Page 53 of Rise of the King (Checkmate 5)

“My…” He stops and turns. “Huh?”

I pull the back of his shirt up and take the nine-millimeter Glock from the waistband of his jeans. I trust Jay that it has a full magazine. I trust that it’s a good gun. And I trust my skills. “Run straight through, don’t stop. I won’t let you go, but don’t stop and turn around to check on me.”

“You get hurt, and you’ll have to answer to me.” He pulls me around and slams his lips against mine until we both taste blood. “Don’t fuck this up.”

Kiss the girl before you run into danger.Now who’s being cliché?

“Boss?” The door rattles on the hinges when the guys outside turn from annoyance to straight up rage. They know something is wrong, and they’re ready to siege the room.

“Three.” Jay’s hand clutches mine and crushes my bones together. Adrenaline runs through his veins until he doesn’t know his strength anymore. “Two. Out the door. To the left. Use as many bullets as you need. I’m not a cop anymore; your life matters to me. Not theirs.”

“Okay. Okay. Okay.” My heart races as I work through my panic. I’m the data girl, the orchestrator, the organizer. I come out to the field sometimes, but rarely find myself in a situation where I’m found out. “Don’t get hurt, Jay. Don’t die.”

“Boss!” One shot pierces the door and zings to the floor a foot from my heels, then a second bullet is shot off until the door handle crumbles.

“One!”

The door flings open in the same breath that Jay’sonereaches my ears. My shoulder protests when he yanks me forward, only for my ankle to roll in my heels and make me realize I should have gotten rid of them back when he was saying three. I run straight out of them as bullets are fired off and the men at the door are toppled like bowling pins. Jay’s gun is loud, so the hornets in my brain turn to hornets in my eardrums, and the club patrons’ screams join in and turn my hearing echoey.

Men rush toward us, but Jay slingshots me ahead of him so his back shields me as we run. He protects me with his body, but his hand refuses to release mine as we sprint the twenty-foot hall and I crash against the emergency exit door. Trenton’s soldiers shoot off dozens of rounds, but it’s all lost in the chaos as the clubgoers sprint in every direction and spill out of the exits.

Fire burns my arm as I pull Jay into the night and straight toward the underground subway. The trains have been replaced with an above-ground system, which leaves us the perfect way to get home without being seen.

The snow doesn’t fall anymore, but the air is still freezing, burning the tip of my nose. My feet ache as I run, as small rocks dig into my soles and wet grass freezes my digits. But I don’t stop running and counting the steps between the club and the tunnels.

A thousand yards.

A thousand strides.

No longer facing behind him and shooting off rounds, Jay speeds up and overtakes me. But his hand refuses to release mine. His legs are longer than mine, his muscles bigger, but his lungs are injured, and his breath struggles to feed his broad body.

With aching feet and chattering teeth, I try to speed up, to catch up and minimize my stumbling, then as soon as we hit the entrance to the tunnel, I pull him to a stop and slam him against the concrete wall.

His breath wheezes through his lungs, his chest rising and falling with too much effort. “Breathe through it, Jay. Slow it down.”

“Can’t.” His wild eyes wheel around in panic. He looks the way Trenton did when the belt was cinched tight. Leaning forward and resting his hands on his knees, he struggles to drag in breath. “Can’t breathe.”

I poke my head out of the tunnel and glance toward the club. Although Trenton’s men are visible, none of them are coming this way. “Okay. We’re okay.” Coming back to Jay, I take his shoulders and push him back. “Stand tall, breathe, open your chest. You need to get it under control.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes you can! Come on.” I tug his shoulder and pull him further into the darkness of the tunnel. I can’t see more than three feet ahead of me, but I’ve walked these enough now to know where I’m going. I shiver beneath his coat, dragging him forward by his arm. “Walk it off, babe. Straighten your spine. Big breath in. Big breath out.” My arm screams with a fiery pain, but I don’t focus on it. I’ve hurt before, and I got through it when I had time to get through it. Right now is not that time. “What do we know? What did we get from Trenton?”

“Trenton?” He blows out his breath, then sucks it in again and makes me worry about the rattling I hear from inside his chest. “Um… Trenton. CAB. Military. Could be thirty, could be fifty.”

“Oh! His phone.” I dig my hands into his coat pockets, finding gummy worms in the right and the cell in the left. Pulling out the phone, I hit the home button once, twice, three times, but the screen doesn’t power up. “Shit, it might’ve gotten broken while we crashed through the door. It’s okay.” I’m essentially talking to myself, thinking, planning. “Let’s get back home. I need my laptop, then I’ll be able to get this phone open.”

“You’re Ace?” His breath continues to whistle. “You’re Ace?” He comes to a dead stop and spins me around as a cry tears up my throat. I think my arm is worse than I thought, and my feet are either wet from puddles on the concrete… or bleeding. “You’re Ace!”

“Yes, now shush. Keep walking, before Trenton’s men come looking in here. We’ll talk about this when we get home.”

“No, we fucking won’t. We’ll talk about it now. You lied to me, Sophia!”

“You lied to me, John D. Hamilton! You don’t sell fridges.”

“I was protecting the pretty ballerina,” he snaps. “I was doing the right thing by keeping you away from a world you have no business being a part of. You were straight up fucking lying to me!”

“I was protecting you. You didn’t need to know who I was.”

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