Page 95 of Hell to Pay

“It’s Rain!” Lilah screamed, trying to pull her hand away from mine.

“We can’t go back,” I said, dragging her from the ballroom.

She fought me, tried to pull her hand away from mine. “Stop! We’re not leaving her!”

I threw her over my shoulder and carried her — kicking and screaming, beating my back with her fists — into the hall.

61

NOLAN

“Find the kitchen!”Jude shouted. “There’s got to be another staircase there!”

An alarm had started blaring from somewhere in the house and I pushed to follow Rafe, aware that something was wrong, that I was fighting to stay on my feet.

I’d started feeling off even before we’d gotten to the platform with Lilah. I’d felt jittery, shaky, my head buzzing.

That was when I’d remembered that I hadn’t taken my insulin at the safe house.

I’d gotten used to turning off the alarm on my phone, pushing my dose back as I finished one task or another, making full use of the fairly small window I actually had to take my insulin without fucking up my blood sugar.

Except this time I hadn’t taken my insulin late. I hadn’t taken it at all.

My ears were ringing as I followed Jude and Rafe down the hall, pushing through the men in tuxedoes, the woman in dresses and lingerie, wishing we had time to get them all out with us.

But the gunfire in the ballroom and the blaring alarm made it clear that time was something we didn’t have, and if that wasn’t enough, I could feel myself crashing like I had in Yemen, could feel my body shutting down.

I ordered my feet to keep moving, the way I’d had to in SEAL training when I’d thought I would fall asleep on my feet, the way I had on more than one mission when we’d humped it through rain and mud and rough terrain on nothing but water from our canteens and MREs we’d shoveled into our mouths under the cover of brush.

“There!” Jude headed for a set of swinging double doors at the back of the house.

Rafe pushed through the doors, Lilah kicking and screaming over his shoulder.

I followed them into a massive kitchen with black and white tile and acres of countertop.

The kitchen staff looked up in shock as we barreled into the room and Jude shouted at them. “Stairs?”

A younger man lifted a finger, pointing to a doorway leading to a small room.

We hurried toward it and discovered a butler’s pantry and wet bar, and in the corner, a narrow set of stairs leading upward.

Rafe put Lilah down and shoved her toward the staircase, obviously wanting to make sure she didn’t have a chance to go back for Rain Adakai. Lilah stumbled a little in her heels, glaring at Rafe as she started up the stairs. My tuxedo jacket barely covered her ass but I was glad I’d had the foresight to give it to her in the ballroom because now it felt like my brain was trudging through sludge, the buzzing in my ears growing louder.

A crash sounded in the kitchen behind us, the low voices of the guards demanding to know if the kitchen staff had seen us.

I was halfway up the stairs behind Jude when I heard them burst into the butler’s pantry.

I couldn’t remember where we were going, why we were on the staircase, but I followed Lilah, Rafe, and Jude past two landings with closed doors.

Finally we reached the top of the stairs and Rafe pushed through another set of doors.

Cool air blasted my face and body as we emerged onto the roof.

Rafe hurried toward a pile of gear near the edge, bent to pick up the climbing harnesses Ghost had left there, and threw one each to Jude and me.

He started pulling his on while Jude did the same but I couldn’t seem to make my arms move.

“What the fuck is going on?” Lilah asked.

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