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I know, with absolute certainty, that this is how my parents felt. Our faces were vivid in their minds. They only wanted to be with us. They would have given anything.
Mason was right. Dad wouldn’t have wanted us to spend our lives on revenge. I don’t want Elise and Nate and my siblings to seek revenge for me. I just want them to be happy. I want them to live a good life.
And I want to live it with them. I don’t want to die.
If I was going to spend my last moments in a burning building, it was supposed to be relatively peaceful. I’d be taking down the consortium. Not dying alone. Not like this.
Jameson will be pulling up any second, but he’s not going to win against a burning building.
Getting out of this is my job.
Christ. The conference room chairs have some weight to them. I haul one to the window, hoist it up, and swing it into the window. It bounces back off. Doesn’t so much as scratch the glass. Is it fucking bulletproof? Bettencourt would use reinforced windows, goddamn it. I plant my feet and hit it again.
Again.
Again.
A crack appears in the glass, but the window doesn’t break.
The room’s getting darker. Black smoke curls in everywhere. My chest spasms around it. The first cough feels hot, like my lungs are on fire. It’s a chain reaction. I can’t stop coughing. Can’t stop breathing this burned-up air unless I get out.
My abs ache from swinging the chair.
Light flickers in the corner of my eye. Flames. The reflection in the window shows the fire racing across the room behind me. Reaching up the walls.
The crack in the window widens, growing toward the corners.
Flames lick at the walls.
There’s a large crack in the window now.
I smash the chair into it. There’s a rhythm I’m following. A chant in my mind. I can hardly hear it over my own barking cough.
Elise. Elise. Elise.
Starting to get light-headed. Overheated. Can’t stop coughing long enough to breathe.
The glass spiders in the window. Thousands of hairline cracks. One more hit will do it.
I throw the chair behind me, take three steps back, and launch myself through the window. My body is the final hit. Broken glass tugs at my shirt and releases me.
Cold night air on my face. Heat and flames behind me. Concrete beneath me, coming up fast.
This is the one thing Mason never told me. For a single, suspended instant, I’m not falling.
I’m flying.
