Chapter 9 - Smoke on Forty-Two
“Air vents!” Adrian shouted.
Lucian dragged a cabinet beneath the grille and shoved folders into the opening. Mara soaked her sweatshirt in water from the cooler and pressed it over her nose.
“Stairs?” she asked.
“Magnetic locks,” Lucian said. “Controlled downstairs.”
“Then we break something.”
Adrian grinned without humor. “Now you're speaking my language.”
He smashed the glass on a wall cabinet and pulled out an emergency ax. Three blows mangled the door latch. The fourth cracked the frame. They kicked through into a hallway streaked with smoke.
The elevators stood open. Too easy.
“Stairs,” Adrian said.
They fought down fourteen flights, shoes slipping on wet concrete. A door slammed above them. Footsteps followed. Mara was certain she heard Cross laughing.
At floor twenty-eight, Lucian stopped. He bent over, sucking air. “Go. I'll slow them down.”
Adrian stared. “You don't get to die before we finish this conversation.”
“I didn't say I was dying.”
“Then keep moving.”
Lucian's phone lit up. A new message: ONE VOSS BROTHER FOR ONE GIRL. PIER 9. MIDNIGHT.
The sender included a video. Sophie sat in a bare room, drawing a rabbit on a sheet of paper. A man's hand entered the frame and lifted the paper away. On it she'd written HELP ME, MARA.
Mara couldn't hold back her tears. “She's trying to be brave.”
“We'll get her,” Adrian said, not as comfort but as a promise he intended to survive.
They reached the basement and pushed into a delivery bay. A van blocked the exit. Its driver was the woman in the gray coat from the station.
She lowered her window. “I'm June Mercer. Get in unless you want to discuss evidence with the men behind you.”
Lucian hesitated. “How do we know you're June?”
She held out a scarred hand. A small bluebird had been tattooed above her thumb. “Your mother trusted me,” she told Mara. “But your mother's killer is still breathing.”
“Your voice said Dad ordered it,” Adrian said.
June's eyes moved from one brother to the other.
May you like
“Your father gave the order,” she said. “Your mother signed it.”
THE LAST DANCE AT BLACKTHORN HALL •
