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“Ms. Swanson!” one reporter shouts, giving her whereabouts away and blasting her stunned face all over the news. “Tell us what you saw last week.”
“Ms. Swanson,” another booms. “Is it true you witnessed a mob-style execution?”
“Ms. Swanson!” a third, fourth, and fifth reporter yells for attention.
Rory takes a step back, retreating from the noise and demands and shouted questions of people she doesn’t know. But while she goes one way, my eyes cross the expanse of the lobby to a glint of sunlight on steel.
I narrow them and try to focus. To see what is near, but too far to pinpoint.
“Ms. Swanson!” they keep bellowing, pushing closer and trapping us inside the silver box of death. “Ms. Swanson!” “Ms. Swanson.”
“Banks!” I wrench my head to the right, to the emergency stair exit as Malone and Fletcher burst through with their guns drawn and panic in their expressions. They’re at the back of the pack, and we’re at the front. Rory’s hand clings to mine for safety, and reporters press closer for an exclusive they have no right to have.
The noise within the lobby is deafening.
Roaring.
But years of training and decades of living under the rule of Henry Banks has my gaze zeroing in on a shadow in the back corner of the building.
Our eyes meet for just a beat.
His dark, almost black. But then one closes, and the other perches behind a scope.
“Everyone down!” Archer bounds through the crowd and shoves bodies to the floor.
The boom of a gunshot makes the windows rattle and my heart tear in half. I spin a mere millisecond after the explosion of a Remington rifle, reaching for Rory’s flailing hand. But a bullet slams dead center on her chest and throws her against the wall of the elevator, her head rapping against steel with a sickening blow.
Frenzied, I dive over her. Wrap her in my arms as crimson bathes her hoodie and soaks through my shirt. I use every scrap of willpower I possess to not spew, to not grab my gun and go on a spree to take down every man who dare hurt her. When Malone and Fletcher burst into the elevator too, smacking the buttons to have the doors shut, I brush hair off Rory’s blood-smeared face and search for a pulse. For life. For a silver lining. “Rory?” I tear her hoodie up to reveal her torso, searching for her wound, my hands staining with blood. “Aurora!” I shake her when her eyes refuse to open. “Wake up.”
“Clear the lobby.” Archer shouts into his phone, pacing the small space of the elevator as the doors close and looking down at the girl splayed out below us. “I fucking told you to wait for us,” he snarls, flexing his hand around his gun and staring daggers at the side of my face. “I told you to wait!”
I wanted a minute with her.
I wanted to say goodbye.
I wanted to taste, for the first and last time.
“How is she?” Fletch kneels on her other side and places his fingers on her throat. “Alive.”
“Unconscious.” I set my knees on the elevator floor and drag her up, her head dangling and her hair sitting in a pool of crimson. “She hit her head really hard.”
The doors open on the ninth floor and reveal Doctors Mayet and Emeri once more. But this time, a third is present. A doctor for the living, not the dead.
“Aw man.” She crouches down and does what Fletch and I did, checking for Rory’s pulse before allowing her eyes to scan across the Kevlar vest we strapped to her chest before leaving the house. “The bullet was too powerful.”
“Knocked her on her ass,” I rumble, lifting her body from the bottom of the red-smeared elevator and stepping out to place her on a stretcher Doctor Emeri wheels closer. “A concussion wasn’t part of the plan.”
“But she’s dead.” Mayet drags the hair off Rory’s face and looks down with an almost serene smile. “Her assassination is gonna be on every news station, every hour, all across the country. Vallejo will see.” She helps Emeri un-velcro the vest and removes it to reveal a small sandwich-bag-esque parcel of pig’s blood.
It exploded when the bullet hit her chest, making a mess, and selling the scene we’re trying to pass off to the world. “He’ll stop hunting her now,” Mayet adds. “Give things a couple of days to make sure he’s bought it.” Then she looks down at Rory, whose eyes flutter toward consciousness. “Hey there.” She steps aside to make room for the third doctor and a penlight. “You went to sleep for a minute, Ms. Swanson. Way to make your ruse look more real.”
“Drake?” Rory’s voice crackles, her eyes squinting when Doctor Cleary, according to the name on her coat, flashes a light to check her pupils. “Drake?”
“I’m here.” I take her hand and wrap my fingers around her delicate wrist. Over her new bracelet and around to touch the pads to her pulse point. “You weren’t supposed to go flying like that.”
“Caught me by surprise,” she rasps, coughing and groaning when the movement hurts. “Judy Jinx got me. I didn’t think it was gonna hit that hard.”
“You’re free now.” Detective Malone stands on Cleary’s right and draws Rory’s eyes up. “Like Mayet said, we give it a couple of days to make sure Vallejo’s people catch the news. Then you get your life back. Freedom,” he smiles. Perhaps for the first time since this all began. “You won’t have to hang out with Detective Banks anymore.”
