Page 63 of Rise of the King (Checkmate 5)

Jay’s a fairly tidy guy, but that might be from lack of “stuff” and not necessarily because he likes a clean home. There’s not much hanging around that isn’t where it’s supposed to be. He leaves his coat lying around my apartment all the time, but I suspect he does that to annoy me. He leaves his shoes by my door, and his bag of guns and passports in the back of my closet. He thinks he’s slick and got them past me without my knowledge, but nothing gets past me. I see everything. I remember everything. And the things I don’t see – like the abuse Ellie would have suffered before she died – I’m able to conjure with my imagination, and then I can’t forget those thoughts and consider them factual memories.

I can’t stop hearing her scream in my mind, though I know I never actually heard her scream. I can’t stop picturing her bruised skin… and worse.

I need to find CAB, and I need to replace my sister’s suffering with his. That’s the only way I can let this go. It’s the only way I can lay her to rest and promise that I avenged her murder. And maybe then, maybe after all that, I’ll be able to dance again without feeling like my heart might literally crumble in my chest.

Movement catches my eye again through Jay’s cameras, but this time, I catch it. “Shit!” I shove my laptop and Trenton’s phone in my backpack and tear the zipper up. My heart races in my chest as I push my still sore feet into my sneakers, skid across smooth floors, and stop by my closet to grab Jay’s bag just as the sounds of glass blowing out downstairs register both in the monitor and with my own ears.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” I grab Jay’s satchel and spring to my feet as a second explosion rocks the floor beneath me. This is an old building with single layer bricks and no insulation but for the stuff I had brought in specifically for my comfort.

One more Molotov cocktail, and my floor will collapse in and bury me among thousands of bricks.

Spinning, my towel flings from my hair and lands on the floor as the concrete literally cracks beneath my feet. A hairline crack, then another, then it spreads like a spiderweb until my floor sags and I throw myself toward my front door.

I’m running straight into the hall, straight toward my enemy, but I have no choice. There are no emergency stairs, no emergency exits except the staircase that crumbles beneath my feet as I run.

Black smoke fills the halls, and disintegrating concrete sizzles in the air as I hold my breath and sprint past Jay’s door. He’s not in there, and there’s nothing in there worth risking my life for. I slam my hands against level three’s door, just in case they’re deaf and missed the fucking explosion, then I slide down the next flight when I lose my footing and move faster than my feet can handle.

“Don’t come back here, Jay. Don’t come back; don’t come back.” They’re looking for him, not me. I’m still invisible, and if they wanted me, they would have come to apartment five.

I’m just a regular resident of a building that caught fire. I’m not suspicious; I’m just a waifish girl with her backpack and wet hair as I bound to my feet and turn at the last staircase. My breath catches and comes out on a squeal when three large men wearing leather coats, leather gloves, and black ski masks stand at the bottom and jump when I come around the bend.

I have a single moment to get away while they process the fact I’m not Jay, then one final second when they realize Jay was with a dancer last night, and just maybe I’m her.

Bullets ping off the metal fire hose reel barely two feet from my head as I round the corner. Another bullet pierces the plastic trash can positioned by the overflowing mailboxes, exploding it so flyers shoot into the air and blind me as I run. Heat pools in my shoes, blood from my cut feet, and more heat slices through my arm as I push out the front doors and slam straight into Jay’s broad chest.

“Sophia!”

“Run.” I grab his coat and try to drag him. “Jay, run!”

He turns back to the front door and meets the eyes of the men shooting at me. One beat. Two. Their guns come up. Then he breaks. “Fuck!” He runs, dragging me along so my feet barely touch the ground. My bags drag down my arms; they fly through the air but follow us, because I refuse to let them go.

Jay drags me around one corner, then a second. The sounds of stomping boots chasing us are loud, insistent, and scare the shit out of me as another round of bullets ping off the corners of the building we turn past.

“In here, Soph.” He slingshots me ahead and into a gym, past the weights area, and around the ellipticals. The gym-goers watch us for a beat like they’ve never seen something so strange, but then gunshots boom in the echoing room, and they drop to the floor for cover.

Jay and I sprint through a hall of lockers, then a second hall until we hit the emergency exit and telegraph our movements when the alarms wail. The men following us are still far enough back that I don’t see them, but I hear them; I hear their slamming boots and roared swear words when they push to catch up.

Jay slams the door closed at my back and races behind a massive dumpster half-full of cardboard boxes. He throws his shoulder behind it and inches it closer to the door.

Catching on, I race to his side and try to help him push. Grunting, panting, and maybe a little crying from me, we get the steel box in front of the emergency doors just as it opens. “Fuck!”

“Soph, let’s go.” Jay drags me at a jog and barely flinches when a gun squeezes through the two-inch gap between the emergency door and the dumpster. “Don’t look back, babe.” He pulls me forward, around another corner, and into a Chinese restaurant. Like he owns the place, he drags me through the seating area, through the kitchen past staff setting up for their day, and out the back door until we run headfirst into a crowd that Jay loses us in.

I blend. I learned a long time ago how to blend, so I pull my backpack on like it’s my schoolbag, and my hair back into a bun with the hair tie on my wrist. Glancing to my left, I choke at the sight of blood on my arm, but I say nothing as I clap a hand over the open wound and allow Jay to lead me through the crowd at a fast walk.

“They were in your apartment.” My teeth chatter from shock as Jay leads us further and further away from our apartment building until the crowds thin and his breathing begins to slow.

“How’d you get out?”

“I saw them through the monitors on my computer.” I can’t stop looking back over my shoulder, can’t stop feeling like guns are pointed right at our heads as we walk. “I was going to work on Trenton’s phone, so I went to my desk and grabbed my laptop out to work. My main screens came on, and I saw them in your apartment.”

“You’re okay, Soph?” We turn one last corner and stop on a residential street when he slams me against a brick fence and leans in so his body is flush with mine. His large hand wraps around my uninjured arm, his nose basically touching mine as his eyes scour my face. “Jesus, Sophia. I nearly died when I saw the place go up.”

“I’m okay.” My teeth continue to chatter. “Nobody actually touched me. I saw them, so I grabbed my laptop. Oh!” I tug his bag from my back and press it to his chest. “I grabbed this. Dunno if you actually wanted it, but I had time to grab it.”

He peeks inside the satchel and nods. “Thanks.” Fisting the bag in one hand, he brings the other up to my jaw while his eyes jump between mine. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m cold.”

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