Page 192 of Between Passion and Revenge: Part Two

After a silent breath, I say, “What’s up?”

She smiles, but it falls just as quickly as it appears.

“I’m not like him, you know. Yes, I’m…I’m sick, but I’m not like him.” Her bottom lip trembles, and I don’t know if she repeats the words to convince me…or herself.

I don’t know how to respond. Opening my mouth to say something, anything, she cuts me off by giving me a flicker of a smile again.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and then she’s out of the kitchen.

My phone buzzes again, and I pick up speed to head to the office. Axel wouldn’t send a message without at least cracking a joke somewhere in there, so I know some shit’s going down.

Sliding into the room, I pause when Axel and Riale look at me with twin worried expressions.

“Who died?” I ask.

“It’s more like who didn’t,” Axel says, and my eyebrows slam down.

“Explain,” I grind out. Riale straightens, walking over to put his hand on my shoulder.

“We’re not sure that Lakeland’s dead,” he says.

It takes a second for the words to make sense.

“What?” I ask, my voice flat, deflated. Then, like being hit with a Taser, every nerve ending comes alive, registering the danger. “What do you mean you’re unsure?”

Lakeland’s not dead?

I knew it was too easy.

“We found there was a secret tunn?—”

“Fuck!” I shout, throwing the full water bottle at the wall so hard it explodes, raining its contents over us.

“My CPU!” Axel shouts, and Riale whirls on him.

“Fuck your CPU!” he yells.

I just stand there, glaring at the wet floor as if it could make the mess in front of me disappear.

“Everybody shut up,” I say, putting a hand to my chest and breathing slowly. Panic. I’m fuckingpanicked,and that’s exactly what I neednotto be.

Axel and Riale freeze their bickering.

“Axel, tell me what you know,” I say. “Forcertain.”

Axel gives Riale a hard look and stands in a smooth movement. He walks to the utility cabinet in the corner and grabs a fresh package of Bounty rolls. With methodical movements, he opens the plastic and begins blotting up the water around his computer components.

“What we know for certain,” he says, folding the towels into large squares, “is that there was a tunnel we didn’t know about until after the explosion site was fully cleared. We also know from Misha’s team that there was a heat shield over the tunnel, preventing fire damage and also preventing anyone from getting a heat signature—not that we would have been able to since there was, y’know, a fire and all.”

He rips another few sheets from the roll.

“Goddamn it, Storm. The least you could do is help,” he growls, and I wave his words away.

“Keep talking,” I say, but he gives me a hard, surly look, and with an eye roll, I head toward him, taking the towels from his hands.

“Thank you very much,” he says, but it’s delivered as if he said,Fuck you very much.“None of the remains at the site were Lakeland’s, so we think he made it out. Whether he was injured or not, whether he got out or had help or vanished into thin air, we don’t know. But we do know there’s no body.”

Axel and I finish cleaning up the water at the same time, and I stand, the world spinning.