Page 16

Cables still clanged and twanged, dancing in the middle of the shaft.

“Who are they, Victor?”

“Gideon Cain, and perhaps my own family.”

“Well, that’s just . . . rude.”

“Hold my arm, and we’ll climb up.”

“Right. Okay.” More clanging sounded from high above. Then chimed closer. I saw it then, like a giant metal whip, lashing down the shaft. Victor, facing me, had no chance to prepare.

Time slowed. My heart thumped.

His eyes widened.

Lurching over his shoulder, I snatched the flailing cable, jolting its whiplike slash to a stop an inch from Victor’s skull, and held its thick, metal girth in my own steely grip. It yanked, almost jolting me from Victor’s arms, but he held on.

I dropped the cable, and its heavy weight thumped into the mangled wreckage below.

“Indeed, you are strong, Adam.” Victor gulped.

“You’re welcome.” More clangs sounded from above. Was Gideon Cain up there somewhere, cutting cables and chuckling to himself? “Let’s get out of here before something else comes at us.”

“Agreed.”

We clambered the rest of the way up the shaft. Every noise from above could be another deadly projectile. Trying to engineer our accidental deaths was extreme, even for Cain.

Victor dug his nails into the closed lobby doors, peeled them apart, and urged me to climb through first. I reached up, wriggled through the gap, and emerged between the legs of several alarmed office workers. “You uh . . .” I climbed to my feet and brushed metal shavings and dust from my clothes. “Should probably take the stairs.”

Victor crawled through next, to a chorus of gasps. He stood, shook his hair out, and ruffled his clothes free of dust. “As you were,” he told the staff, then extended his hand for me to take.

I folded my fingers in his and we casually ambled toward the doors, careful not to run.

Through the glass doors, I spotted Zee leaning against a waiting car at the bottom of the steps, oblivious to our near-death experience. The sun beat down, its full force making heat haze ripple off the steps.

“Are you going to be alright getting to the car?”

“I’ll have to be.”

“Hey, Zee—” I hurried down the steps. “Get the door.”

“Fucking fuck, what happened to you?”

“Get the car door, will you?”

“Oh fuck, right.” Zee opened the door and Victor moved fast, blurring from the building into the back of the car, where I found him, head back, eyes closed, breathing hard. It wasn’t just the sun leaving him wrecked. Gideon Cain had tried to kill him in his own building, and marked his name all over Reynard’s hard work, like a dog cocking its leg.

As mornings at the office went, this had to be his worst.

“Scoot over.” Zee squished himself into the back of the car alongside me and closed the door, sealing out the sun’s painful rays.

Victor didn’t move. Just breathed, and kept his eyes closed. But his hand found mine again and latched on.

“What the actual fuck happened to you two?” Zee asked as we got underway.

It didn’t seem real, even as I said it. “Gideon Cain just tried to kill us.”

CHAPTER 4