Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 105825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
I jumped up. “I know where they are! Everyone in the chopper!”
We grabbed our gear and ran up to the roof. On the helipad, the rain was crashing down in sheets and the wind was gusting and howling, blasting our faces with water and nearly knocking us off our feet. It took me right back to four years ago. Another storm. Another family.
I climbed into the chopper, grimly determined. I wasn’t going to lose them. Not again.
64
LORNA
I turned off the road and into the construction site, the wheels slipping in the mud. I skidded to a stop and looked up at the half-finished building. Radoslava had said to meet her on the roof but there were no elevators in the building, yet: it was just a skeleton with open, gaping sides. There was only a construction elevator: a basic box with mesh walls that climbed up the outside of the building on a track. I ran over to it, pulled the door closed and reached for the ascend button.
A hand slammed against the mesh wall. I jumped and spun around—
JD stared at me through the mesh wall. “You go up there, she’ll kill you.”
“I know,” I whispered. And reached for the button again.
“Wait!” he pleaded.
I hesitated, my hand still hovering over the button
Rain was coursing down his face. “I know you’re scared,” he said. “But you gotta trust me. Me and the team…this is what we do.”
What if he’s wrong? My palm traced the plastic circle of the button, my heart tearing in two.
JD pressed his face closer and his words were as solid as huge hunks of granite. “Lorna, I swear to you. I swear, I will get him back.”
My arm tensed, ready to press. I stood there panting, debating, my eyes filling with tears.
Then I dropped my hand from the button, hauled the door open and JD pulled me into his arms.
65
JD
We pulled back to the marina, out of sight, to plan. I looked up at the building, then looked around at the team. Radoslava and her men had had time to dig in and prepare. She’d told Lorna to come alone but she’d be prepared for us to show up, too. Whichever way you sliced it, we were walking into a trap and the people we were up against were Special Forces, too. There was a good chance not all of us would come home from this one. And this was my mess I’d involved them in.
”Look,” I began. “I have to do this. But the rest of you—”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Gabriel. “We get it. We don’t have to do this.”
“JD,” said Kian. “Can you just, for the love of Christ, accept that we’re all here for you and skip to the part where we shoot the bastards?”
I stopped and looked around at them in amazement. And I realized we’d become more than a team. And I’d become more than their leader. I should never have shut them out.
I had to look away and clear my throat before I could speak again. “Okay. Lorna, tell us about the building. How can we get to the top?”
She sketched on her phone screen. “The building elevators haven’t been fitted yet. There’s the construction elevator on the outside of the building and there are two stairwells. When we get to the roof, there’s a separate structure, a restaurant, in the middle that goes up one more floor.”
I thought. “They’ll be expecting Lorna to come up in the elevator. I’ll go up with her. Kian and Bradan, you go up the north-east stairwell and stop one floor from the top. Gabriel and Colton, you do the same on the south-west stairwell.”
Colton looked up at the building: sixty floors, with open sides and the wind whistling through it. “Why d’you have to build these things so fucking high?” he muttered. But he nodded: he’d suck it up and get it done, and I nodded in thanks.
“When we’re all in position,” I said, “I’ll give the go and you can rush them from two directions at once while I grab Cody. Cal, you find a place where you can watch over us.”
Cal looked around and saw a crane that towered over the whole area. He grabbed his rifle and loped off. Kian, Bradan, Gabriel and Colton headed for the stairwells. Gina had taken the chopper back to the penthouse after dropping us off, so that left me alone with Lorna.
I reached in my pocket and took out a radio earpiece, then gently brushed back her hair and carefully inserted it. I could feel her shaking. “It’s gonna be okay,” I told her.
She looked at the ground and swallowed, then looked me in the eye. “If it comes down to him or me, you save him. Okay?”
I stared at her, speechless. I hadn’t been ready for that. “It won’t come to that,” I said at last.