Page 69 of Thorn

The shirt hung around her neck, her naked breasts chilled by the night air. She pulled out the shirt and stuck her hands into the sleeves.

When she stood, Thorn’s shirt came nearly to her knees, the arms dangling far below her finger tips. She looked back, and Juliette could see that the fight continued. It looked like a lot of people. Too many people to count. The only thing for Juliette to do was to keep going. She crouched back down and shoved the sleeves up past her elbows to free her hands.

This time, she’d put a little more brain power behind her moves.

Juliette tried to do the squat jog that Thorn had done to keep his head low. But that took a ridiculous amount of energy. And Juliette was weak as a kitten. She decided crawling was going to end up being her best option.

She was on all fours, crawling along the protective lip of the roof line. She’d done this before with bare knees. But people were cheering her on. It was a marathon race, she’d run to the very end and had gotten weirdly disoriented and fell. She had decided she was so close to the end, she’d just crawl the last bit. It was dehydration back then, she remembered. Easily fixed. She remembered! She was remembering! She’d been an athlete.

Inthismarathon for survival, Juliette’s goal was to get back to the ladder she’d come up. It was the ladder she knew, and the building she knew. Her passport and her money were back in her room. If she was going to escape, she needed those things.

Down, in, grab, go.

That was her plan.

Her other plan, the one that she’d do if anyone grabbed at her, was to go over the building and maybe take them with her.

Death was the ultimate escape.

She pushed against the memories that crawled from their hidden places. She tried to slam them back, at least for the time being. But from the memories that snaked their way out, Juliette knew that she’d never let them take her again.

Never.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Thorn

Paris, France

Sunday, Twenty-two Ten Hours

Hands on his knees, Thorn dragged big gulps of air back into his lungs.

Brigitte was on all fours catching her breath, too.

He staggered past, with a pat on her shoulder. Her team had backed them up. They had four goons zip tied and lying on their stomachs. He’d broken one guy’s arm before he’d even rounded into the fight. The three he really wanted to chat with, the Omega crew from the airport, were in the wind. Billy had been in the fight. He’d clearly seen Billy doing his famous round house on some poor guy. But he and Norman Colburn must have slipped the noose.

Thorn had snapped pictures of their captives faces and ears, rolled their fingerprints onto to his app and sent them on to Iniquus for identification.

He’d hoped that amongst their prisoners he’d find the two men who had kidnapped Juliette in the first place. There was no guarantee that the kidnappers and Omega were on the same team. There could, very easily, be four sets of players − Iniquus, Omega, Mossad, and the kidnappers − going after Juliette now that she wasn’t safely tucked away in America.

Thinking that, with each step, Thorn found new energy. He raced over the roof tops, trying to get back to where he’d hidden Juliette.

When he arrived between the chimneys his bag was there, open. Juliette’s pink gown, and her medical equipment was strewn about.

His eyes scanned, but he didn’t see her.

“Where is she,” he panted into his comms.

“She headed north. She went over the first wall, and then she was lost in the shadows. It’s been twelve and a half minutes since we saw her.”

Thorn turned back toward Brigitte. She was on her feet now and moving his way.

She was one hell of a hand to hand fighter. In that instance, Thorn was glad she was on his side. Glad she did her wicked thing, taking down those Omega crew. Yeah, she was the real deal when it came to soldiering.

Thorn jogged north. When he got over the first wall, he could see shifting debris under his penlight. Juliette left funny side-sliding tracks for a few steps, then it looked like she’d fallen and started to crawl.

That must be why the eyes in the sky didn’t pick her up.

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