Dark eyes land with precision and don’t let go.
Kade feels a weirdrushof things inside, all of them warm and confusing.
‘Alright, enough!’Kade snaps, because Riley never would.‘Everybody back off!’He moves forward, gun raised and aimed directly between Lachlan’s eyes, not that it would do much beyond dropping him for a few seconds.‘Back up,’ Kade orders sharply, working his way through the parting crowd.‘Thank you.’
Lachlan’s expression is pleasant.‘I’m early, I hope that’s OK.’
‘What thefuckis that?’Kade asks, tone clipped.He clocks Seth farther back, who has his gun trained on Lachlan just like Kade.‘You look like you crawled out of a shallow grave, and what happened to meeting later?’
‘I didn’t want you to have to feel it,’ Lachlan explains, showing him the knotted ball of mechanical death, ‘so I waited until it was on for confirmation and then I tore it out.’
‘Youtore it out?’
‘Yeah.See?’
‘Yes, I see, Lachlan, but what the fuck is that meant to prove?’
‘Ah!’the former bodyguard says, brightening.‘You can’t really tell, but I moderated the flow and rerouted it for a brief burst.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I made it handheld, to demonstrate.’
‘You could have showed me thisoutside!’
‘Look, do you want me to demonstrate or not?’
‘No!’
‘Too late now.’
He turns and aims the device at Rike, whose eyes widen, mouth parted to ask what he meant, but then something in the air twists violently.Kade’s blood runs cold as that same horrific feeling manifests right in the middle of the Tower, a crushing wave of agoraphobic dread.
Rike lets out a strangled groan and drops to his knees, hands clamped over his ears.The people nearest to him recoil almost instantly, affected as well, though nowhere near as badly as he is.
‘Tell him how it feels,’ Lachlan instructs evenly.Rike, to his credit, says nothing, holds fast in a shaky ball on the floor, hands firmly over his ears.
Riley steps forward and shoots the device.
Sparks fly, something sizzles andpops.
The sickness vanishes at once.The feeling disappears so suddenly Kade nearly buckles from it, his body flooded with the same desperate relief he’s only ever felt after stumbling back inside the Tower.
‘It’s the Hush Line,’ Riley confirms calmly.
He aims his gun at Lachlan next.Kade has a distinct feeling he’s going to shoot himjustto prove a point and for some reason, he can’t allow it.So instead, he steps forward and punches Lachlan hard.The mangled device falls to the floor.The lobby of Iron Star falls briefly silent.Bloodshed at the bottom of the main staircase.
‘Basement,’ Kade snarls at the older man.‘Now!’
?
The moment they’re inside one of the holding rooms, Lachlan starts shouting while Riley answers in that same calm voice somehow, guaranteed to make things worse.Luca, Seth and Kade came down with them, crowding the already cramped concrete space, but Seth seems rattled by how casually Lachlan carries himself after everything that happened, and Kade can practically see the urge for retaliation simmering under Seth’s skin, along with the open confusion over why Lachlan’s presence is being tolerated at all.
Kade posts him outside on guard instead.
While Lachlan and Riley argue, Luca asks what exactly aHush Lineis.
‘That’swhy you got sick when you tried to leave?’he follows up when Kade has explained under cover of the argument unfolding behind them in varying shades of complicated male anger.
