Page 28 of Sink or Swim

Sensing my apprehension, Maurice slaps his meaty mitt across my shoulder. “You got this. Because if you don’t, we’re going to look like bloodied Swiss cheese. So, I suggest you got this.”

I look over my shoulder just in time to see Maurice lifting me up onto the pipe, giving me a head start. Then I clear my mind of any doubts and just … climb. Slowly, despite the danger, because a metal pipe is a lot different from a rope, but I hear Maurice grunting behind me, and before I know it, we’re at the top of the warehouse. My muscles are screaming. When I lean over my feet, panting, I wince as a lightning bolt of pain lances through one of my oblique muscles.

“Fuuuuck me. I just pulled something,” I mutter.

Maurice hobbles next to me and shakes out his hands, which are redder than steamed lobsters at this point. “Better a strained muscle than dead,” he murmurs.

Yeah. True. But now that we’re up here, what are we going to do? We can’t exactly just drop back down and hope it all works out. We need a plan. Although we kind of ended up this far in the game without a plan so far. I’m not sure what Maurice’s deal is, jumping headlong into danger without so much as an idea of how to handle things. But he’s survived this long at the helm, so … maybe he’s got something Luther didn’t.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. He’s dead, and Maurice is not. I have to trust him. I don’t have a choice right now. Not if I want to get my girl back.

“There,” Maurice says as he crouches down as low as he can go, which isn’t saying much. The man is a behemoth.

We hear disgruntled voices down below, including Jonah’s. Maurice points at the rooftop’s ceiling windows, which look like they open outward. Good. It’s better than nothing, although getting down is going to be another feat entirely.

Another explosion goes off in the distance, shaking the ground once more. Maurice and I jerk our heads up to watch as more birds scatter to the wind. Damn. Just how many charges are they going to set off? All of them, at this rate.

“They really like it when shit hits the fan,” Maurice grumbles. “I’ll need to have a talk with them about that later.”

Sure. If there is a later. But I don’t say that out loud. No need to say it; we’re probably both thinking it. Maurice, with his enormous bear paws and tree-trunk arms, practically rips the window right out of its frame. It squeaks open with a groan, and we both stare at one another in abject horror. Okay, that was loud. Really fucking loud. But thankfully, another charge goes off in the distance, and Jonah curses down below.

“What the hell is going on out there?!” he screams, and I can practically hear the blood vessels in his neck getting ready to burst. Hopefully they will. Save us a bit of trouble. One of the guys with the machine guns gets into a golf cart—seriously?—and zooms away. One down, two to go. That leaves Jonah almost entirely unguarded.

Maurice lifts a finger to his lips as he jumps down through the window. My eyes widen as I race to the edge, expecting to see a stain on the concrete from where he fell. Instead, he stands on top of a … tube? Some sort of dark, cylindrical machine that hums with electricity. I follow after him, landing gently next to him.

We’re inside.

Thanks to all the morning light pouring in from the windows, it’s easy to see where we are. The room is full of these tube-machines that pump water. They’re not hooked up to anything in the warehouse, so this must be a relatively new operation—and when I scan the rows of glass tubes, I realize there are things inside of them. Not things but animals. Gators. Rows and rows of gators.

The hell is Jonah capturing gators for? I thought he was making Stim.

Maurice jumps down onto the ground from ten feet up, that crazy bastard, and lands with a thud. When he turns around, his jaw falls open.

“Hey. Um … Nick? You better get down here, buddy,” he says. The edge in his voice makes me shimmy down the giant, warm tube in a hurry.

A webbed hand strikes the glass next to my head, and I fall back onto the concrete.

OONA

Nick. My Nick is here.

We stare at one another for a long moment, like neither of us believe what we’re seeing. When I left him at the docks, I didn’t think I’d ever see my mate again. Resigned myself to a life without him. Misery would be my constant companion.

When his lips part and his eyes start to gleam with unshed tears, I know in my heart he’s thinking the same thing.

“Nick!” I yell as I pound the glass. “Help!”

Nick and the much, much larger man beside him look around frantically. Then the man beside Nick pulls out his gun. I let out a shriek in horror and curl into myself.

“Stop! Don’t shoot it!” I hear Nick scream.

Before I can warn them, Ponytail runs through the doors with his own weapon pointed at my beloved’s head. Rage engulfs me, taking over every last speck of rational thought I have in my brain. Instinct overrides everything else, and I thrash about, desperate to get out of my watery prison.

Ponytail shoots, but his bullet misses by a hair as Nick rolls away and gets cover behind several crates. The burly man returns the fire, also missing Ponytail. This is too much. My heart cannot bear it. If fate has returned my mate simply to force me to watch him die before my very eyes, I-I?—

The burly man races behind a steel pillar for cover and returns fire. I whirl around to lock eyes with my Nick. His jaw sets, and a silent thought passes between us. When he nods, I return it, and he takes aim for the glass above me.

BLAM.

---