Chapter 9

Ember’s POV

The river swallowed us whole.

Spray slapped my face as the speedboat tore through the current. Every jolt rattled my bones, but I didn’t loosen my grip on the gunwale or the flash drive clenched in my fist. The ledger was pressed under my shirt, soaked but still intact.

Behind us the jetty shrank to a smear of wood in the darkness. No gunfire now—just the roar of the engine and the hiss of rain. My ears rang with the echo of that last shot, the one Aaron had fired at Kade.

I twisted around, straining for one more glimpse, but the bend in the river had swallowed them. Nothing but black water and trees.

Kade.

The name hurt more than the cold.

The repairman kept his eyes on the channel, hands sure on the wheel. His shoulders were hunched, as though expecting a bullet in his back at any second.

“Sit lower,” he shouted over the wind. “If they’re still shooting, you’re a beacon.”

I crouched in the footwell, arms wrapped around my knees. Rain plastered my hair to my skull. My body shook, but not from the cold alone.

“You think he’s” I couldn’t finish.

The repairman’s jaw tightened. “He bought you time. That’s what matters.”

I wanted to scream at him, at the storm, at Aaron, at myself. Instead I bit down on the sound and stared at the flash drive until the plastic blurre

The boat pitched through another curve. Lights flickered ahead low, dull glows on the horizon.

“That’s the refinery,” the repairman said. “Dock’s a mile beyond.”

I crawled up to sit beside him. “Who’s meeting us?”

“Forrester’s people. Supposedly.”

“Supposedly?”

He gave a bitter smile. “Trust is expensive. We’re paying with blood.”

Wind whipped his words away.

I stared at the dark outline of the refinery. Its towers rose like skeletal fingers against the night sky, flames guttering at their tips. A maze of pipes and catwalks loomed beyond the shore.

My gut twisted. “This looks like another trap.”

“Everything looks like a trap when Aaron’s hunting you,” the repairman said. “Sometimes it still isn’t.”

We throttled down as we approached a decaying dock jutting from the mud. A single lamp burned at the end, throwing a weak circle of light. A man stood there, hands in his coat pockets.

He didn’t wave. He didn’t move.

The repairman cut the engine and let the boat glide in. His hand drifted to the small of his back, where I glimpsed the butt of a pistol.

“Stay behind me,” he murmured.

The boat bumped the dock. The man stepped forward, lean and angular, a hood shadowing his face.

“You’re late,” he said in a voice smooth as oil.

“Storm,” the repairman replied. “And a tail.”

The hooded man’s gaze flicked to me. “Is this her?”

I stiffened. “Who are you?”

“Someone who wants Aaron Cole’s kingdom burned to the ground,” he said. “And you’re holding the match.”

The repairman tied off the boat. “Name?”

“Silas.”

The name meant nothing to me, but the way the repairman’s eyes narrowed said it meant something to him.

Silas extended a gloved hand. “Ledger?”

I didn’t move.

“She’s not handing over anything until she sees Forrester,” the repairman said.

Silas’s smile sharpened. “Forrester’s dead.”

The dock tilted under me. “What

“Car bomb,” Silas said, as if discussing the weather. “Two nights ago. That’s why you’re with me now. We’re the only ones left.”

The repairman swore softly. “You could have told me.”

“I just did.”

“Then why bring us here?” I demanded. “Why pretend Forrester’s people”

“Because you don’t have any more time,” Silas snapped. “Aaron knows you’re alive. He knows you’ve got the ledger. He’ll burn every port between here and Havana looking for you. You want out? I’m your door.”

Something in his tone the urgency under the arrogance made me hesitate.

“What door?”

“Offshore safe house. New name. New passport. Enough cash to vanish. But you give me the ledger first.”

“No,” I said.

Silas blinked. “No?”

“I’m not trading one cage for another,” I said. “You want this? You help me bring Aaron down. Not just run.”

Silas chuckled, low and dark. “You sound like Forrester. Look where it got him.”

The repairman’s gun was out before Silas’s laugh faded. “Back off.”

Silas didn’t flinch. “You think you can outshoot me, old man?”

My stomach churned. “Stop. Both of you.”

But before either could answer, a low thump rolled across the river. Another. Then a bloom of orange light back where we’d come, the warehouse going up in flames.

“They’re covering their tracks,” Silas said. “We need to move.”

“Not until we know about Kade,” I blurted.

Silas tilted his head. “Kade’s the one who called me, darling. He’s not dead.”

The world steadied a little. “Where is he?”

“Being hunted,” Silas said. “Like you will be if you stand here arguing.”

He reached inside his coat and pulled out a phone, showing me a grainy live feed Kade running through an alley, blood on his arm, two of Aaron’s men closing in.

My heart lurched. “Help him!”

“Give me the ledger and I will.”

The repairman hissed. “This is extortion.”

“This is survival,” Silas said.

I clutched the ledger under my shirt. Rain dripped from my chin. Kade’s image on the phone flickered, then froze. Signal lost.

I heard my own voice as if from far away. “Fine. But I’m coming with you.”

Silas’s smile returned. “Smart girl.”

We left the dock and followed a narrow path through reeds toward a waiting SUV. Silas moved with the quiet confidence of a man who never had to check his back because someone else did it for him.

