Page 74 of Mile High Heist

A pair of legs crouched in front of me. The voice stirred a new awareness in my mind. I knew that voice. That voice irritated the hell out of me.

“Come on, dude. Tell me you’re not brain dead.”

With a groan, I pushed myself upright with my hands, my vision swimming. When it settled, I stared uncomprehendingly at the dumbass face in front of me.

A face that broke into a sheepish grin.

Nate.

21

JAX

“You look like shit,” were the next words that spewed out of the dickhead’s mouth. My brain still felt like it was deflating, so all I managed was a weak glare.

I did a quick inventory. The cargo doors were shut. I wasn’t dead, but my thigh and abdominal muscles felt like they’d been murdered. My mouth was so dry that my teeth felt foreign. I licked them absently and was rewarded with a delicacy of dried blood. I was still frozen to the core.

“Those hands look gnarly, dude,” Nate said, looking down between us. Slowly, I unclenched my fists. Damn.

The frozen ladder had removed whole chunks of skin from my palms. Looking at them made them burn, like my brain didn’t feel the nerves until it saw the damage.

Apparently, I was taking too long to respond because Nate shuffled forward nervously. “You, uh, probably need to say actual words, dude. So I know you don’t have like…permanent brain damage, or something.”

“Dickhead,” I croaked out.

He grinned. “Still yourself, then.”

I swallowed, my throat felt like it was coated with shards of ice. “You—” I started, then hunched over into a violent coughing fit.

I wouldn’t be surprised if half my fucking organs came up.

Nate slapped my back, waiting for me to either recover or die. He rambled on: “Look, I know I wasn’t supposed to get involved. I know you told Zola to keep me out of it unless it was an emergency. But it got bad up there, dude. Masks came down. People were sobbing and praying and doing some weird kumbaya shit.”

I rubbed my face, then slapped my cheeks to get some feeling back into them.

“One dude even started stripping off his clothes and screaming about how he wasted his life. Man, lawyers are grim—”

“Stop,” I grunted, slapping my raw hand over his face. “Fucking. Talking.”

My head was pounding like a jackhammer.

Nate zipped his lips, which lasted about ten seconds before he stage-whispered: “Okay, we’re still not good. I get that. Let’s just find Madoc and get the hell out of here, yeah?”

Madoc.

The reminder was a sledgehammer to my system. I shot up too quickly, then stumbled on my butchered knee. I didn’t care. I half-stumbled, half-jogged down the cargo hold, Nate scrambling to keep up. When my stupid feet got tangled up in someone’s bathrobe, he steadied me without a wiseass crack.

Look at that. Growth.

“Jax.”

I stopped at the sound of her voice. I turned and found her. My chest cracked all over again. “Come here.”

Olivia threw herself toward me. I lifted her and crushed her against me. She was ice cold, like a corpse. I wasn’t much better.

Her face tucked into my neck. “God,” she whispered. “That was so close.”

“I know.” My throat burned, but every word was important. “Where is Madoc?”