Paisley stops me just inside the door and my eyes flick to the side.
The string’s hanging right there.
I could pull it right now, but I’ll get shot, so I can only stand there and watch helplessly as her men muscle past and move to the shelves, whispering to themselves as they count the loot.
“Yo, why are you counting it?” Gavin frowns.
“Because,” Paisley says mockingly. “You’ve already made it clear you’ve got very big, very hungry pockets. You better not have lied to me about how many bars there are, Coakley.”
“I told you,” Gavin snarls. “Seventy-two. Seventy-one, now that you’ve got one. I counted them way back at their old hiding place in the woodpile.”
“He’s lying,” I interject quickly.
Paye’s doll-like face snaps toward me.
He’s actually not lying, but this is my chance.
“There were eighty bars, Paisley,” I say. “I left him alone in here and he must’ve swiped a few. I don’t know where he hid the others.”
Gavin whirls on me. “What the fuck? You bi—”
“Enough!” Paisley snarls—and suddenly the gun swings away from me and dead onto Gavin. She jerks her chin at her men. “Search. He probably stashed them behind those coffee sacks.” Then she turns her narrowed eyes on him with a cruel smile, all teeth, so coy and yet so terrible. “Unlucky for you that little Miss Fe-li-ci-tee here has a well-honed sense of self-preservation. Do you know what I do to people who steal from me, Coakley?”
I hold in a searing breath.
Finally, something’s going right. I think.
Paisley’s men are right under the shelves, rummaging around in sacks for gold that isn’t there.
Paye’s distracted with Gavin, and Gavin’s distracted with Paisley.
They don’t even look at me as I slowly edge a little farther inside, pressing my back against the wall, moving toward the dangling cord, and just making it look like I’m trying to get out of the way to save my own skin.
Gavin stares at Paisley, fingers tightening on his gun, his rough face red. “I didn’t steal nothing. Are you mental? You owe me, anyway. What the fuck about my cut? You never would’ve found this shit if I hadn’t—”
“Actually, I would,” Paisley says tiredly. “Since Felicity was kind enough to have her guilty little conscience fess up. So, you didn’t do anything but lend us splatter protection in case she had a nice stick of dynamite waiting for us.”
“Meaning...what? You’re telling me to my face you’re screwing me over?” His face sours and I know his trigger finger must be itching.
“Meaning I have no use for you anymore,” she says coldly.
Gavin doesn’t get a chance to swing his gun up.
Doesn’t even get a chance to say the last word.
Not before Paisley’s finger tightens on the trigger, and there’s the deafening bark of a bullet firing in such a small space the sound explodes off the walls.
I flinch, a scream caught in my throat as Gavin’s head turns into an explosion of red in front of me, like a flower bursting into bloom—blood spattering everywhere.
My hands fly up to shield me, but I can still feel it hitting me.
Wet and hot and salty and terrible.
Awful enough to nearly make me retch, my heart slamming fit to break, panicky raw fire in my throat.
I’m frozen, hunched against the wall as Gavin’s lifeless body tumbles to the floor, and suddenly I realize how absolutely screwed I am.
I’m not going to survive until Langley gets here.
I’m not surviving this at all.
There’s just my own death whirling in Paisley’s eyes as she advances on me, her smile like the empty grin a pretty porcelain doll wears.
“Now,” she whispers. “We’ve got one last bit of very important business besides the gold, sweet Fe-li-ci-tee. About my daddy’s knife.”
26
The Golden Ticket (Alaska)
Okay.
Turns out I was a little overconfident about getting the Employees Only exit open from the outside.
The damned lock refused to break or jimmy no matter how much power I threw at it.
One thing you’ve got to give Felicity Randall; she’s had so many break-ins that she made sure no one could get in through the side entrance without having a key or shooting the entire strike plate off the door.
Can’t risk that when it could reveal my presence and accelerate whatever’s going on inside. The only kind of distraction I want to be is a useful one.
Not the fatal error that causes Paisley to shoot Felicity in cold blood and run.
Not a gamble I’m willing to take.
After a frantic minute searching around, I found my next best option—the roof.
I hear muffled voices inside as I scale the small service ladder leading to the top of the building—nothing but an array of HVAC housings, a narrow service shed, a few vents for the boiler system, and fuck yes, there it is.
A window.
A skylight, technically, looking in on the back room.
That’s my way inside and my one chance to save her.
I creep across the concrete slab of the roof, without letting my gear jingle in the slightest, placing every tread so my weight won’t vibrate to jostle anything below.
It’d be just my luck, giving myself away with a heavy step that sends a spoon clattering to the floor in The Nest, ruining everything.
Even if I’m starting to think this plan wasn’t very well thought out.
I’ve got no clue how in hell I’ll mash my giant ass through that tiny skylight.
Guess we’ll find out how well I can hold my breath.
I don’t even make it to the edge of the window before I hear a gunshot.
My heart stops like I’m the one who was struck, straight through the chest.
Felicity.
Dammit—don’t let me be too late.
Please don’t let her die just feet away from me, bleeding out below because I wasn’t fast enough, because I didn’t protect her.
No.
Forget quiet and worries and tactical thoughts.
There’s exactly one way in: hurling myself at the window like a human cannonball, and hoping the force will punch a big enough hole for access.
No time to think.
Just reflex, master of fate—decide, act, move.
And I’m moving.
Skidding to my knees.
Hand gripping the edge of the skylight’s frame.
My other hand swings to the hilt of one pistol as my entire body lashes on my outstretched arm like a pendulum, arc up, boots down, and—
Through!
Glass shatters into pulverized glitter under my boots.
Metal bends with a howling shriek and tears out of its housings.
Then I’m plummeting straight down, falling like a rock, pistol snapping out of its holster and thumb catching the safety.
I land in the room in a shower of biting glass, fuzzy colors whipping past and startled shouts rising everywhere.
Even under me, apparently.
My feet hit something soft and yielding. It crumples under my boots. My aching legs absorb the shock before I roll free and come up on one knee.
There’s barely a full second to do recon.
My eyes flick to everything that moves.