Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
“I don’t care. Run!”
I should have headed straight for the door. But something in her voice had tripped me. She wasn’t going to run unless I made her.
I turned, darting down the aisle where I’d last seen her to find her halfway up a set of shelves, pulling on a box.
“We don’t have time,” I shouted at her.
My internal clock counted down. 23, 22, 21, 20…
“I’ve almost got it.” She’d climbed the metal shelves high enough that her feet were even with my ribs, and she was reaching into the box.
In that moment, I didn’t care about Emily Shaw, about Silas, about anything but the bomb on the other side of the building. It had been plugged into enough explosives to take out the entire building, us included.
I wanted answers. But I didn’t want to die for them. Not yet.
I was done talking. I reached up, grabbed Sylvie around the waist, threw her over my shoulder, and took off for the door. My feet pounded the concrete, her forehead bouncing off my back. I didn’t stop until we were out of the building, through the gate, and across the street.
I bolted for the SUV, dumping her at the front, shouting, “Get in, get in, get in!”
The second her door closed, I threw the SUV in reverse and sped backward out of the alley, putting as much distance between us and the building as possible. As we cleared the alley, I turned the wheel hard, throwing the back end into another narrow street and hitting the gas.
All I could think was that we had to move.
I had to get us far away from that warehouse.
My memory of the alleys came in handy as I traveled them in reverse, literally, my eyes skipping between looking over my shoulder and at the rearview camera screen as the internal clock in my head clicked down.
5, 4, 3, 2…
The SUV shook from the blast. Above us, a flash of red and orange bloomed in the sky, illuminating billowing smoke.
I slowed down, taking the time to pull off a three-point turn so I could throw the SUV in drive, and we headed for the main road back to the highway. We needed to be gone before the fire department showed up.
I risked a turn that took us back in sight of the storage building.
“Oh God,” Sylvie said, craning her neck to look behind us. “It’s gone.”
I slowed before we took the next turn and followed her gaze. The storage building was rubble, the walls mostly collapsed around a raging fire.
“Holy shit, Eli. I’m pretty sure that had to be the guy who blew up my van.”
I was pissed. At her, at the situation. At the asshole who’d blown up our only lead.
But she’d said exactly what I was thinking.
“Did he look like the person you saw under your van?” I asked, turning away from the fire onto the deserted four-lane road that would take us to the highway.
“Pretty much,” she said. “But that just means medium-sized, probably a guy, wearing dark clothes.”
“Did they move the same?” I asked.
She closed her eyes, drew in a breath. Slowly, she let it out before she looked at me. “Yeah, yeah, I think… Fuck, I think that was him. We were so close.” She sounded like she regretted not chasing him down when she had the chance.
So did I. And I was trained. “We almost got fucking blown up, Sylvie. That’s a little too close.”
She threw her hands up in clear irritation. “I’m done with almost getting blown up. Twice in two days is more than enough,” she said, a little too loudly. She lowered her hands and grasped them in her lap, the knuckles turning white. “But it was worth it.”
“How so?” I asked, keeping my tone as even as I could. Yelling at her now wouldn’t help, I was sure. “You like almost getting killed?”
“Nope. But we got this.” She held up her hand, and I saw what I hadn’t before—a bright pink phone case.
Son of a bitch.
“Is that—?”
“I couldn’t get the rest of the box,” she said. “But I think we have Emily Shaw’s phone.”
Chapter Nine
ELI
“Don’t,” I said, as out of the corner of my eye I caught Sylvie’s finger moving toward the power button on the phone. I plucked it from her hands and slid it into the pocket of my shirt.
She glared at me, her eyes just shadowed in the dark car, but her annoyance clear. “Hey, I’m the one who almost died to get that.”
I expected a flippant response to roll off my tongue, but instead I felt my jaw tighten, my gaze narrowing on the road ahead. She wasn’t exaggerating. She had almost died for that phone.
“Don’t remind me,” I finally managed to say. “You should have left it.”
“Maybe,” she agreed, “but if I had, we would have lost everything. Now at least we have the phone. People live their whole lives on their phones. It’s probably more valuable than the laptop or the tablet. If we’re trying to figure out what she was doing before she died and who she was talking to, this could be our best bet.”