Page 74 of Oath

“Look at me.” My voice was sharper than I meant it to be, but I needed himhere.

A harsh exhale.

A second one.

Then his eyes locked on mine. Bloodshot. Too wide.

“Don’t you leave me now,” I said. “We didn’t come this far to die in a stairwell.” My heart sank at the very idea.

That ghost of a smile flickered again. “Dollface,” he said on a wisp of a pained chuckle. “Always so romantic.”

Tears burned in my eyes and I sucked in a deep breath to keep from crying. We so did not have time for me to cry right now. “Look, Boney Boy.” I tried to inject as much snark as I could into my voice. We were good at the sarcasm and the picking on each other. Really good. I leaned on that heavily right now. “I broke a nail for this escape already. Don’t push your luck.”

A ghost of a smile creased his mouth and his eyes actually seemed to soften. “You really have a problem with keeping your nails done. Maybe you should just cut them short and keep it them that way.”

The roughness of his voice robbed the flip comment of its impact, but I made a face at him anyway. “No one asked you,” I muttered, then shoved his arm over my shoulders again.

“Are you two going to make out or get the hell out of here?” O’Rourke reappeared in the stairwell door and I glared at him.

“Get out of our way,” I ordered and the other man just shook his head before he took the stairs two at a time. Bones and I were a hell of a lot slower, but he gripped the railing with his bloodied hand to help stabilize himself as he climbed.

We were leaving his blood everywhere.

I really hoped the guys were right about thisnotbeing a real government operation.

Because we were leaving DNA and fingerprints behind, and Bones wasnotlight on his feet despite his spectacular show of physical prowess downstairs. Still, we kept moving. I was hot, sweaty,andpanting by the time we made it to the ground level.

We were gonna make it out. We had to.

Or we were going to burn this place to the ground trying.

Once we made it to the ground floor of the museum’s grand storage area, the damage was—catastrophic. Smoke thickened in the air. Scorch marks blackened one of the walls. A door that had been there earlier was literally blown off its hinges.

The alarm changed, it shifted from the siren force to a ring that reminded me of old school bells. A hiss of sound had me looking up, but there was no water dumping on us. That was good, right?

My panting increased. “Guys…”

I hadn’t heard from AB, Legend, or Voodoo in a few minutes. I swung my head around to scan the area. O’Rourke was gone too. Shouting came from the hall, but I waited another ten seconds.

Bones rested more and more of his weight on me. His head listed forward as he wavered. It seemed to grow progressively more challenging for him to lean on me considering how hard it was getting just tobreathe.

My lungs burned like I’d been sprinting uphill for miles, and every inhale felt thinner than the last. It wasn’t smoke—there was no smell, no sting. Just this creeping weight in the air. Invisible. Insidious.

Something hissed again overhead.

I looked up and saw the nozzles—dozens of them—lined across the ceiling like a silent army. The suppression system. Not foam. Not water.

Gas.

My stomach dropped.

“Bones,” I choked out, tightening my grip on him. “We gotta move. Now.”

He didn’t answer. His head dipped again, then jerked like he was trying to shake it off. But his knees buckled, and his whole body seemed to list and fall. There was nothing close enough tolean against and I went down with him as carefully as I could to keep him from hitting his head.

Or anything else for that matter.

“No, no, no—damn it.” I dropped into a half-crouch, dragging his arm over my shoulder again. He was damn near a dead weight. My legs screamed in protest, but I didn’t care.