Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
“Apex,” he said hoarsely.
“I’m going to pick you up.”
Shaking his head, Kane tried to speak further. Movement would be very bad in this instance. Very bad indeed—
“This is our one shot. We have to take it now.”
The arms that shoved their way under his body were like rods inserted through his flesh, and he moaned. Then panicked.
“Wait, stop,” he choked out.
On his command, Apex froze, and Kane had a thought that no one else could do that to the other prisoner. Apex was a force of nature, an immoral scourge within the camp’s confines, whether here at the new location, or in the previous subterranean one. And yet he came to heel for Kane, for reasons that had never been clear.
“We cannot leave.” Kane coughed weakly, which made him feel sicker. “What… of Lucan. The Jackal—”
“They’re gone.”
Kane struggled to keep focus. “Where did they go—”
“We can’t do this right now. The head of the guards is in the workroom and the shift change is happening. We need to get you out of her private quarters while we can—”
“What about the Executioner—”
“I already told you. He’s been taken care of.”
“What about Lucan, what about the Jackal—”
“I just answered that. We’re going now—”
“What about Nadya?”
He didn’t get a reply. And as he was forcibly picked up and carried off, he lost his ability to speak. Sure as if someone had set a charge under his skin and blown him up, his body seemed to lose all structural integrity, becoming nothing but nerve impulses that overwhelmed his brain, even with the drugs. It was all he could do to stay alive—and then he did throw up, bile stinging its way up his throat and souring his mouth. As he began to choke, he was roughly turned in Apex’s arms so his mouth cleared.
Another round of beeping.
Stairs, but in his delirium he couldn’t tell whether they were ascending or descending. The next thing he was aware of was fresh air. Cold, fresh air. As his lungs inflated, his stomach settled a little, and he became preoccupied with the layers of scent. Pine. Wet dirt. A faint vehicle exhaust—
Gunshots. From behind them.
“Fuck,” Apex muttered.
Now, gunshots close by. And a shout as if someone was hit. Followed by another holler.
“Over here!” Mayhem called out.
Fast movement now, and bullets whizzing by, the high-pitched missiles streaking past them.
A stop-short, something opening, and then Apex said, “No, I’m getting in the back seat with him—go! Go!”
With no preamble, he was thrown free of Apex’s arms and landed in a tight space that brutally compressed his arms and his torso. The smell of leather flooded his nose, which was pushed into something with a little give to it.
Apex’s voice, loud: “Go! Fucking drive!”
A slamming thump was followed by many gunshots now with pings of what he assumed were bullets hitting the panels of the car. Roaring, an engine. Screeching, tires on pavement. Rough rocking, his face smacking into something else, and then his body banging back.
The next thing he knew, the car seemed to be gathering speed—
A burst of sound, shrapnel falling upon him, a sharp rain. Wind now, blaring wind, a rush in his ears and across his raw skin.
“Are you hit!” came Mayhem’s voice over the din.
Apex: “Just keep driving, I don’t give a fuck!”
“They’re coming up on us!”
There was more shooting, and then Kane smelled fresh blood along with gunpowder. And after that, an explosion—
“We’re going off-road!”
He wasn’t sure who said that because a sudden lurch was followed by a brief period of total smoothness, as if they were airborne, and too bad they couldn’t keep flying. There was a bumping return to ground and turbulance that rolled him around—
“Tree!”
The pounding impact as they crashed was so loud, his ears stung, so violent, that pain consumed him even through the haze of the drug, everything taking him back to the moment when he had made the decision to give someone else’s true love a chance.
And purposely detonated his own restraint collar.
Finally, he thought as his energy ebbed. He could be reunited with Cordelhia in the Fade.
When he felt no relief at the prospect, no happiness, either, he told himself it was because of his suffering.
It had nothing to do with the nurse that had been left behind, the one who had cared for him with such tenderness and concern, the one who, when Apex had not been by his side, had sat with him as if where his destiny went so did hers…
The one whose eyes he had never looked into, and face he had never seen, whose halting movements told a story she had never put into words—and didn’t need to for him to understand.
No, his numbness had nothing to do with Nadya.
At all.
* * *
One grenade.
It turned out Apex found one grenade in the SUV they stole.