didn't slow down. Didn't even glance at me. Both hands on the wheel, eyes forward, jaw locked tight.
"Lawrence still has patrol vehicles in this area. We need at least five miles before it's safe."
I stared out the window as the street peeled away behind us. Streetlights swept past one after another, strobing the interior in bands of light and shadow.
The road narrowed. Darkened. The sycamores gave way to derelict warehouses and rusted chain-link fences. The smooth asphalt turned to broken gravel.
Wrong.
No route from the Lowe estate to any main road went through an industrial wasteland like this.
I checked the dashboard. The GPS wasn't on.
I looked ahead. The road was getting emptier, more barren. The streetlights had stopped entirely. There was nothing out there but the narrow tunnel of light carved by the headlights.
A cold, crawling alertness climbed from my feet up through my chest.
"Where are you taking us?" I turned and fixed my eyes on Marco's scarred profile.
"Shortcut." Short. Flat. Not a flicker of anything in his voice.
A man who had just walked out of a firefight shouldn't be this calm.
My hand drifted quietly to the interior door handle. I tried it.
Locked.
"Stop the car." My voice had an edge now, sharp and undisguised. "I said stop the car."
Marco still didn't slow down.
I bent forward, both arms wrapped around my stomach, curling into myself. I twisted my face into something wretched.
"Stop—I feel sick, I'm going to throw up—"
I gagged. Twice. Made it convincing—that raw, spasming sound of a body on the verge of losing control.
Marco's brow creased slightly. His eyes cut to the rearview mirror for half a second.
"Hold it."
"I can't—" I lurched upright, one hand clamped over my mouth, the other scrabbling at the door handle, the picture of someone two seconds from making a mess. "If you don't stop, I'm throwing up all over your seats. The smell will be soaked in for days—"
There was a hysterical edge to my voice. I swayed hard against the door.
Marco swore under his breath—sharp and irritated—and wrenched the wheel. The van lurched off the road and bumped to a stop on a patch of cracked asphalt beside an abandoned lot.
The engine was still running.
"Make it quick," he said coldly, and hit the door unlock.