The repairman walked close to me, gun hidden under his coat. “Are you sure about this?” he muttered.

“No,” I whispered. “But Kade”

“I know.”

The SUV’s interior smelled of new leather and gun oil. Silas slid behind the wheel; we took the back. The doors locked automatically with a heavy clunk.

As we drove, the refinery lights receded into the night.

Silas glanced at me in the mirror. “We’re heading to an airstrip. From there, out of the country.”

“And Kade?”

“He’ll be at the same strip if he lives long enough.”

“If he doesn’t?”

Silas shrugged. “Then we go without him.”

I gripped the flash drive until my nails dug grooves into the plastic. “If you’re lying”

“You’ll what?” Silas asked mildly. “Shoot me? Throw yourself out on the highway?”

I met his eyes in the mirror. “Yes.”

For a moment his smile faded.

We left the main road for a cracked two-lane blacktop lined with dead trees. Headlights ahead appeared, then vanished.

Silas’s phone buzzed. He answered without looking at me. “Talk.”

A voice crackled through the speaker, urgent. Silas’s mouth tightened. “Understood,” he said, then hung up.

“What?” the repairman asked.

“Roadblock ahead. Not the police. Aaron’s men.”

My pulse jumped. “Then turn around!”

“Too late,” Silas said. “They’re behind us too.”

He flicked a switch. The SUV’s headlights died. We sped through darkness, engine humming low.

I pressed my forehead to the window, trying to see. Shapes loomed a tangle of trucks across the road, silhouettes with rifles.

“Brace,” Silas said.

He yanked the wheel. The SUV shot off the road into a ditch, bounced, then clawed up the far bank onto a parallel service lane. Bullets sparked off the hood.

The repairman returned fire out his window, muzzle flashes strobing the dark.

“Where does this lane go?” I gasped.

“Old quarry,” Silas said. “We lose them there or we die.”

The SUV howled over gravel. My teeth rattled. Trees blurred past, then opened onto a barren expanse of rock and mud. Puddles reflected the storm. Rusted machinery jutted like fossils.

Silas killed the lights again and threaded between piles of stone. Behind us engines roared, closer.

“Out,” Silas ordered suddenly.

“What?”

“We split up. Harder to track three than one.”

“No!” I shouted. “We stay together”

But Silas was already out the door, grabbing a duffel from the back. “You want Kade alive? Follow the flare when you see it.”

He vanished into the quarry shadows.

The repairman tugged my arm. “Come.”

We scrambled from the SUV as bullets punched through the windows. My feet slid on wet gravel.

“This way!” the repairman hissed, dragging me behind a loader’s rusted bulk.

The engines of our pursuers echoed off the quarry walls. Lights swept over stone. Shouts in the dark.

I clutched the flash drive to my chest. “He’s leaving us.”

“Or buying us time,” the repairman said.

A flare burst overhea green, hissing, bright as a false sun.

“Move!” he barked.

We sprinted toward a narrow crevice between two cliffs. Rain slicked the rock, turning it into a chute. My lungs burned.

Shouts grew louder. Gunfire cracked. A bullet sparked off the cliff inches from my head.

The crevice opened onto a ledge overlooking the quarry floor. Below, trucks and men milled like ants. Silas stood on a rock outcrop, arms raised, as if surrendering.

“What is he doing?” I whispered.

The repairman’s eyes widened. “Buying time.”

A searchlight fixed on Silas. A voice boomed through a loudhailer—Aaron’s voice, unmistakable even distorted.

“Bring me the girl,” he commanded. “And I’ll let you live.”

Silas laughed, the sound echoing off stone. “Come get her yourself.”

He dropped something at his feet.

My breath caught.

“Bomb,” the repairman hissed. “He’s rigged the whole place.”

Below, men shouted, scattering. The searchlight swung wildly.

Silas looked up at the cliffs right at me. Even from that distance I saw his grin.

Then he pressed a button.

A thunderclap of light and heat tore the quarry apart.

The ledge bucked under me. I fell to my knees, hands over my head as shards of rock screamed past. The repairman yanked me up, dragging me away from the edge.

Flames blossomed below, consuming trucks and men alike. Smoke billowed, choking, acrid.

Somewhere in the inferno someone screamed Kade’s name.

I spun, heart hammering. “Kade?”

Through the smoke a figure stumbled toward the base of our cliff tall, staggering, one arm cradling his ribs.

“Kade!” I shouted.

He lifted his head. Our eyes met. Relief and horror tangled in his expression. He raised a hand not waving, warning.

Then a shadow detached from the smoke behind him broad, steady, gun in hand.

Aaron.

He leveled the weapon at Kade’s back.

I screamed and started down the cliff, slipping on loose stone. The repairman grabbed me but I tore free, half-sliding, half-falling toward the quarry floor.

Gunfire cracked. Echoes rolled like thunder.

When the smoke cleared just enough to see, two bodies lay on the ground one moving, one still.

I couldn’t tell which was which.

And above us, on the cliff we’d just left, another silhouette appeared, someone I hadn’t seen since the night my life burned down, smiling as if he’d been waiting all along.

“Hello, Ember,” he called through the smoke.

My blood turned to ice.