Page 9 of Saving the Last Heir
“Jackson,” he hissed, yanking my jacket.
Ignoring him, I pulled the trigger twice more, and a snapping sound accompanied the second. Looking down in horror, I saw the thin metal pick had broken off inside the padlock.
“Shit!”
“Dude, we gotta go. Now,” Christian said, hauling me to my feet.
That was when I noticed the scent. Wolves.Fuck. The perimeter guards had already circled the building and were making their way back to us.
“But the lock,” I said, looking back at the hanging lump of metal on the door. “They’ll find the broken pick if they try to unlock it.”
“Too late to worry about that,” he said.
We rounded the corner an instant before the guards reentered the alleyway.
“Son of a bitch,” I cursed. “Plan B.”
“There’s a plan B?” Christian said, looking at me as though I was speaking in tongues.
“There is now,” I said. “I told you. The Anitoli crime family doesn’t take no for an answer. We have to do this. I can’t go to them empty-handed. You know what’s at stake here.”
Christian glanced over his shoulder as we hurried down the street. “Fine. What’s this second plan you’ve got?”
I pointed to the sky. “I come in from above. I’m hoping there’s some sort of skylight or maintenance entrance on the roof. You go across the street and hide behind one of the vacant buildings. I’ll give you a signal when I need a distraction,” I said, pushing him toward the other buildings. “Hurry.”
“What the fuck is the signal?” Christian asked as he stumbled across the street.
“You’ll know it when you hear it.” I leapt into the air, shifting as I did.
That was a bullshit answer, but I had no clue what the signal would be. This was going sideways fast. I wasn’t a fucking bank robber or professional thief. I’d had precisely one plan going into this, and now that was out the window. Everything that came next would be pulled out of my ass.
Doing my best to keep my wings from making too much noise in the quiet night, I glided forward until I was well away from the building, then rose higher until I drifted above the rooftops. Below, I spotted Christian huddled behind what looked like a rusted truck. The wolves had again passed through the alley and were walking the same street I’d been on a few seconds before. Thankfully, they hadn’t stopped to check the lock. I still had a chance. There was still time.
Silent against the night sky, I swooped down to the roof of the warehouse, shifting at the last instant. I landed on my boots androlled to absorb the impact. After rising, I let out a sigh of relief at the sight of the door near the edge of the building.
Of course, it was locked. Not surprising, even though I was at least three stories up, but still annoying. With few other options, I decided to take the risk of making noise. I stood to the side of the door and kicked the spot right below the door handle as hard as I could.
The first kick did nothing, but the second had the desired effect. The metal within bent, pushing the handle to an awkward angle, and the third kick finally snapped the inside of the door handle and locking mechanism. Sighing in relief, I knelt and waited, straining to hear if anyone had sounded an alarm. Wolves had extraordinary hearing, and breaking the door hadn’t exactly been quiet. After a few seconds of silence, I pulled a knife from a sheath on my waistband and dug the tip into the ruined door mechanism, twisting the blade until the door clicked open.
Déjà vu washed over me as I stepped into the dark stairwell. It reminded me too much of walking into the hatchery after my call with Joseph Anitoli, the lights turned down so low I could barely see my mother.
“Mom? Are you here?”
“I’m here,” she said, her voice thick from tears and hoarse from crying.
Moving deeper into her room, I found her not on her bed, but curled in a ball inside the small stone ring where my sister’s egg had been. I’d never seen my mother that heartbroken. Even years before, when my father had succumbed to The Vanishing,she’d been distraught and had gone through mourning, but nothing like this.
She sat up, wiping her eyes, and pulled her blanket close. “Is something wrong?”
I’d come to tell her what Anitoli had said. To tell her I’d accepted a job that I might not come home from. Seeing her like this, though, broken and destroyed by the loss of her unborn child, I came to the quick realization that I couldn’t put more stress on her. Not now.
“Nothing’s wrong, Mom,” I said, putting a hand on her back. “I wanted to check on you.”
In the low orange light, I could barely make out the hint of a smile on her lips as she patted my hand.
“I’m fine, Jackson. I just… I don’t like leaving here. I can still smell her.” She lifted the satin sheet that had been used to cushion the egg and sniffed it. “It’s all I have left of her.”
My heart lurched. Something deep inside my mother had broken when the egg was stolen. It had broken within me too, but not with such intensity. She’d hung most of her hopes and dreams on my sister’s birth, and now we might never get to see that happen. Might never see her face or hold her in our arms.
