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Clearly, she’s broken that agreement to my favor.
I rip off my other stiletto heel and run after her. I’ve used one of these sharp heels as a weapon once. It’ll have to do the trick again as we attempt our escape.
Brenda blasts a security guard that rushes toward us from the other end of the hall. Elsewhere, gunfire cracks louder in the air and more screams accompany the abrasive sounds.Whois shooting up the rest of the club?
It can’t be Chester. He’s dead.
Unless there were even more people posing as NorthamNeptune, seeking to dismantle the secret society of elites…
“Brenda,” I pant as we race down the hall, “who are you with? Who’s breaking me out?”
She tosses a glance at me from over her shoulder. “Your friends. The guy with the Harry Potter glasses and some others.Mobguys, I guess.”
“Stitches?!” My chest expands with hope for the first time in weeks. It’s such an uplifting feeling that I almost stop running from the bright surprise of it, though at the next crack of bullets, I remember where I am, and what’s at stake.
No time for slowing down. We have to stay on the move.
We reach the elevator at the end of the floor.
It’s as we file inside and Brenda goes to press a button for the ground floor that I stop her.
“We have to go to level five,” I say.
“What? Why?”
“The cages! People aretrappedin them.”
“Delphine—”
“We have to at least try. Brenda, you were one of them once before. You know what it’s like. We can’t just leave them.”
She huffs out a difficult breath and then gives a terse nod. The elevator takes us down to level five, where we run out and discover we’re not the only ones with the same idea.
Fabio and Lev are already on the floor. The dozens of cage doors hang open. They’re herding the many captives out the emergency exit. They nod the second they catch sight of us.
“See, they’re getting their freedom,” Brenda says, about-facing in the opposite direction. “We’ve got to make it out of here. Your pal Stitches says we only have a few minutes before we’re outnumbered by reinforcements.”
“Define a few minutes.”
“Not enough minutes to make pitstops along the way!” Brenda pauses long enough to aim at two guards who in turn are dragging a man in tattered clothes, a ‘product’ they’ve caught trying to escape in the chaos. She fires two shots, landing one and missing the other.
We dive for cover behind the nearest wall as the guard she’s missed goes on the offensive.
“Have I mentioned I’m not the best shot and I’m running out of ammo?”
“Hand it over.”
I trade my stiletto heel for her handgun. From there, we work to double team the guard we’re up against. As he approaches the corner of the hall, Brenda readies herself to use the heel while I do the same with the gun, my finger on the trigger.
The moment he springs up on us, we strike. Brenda slams the stiletto into his face while I pull the trigger and shoot him in the abdomen. He’s barely hit the ground when we’re already jumping over him and rushing the rest of the way.
We carry on like this, tag-teaming any guards that come into our escape path, or attempt to stop us.
The elevator’s blocked off as an option. Many of the same people freed by Fabio and Lev have flooded the mode of building transportation. By the looks of it, they’ve reached max captivity as the elevator doors close and it lurches going down.
We pivot to the stairwell close by. Only a couple more levels and we’ll be on the ground floor.
I’m halfway through the door when I spot him—the Handler darting into another room, disappearing out of sight. His gaze meets mine even at a distance, a knowing twinkle in them.
