The carpeting must have knotted around the barbs because the mat stayed in place as I climbed higher. I readjusted my balance and swung a leg up and over the mat, careful to keep my skin away from the threatening barbs. Thank you, Tre, for the cardio and strength training. I owe you the biggest banana pudding ever.

Barbs pressed into the rug, threatening to puncture my delicate flesh. Someone yelled again, and I froze. Then I drew in a deep breath and forced myself to move. Either the guards had seen me and I was doomed, or they hadn’t and luck was momentarily on my side. Either way, I had to get moving. I twisted and lowered myself until I hung, arms fully extended, hands bearing the brunt of my full weight. I drew in one deep breath and another, and I let go.

My feet hit the ground, and I stumbled, recovered, and took off running deeper into the compound and away from Val’s explosion. The doors of the first warehouse I came to were locked. The next ones weren’t, so I ducked inside and paused, listening for footsteps, moaning, conversation, or dismayed shouts, but only silence greeted my entry.

The floor plan laid out the interior rooms in a four-square style: four doors leading off one main hallway—two to the right, two to the left. I opened my mouth to call for Thorin but paused midbreath. What if a guard had stayed behind to watch the prisoners? If they’re even in this building in the first place. You could just be playing a giant shell game. What if they’d been taken away in a sleight-of-hand move, and all the buildings were empty?

Eenie, meenie, miney, mo. After utilizing my sophisticated analytical technique, I chose the first door on the right. If my life had been a movie, that was the point where the cellos would have started playing one ominous note, over and over, low and slow at first but mounting in pitch and tempo as the probability of danger increased.

Fear diluted my bravery, and the urge to run away, with or without the others, surged through me. Someone coughed in another room. Another guard? My bladder spasmed.

The same had happened to me as a kid whenever Mani and I played hide-and-seek. He won so many times on my forfeit because I thought for sure I would pee my pants before he found me.

I closed my eyes, said a quick prayer, and turned the handle. The door flew open, and I rushed forward, prepared to fight, but I stopped short when my gaze fell on the room’s sole occupant. My mouth dropped open and I stuttered, “Wha… What the hell are you doing here?”

Chapter Nine

Skyla Ramirez sat in an old and very heavy-looking metal chair—a medieval office chair?—that appeared to be bolted to the floor. One handcuff circled her wrist, and another spanned her ankle. Both were linked by a long chain latched around the chair’s leg.

She grinned at me as if Publisher’s Clearing House had just showed up at her door offering a million-dollar prize. “I’ve been waiting for your dumb ass to get here and rescue me. Took you long enough.”

I stood and stared at her, mouth agape, unblinking, breath stalled in my lungs. A wave of elation and disbelief broke over me and tugged like a rip current, drawing me into a swirl of disorderly emotions. She had consumed so many of my thoughts and worries for the past month, and there she sat, like a golden goose egg I’d thought I would never find.

Skyla snorted and rolled her eyes, and the gesture woke me from my daze. I rushed over, threw my arms around her, and squeezed until her ribs creaked.

“Oh, thank God,” I said, struggling against my tears and the lump welling in my throat.

Hysterics would have to wait for better timing, though. I pulled away so I could look Skyla in the face and reassure myself she was real. I brushed my fingertips over her cheek, and she closed her eyes and smiled. “I’ve been looking for you forever.”

Skyla’s voice hitched a little when she said, “And you’ve found me. Good job, Mundy.”

“But what about Nina? We actually came here looking for her.”

Skyla shrugged. “Helen’s been telling everybody I’m Nina. I haven’t seen that chick anywhere. I’m starting to think Baldur made her up.”

“Do you know where Thorin and Baldur are?”

“Haven’t seen ’em.”

“So, what are you doing here?”

Skyla smiled sheepishly. “Playing bait.”

“For Baldur,” I said as I realized the truth of Helen’s plot—tell everyone Skyla was Nina and let the gossip mill spread the word.

“And for you,” said Skyla.

“For me? I’ve been careful to stay off her radar.” But Rolf Lockhart had put me right back on it, and even an idiot could guess to whom I had run for help after I left San Diego.

“You underestimate her radar. She set this whole thing up for you. Well, for you and Baldur.”

“Helen told you all of this?”

I looked Skyla over again. Her dark, curly hair had grown a few inches, but otherwise, she looked the same. She appeared rested, healthy, well-fed.

“Life with the queen of the damned has been treating you pretty good.”

Skyla’s smile fell. “You think I’ve turned to the dark side or something?”

“There are a lot of questions about what went down at the lake.” I had never doubted Skyla, not once, until that moment. My distrust felt dirty, and I hated humoring it long enough to question her. But there she was in Helen’s possession and looking none the worse for it.

“Inyoni all but confessed,” Skyla said.

“Doesn’t mean she was working alone.”

“Ask me.” Skyla held up her wrist and rattled her chains. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know. But we have to get out of here. Fast. I hope you brought something to cut me out of this.”

I held up my hands to show they were empty.

Skyla glanced at the door. “Look, whatever stunt you pulled out there, it’s worked for now. But they’ll be back soon.”

“What can we do?” I crouched and studied her bindings. “I don’t keep bolt cutters in my pocket.”

“Can you melt it or something?” Skyla rattled her cuffs again. “It’s not very thick.”

I wrapped a length of her chain around my fist and focused on my internal wellspring, to send fire streaking down my arms and into my palms. “I missed shop class in high school. I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

“You can turn into a freaking star, Mundy. I think you can handle a chain.”

“I don’t think you want to be in here with me if I go nuclear again.” I grimaced. “I bet Thorin could break it with his pinkie finger.”

“Thorin isn’t here, so do your best.”

I gritted my teeth. “What do you think I’ve been doing?” I closed my eyes and poured fire and willpower into my hands. Something must have worked because Skyla hissed.

“That’s it,” she said. “It’s glowing. Brace yourself. I’m going to pull.”

I spread my feet. Skyla tugged, but nothing happened… at first. Then Skyla cursed, and I stumbled back. She held up a much shorter length of chain. The last link had broken open, its ends now twisted and deformed.

“I can’t believe that worked,” I said and tucked away my fire. “Now, let’s get—”

The door blew open behind me with such force that it banged against the wall like a gunshot. I spun around to face our intruders and reached for my fire, but Helen’s guards had come prepared. One aimed a big red fire extinguisher at me. A second guard leveled his gun at Skyla. “Don’t move,” he barked.

“You think that thing’s going to work on me?” I pointed at the fire extinguisher and raised my flames until they rolled over my hands and arms in a spectacular display of heat and light.

“Don’t know.” The guard blinked at me, wide eyed and wary. “But we’re about to find out.”

A third man stepped into the room and pointed another weapon at me, one I couldn’t identify, and he pulled the trigger as his partner doused me in fire-extinguisher foam. Only after the barbs lodged into the skin of my chest and electricity coursed through my body did I realize he had shot me with a Taser.