Page 106 of Silent Schemes

But I keep walking, Maya's hand in mine, both of us covered in blood that will never wash clean.

The warehouse door slams shut behind us, and I wonder if I've saved everyone or doomed them all.

Time will tell.

If any of us have time left.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Varrick

Concrete is the worst kind of pillow.

Especially when it’s slick with blood, sweat, and something colder than ice water.

I wake to the tang of copper and the ache of being alive.

The warehouse is Cross family architecture—heavy brick, slit windows, smell of mold and mildew cut with industrial bleach.

There’s a chain around my left wrist, and another on the right, both anchored to the ground by a thick bolt hammered through rebar.

My ankles are locked together, padlocked.

I try to flex my hands and feel the drag of metal and the way my right shoulder has stopped working, gone limp and hot from the bullet that bored a channel through my deltoid.

The bleeding’s mostly stopped, but the pain’s nuclear.

There’s another body on the ground two meters away.

Will.

His suit’s torn open, shirt black with his own blood.

He’s breathing, but the breaths are shallow and whistling.

His right eye is swollen shut.

I’d say he looks like shit, but he’s still alive, so he looks better than most.

I look up.

The room’s big, maybe a thousand square feet, boxed in with cement blocks and grates welded over the windows.

No way out except the rolling steel door at the far end.

There are four guards in here with us, two at the door, two posted near a battered wooden desk where the warehouse foreman probably used to punch his clock.

All Cross muscle: shaved heads, cheap tactical gear, but the guns are real enough.

AKs and a shotgun resting on a barrel.

It would take about half a second to turn the place into a blender of flesh and cement dust if someone got nervous.

My eyes squeeze shut, trying to piece things together.

The last thing I remember is Sienna’s face, inches from mine, gun in her hand, my name on her lips.

She was crying.