Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

She had my cuffs off in under a minute, and the ones on my ankles a minute after that.

“How did you learn all this stuff?” I asked her, mystified.

“You free up a lot of time when you can’t watch TV,” she said, tossing the piercing aside.

I snorted. “Leave the rest of this up to me.”

I first went over and tried the door handle like a normal person might, but when that didn’t work, I backed up away from it to the opposing wall, and then ran myself at it, full force, with my shoulder.

It splintered like it was balsa wood—and then I bowed to Satin. “My lady,” I said, gesturing toward the door—but she didn’t move.

Because she couldn’t see or sense me.

But I loved her nonetheless.

I peeked out into the service hallway, where it appeared that chaos reigned—and I scented smoke and gunpowder right away.

“Can I carry you?” I remembered to ask, at the same time as I strode for her.

“Please,” she said, putting out both her hands.

I swept her into my arms and ducked outside, using my memory of the blueprints she’d shown me to try to navigate a way out via the service corridors. There was someone howling in pain up ahead—and I passed a body with their arm blown off.

“Put your shirt over your nose,” I told her. What the fuck had happened here?

She strained up in my arms, without doing as she was told, listening and sniffing the air. “Salvio’s an idiot.”

I didn’t disagree. “What’d he do?”

“He took my eyes into his base here. Wherever it was that he was storing all that artillery,” she said, as we heard another massive bang, followed by screams. “My eye’s bomb probably set off his grenades, and then those fires probably started other problems?—”

“Shit. Well. Fifty-caliber ammo will do that.”

Satin sank back in my arms, tense and angry, as I jogged along. “He underestimated me,” she complained.

“That’s a good thing, right?”

“Maybe,” she muttered, curling in toward my chest at last.

I exited the hallway behind another bar in the casino, right as a subsequent explosion rattled the pendulous chandeliers hanging from above.

Normal casino guests were in full screaming flight, while Satin tapped a code into her cuff.

“My driver’s coming—let’s get lost in the rush.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I started galloping toward the exits, taking bounding leaps from one leg to the next, dodging other escaping patrons, and doing my best not to jostle the most important cargo I’d ever carried.

The doors spiraled open ahead of us, and we ran outside, as her driver pulled up. I practically threw her in the car, then slid in after her. “Get us to the jet,” I ordered him—then watched him completely ignore me in the rearview mirror.

“Please take us to the jet now,” Satin repeated—and her, he listened to.