Blaze manages to sit up, so points for him. He glances at me with a dazed expression. “Pandora?”
I smile. “Yeah. I think it’s me. I can’t be sure.”
He reaches out and touches my forehead. “You’re bleeding.”
“So are you,” I point out. “Do you think you could move this guy off me? He’s heavy. Like, two hundred pounds at least. I don’t even lift a hundred pounds.”
Blaze stares at me stupidly, until he finally notices the bodyguard on top of me. He hisses. “Isaac. So where’s…” He shakes his head, then crawls closer to roll Isaac off me. He has to remove a slab of something first.
It’s a lot easier to breathe without him weighing me down.
I sit up, and I’m secretly relieved that it really was Isaac and the concrete slab on top of him that kept me from moving. I had visions of being completely paralyzed.
I’m sure I could have rocked a wheelchair, but it would have made getting out of here a lot harder.
As soon as I’m free, Blaze pulls me into his arms. “Fuck, Pandora. I’m so glad you’re all right.”
I return the embrace. I don’t mention the stench of smoke and blood or how I’m pretty sure I’m touching an oozing wound.
Blaze sits back and pulls his own phone out. “Okay. Okay, um. No signal. Of course there’s no signal. We picked this place because of how shit the signal was. Anastasia would turn off the jammers though, right?”
“I don’t know.” I rest my head against Blaze’s shoulder. “Maybe she got caught up in all of this too.”
She’d been saying something in our ears, but I hadn’t bothered to pay attention. The operating room was buzzing with flies, the walls undulating, and the blooddrip drip drippingall over.
I think I preferred that view over the current concrete prison we’re in.
“Fuck. The Voronkovs will never forgive us.” Blaze pauses. “Yourparents will never forgive me. Shit. We’ll need to go into hiding after this.”
“You won’t,” I insist. “I’ll tell them it was my fault.”
Because it is, isn’t it?
All of this was for me.
My revenge, my insanity.
Blaze was indulging me. River was lifting me up. Asch was protecting me.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
What an annoying sound.
Blaze looks around us. I don’t know what he’s looking for until he draws in a sharp hiss.
“Dad.”
I follow his gaze.
I don’t notice it at first, the messy, red-and-brown mess that’s only a few inches from where I’d found Blaze. Most of the body is covered in concrete and other debris, but Blaze goes to it and turns the head.
George Bouchard.
Dead.
