Chapter 133
Nico
F:
Za
Something was off. He couldn’t name it, couldn’t point at it, but it sat heavy in his gut like a weight. Wrong.
From the SUV, he tracked Lola through the big front windows. Lights buzzed on overhead, harsh and too white against the dark street. She set her kit down at her station, glanced around the shop once, then disappeared deeper inside.
Nico’s hand flexed against his knee. Every second she was out of sight twisted tighter in his chest.
Dom groaned beside him, head tipped back against the seat. “She better not take more than ten minutes.”
Nico didn’t answer. His pulse was already thudding high in his throat. He shoved the door open and stepped out, heat from the pavement clinging up through his boots.
The hairs on his arms lifted. Wrong. He took a couple of steps toward the shop-
The world detonated.
A roar ripped the air, pressure slamming into him like a freight train. Heat and fire punched out through glass. Windows burst in a cascade of razors, metal screamed, brick split. The blast wave hurled him into the SUV hard enough to crack his skull against glass, then down onto cement.
White. His vision went white.
The ringing hit next–piercing, relentless, endless. It ate the world until there was nothing left but pain and the weight crushing his chest. He coughed, hacking against the dust clawing at his throat, lungs seizing.
He tried to push up. His arm trembled, elbow buckling. Head swimming. Every beat of his heart sent a fresh wave of nausea rolling through him.
The shop front was collapsing in on itself, flames curling black smoke into the night. His vision kept narrowing–edges pulsing dark–like he was looking through the wrong end of a scope.
And in the strobing flicker of firelight–shadows. Three, maybe four. Not fleeing. Moving in with purpose.
Nico blinked hard, trying to clear the blur, but everything doubled, trebled. His stomach pitched.
Through the haze he caught it—a glimmer, silver–white catching the light, moving in the wrong direction.
Lola?
His chest seized. No–fuck, no.
But his head swam so hard he couldn’t trust it. Could’ve been a trick of the smoke. Could’ve been anyone.
He forced sound out of his wrecked throat. “Lo-” But it came weak, shredded, lost in the ringing.
1/3
10:59 Wed, Oct 8 M…
Chapter 133
865
His body wouldn’t move. His legs wouldn’t hold,
Boots pounded somewhere close, heavy, urgent. Shouts tore through the haze. Dom’s voice, furious and panicked, cut like a blade through the ringing.
Nico clawed at the ground, fingertips scraping uselessly against glass and grit. His chest burned with every gasp, vision dimming further, narrowing until the world was nothing but shadows.
The last thing he registered before the dark pulled him under was that glimmer of silver vanishing into the night.
Gone.
Dom
Dom’s stomach bottomed out the second the world blew apart. His chest cinched tight, like the air had been sucked clean out of him. One blink it was quiet, the next fire and glass and screaming metal ripped through the night.
The SUV shuddered under the force, bulletproof glass spiderwebbing as if it had been punched by a giant. The impact slammed Nico into the side of the car before crumpling him to the ground.
“Fuck-” Dom’s hand shot out, bracing against the dash as smoke rolled thick across the street. The acrid tang of burning chemicals hit his nose even through the sealed cabin, stinging his eyes, coating his throat.
He shoved the door open, stumbling into the chaos. The heat slapped him, dry and suffocating, ash already falling like black snow.
How could she have survived that?
Behind him, headlights slashed through the haze. Tires screeched. The rest of their detail–the six men from San Diego–poured out, faces pale, weapons raised until they realized what had happened.
She has to be here. She has to be alive.
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