Page 6 of The Tower

This is it.

This is how I'm going to die.

The doors close agonizingly slowly, seemingly moving in slow motion while everything else happens twice as fast. I don't try to evade the impending shot, but even if I had, I feel like my uncle wouldn't have let me move an inch.

He's hiding behind me.

He's actually using me as a shield.

"Uncle Clyde..."

Ignoring my uttered plea, he does something even worse.

The doors of the elevator are about halfway closed, and the attacker just three steps away from us when my uncle gives me a hard push from behind. I stumble forward through the closing doors—and right into the arms of the guy with the gun. He's just fired another shot in our direction. Met with stinging pain on the side of my lower abdomen, I bend over due to the impact just before I crash against a rock-solid chest.

He's still running at full speed when I'm thrust into his arms, crying out in pain and terror after my uncle sacrificed me to save himself. Our bodies meet with vicious force, pushing the attacker off his feet and down to the floor. I land on top of him, blinded and numbed by pain.

It hits me all at once.

The ache. The shock. The mortal agony.

Far, far away, I hear the elevator doors closing, frenzied steps mingling in the other direction, and a dark voice cursing close to my ear. "Fuck!"

It's the last word I perceive before the world darkens around me.

Chapter 4

Keane

"What is the fuck is this?"

Tom is pointing at the limp body in my arms, his face distorted with stressed disgust. "Who the hell is she?"

I'm grinding my teeth as I look back and forth between him and the unconscious girl in my arms, her pastel-colored dress drenched in dark red. Her entire left side is covered in blood, spilling from a rather serious gunshot wound to her shoulder and running down her torso until it blends with the blood that is coming from another wound right above her left hip.

Two bullets crippled her perfect body.

Neither one of them was meant for her.

Why her of all people?

"She's coming with us," I say, the expression on my face allowing no objections.

"No fucking way!" Tom protests. He's quickly joined by Brad, who is standing farther away from us, busy retrieving the big backpacks stored up here for our escape. We're on the rooftop, sixty-three stories above the ground, and getting ready to make our escape.

"I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you," Brad yells over to me. "But that girl isnotcoming with us, end of discussion."

I grunt in response, casting a quick glance over at the paragliders Brad is unpacking. There are only three of them, two tandems because we wanted to make sure to get all four of us off the roof before the police came up here. The roof is only big enough for one wing at a time, forcing us to jump one by one, and if each of us had our own glider, the last person was very likely to be caught by the police. Our hope was to be able to use only two of those wings, both as a tandem, but we added a third just in case one of us was forced to stay behind. We know there's no time to waste. Once we're on the roof, we need to get down as quickly as possible.

Those are the orders.

Brad is already wearing his harness, and Tom was putting his on when I appeared on the roof.

But one is still missing.

"Where's Jered?" I ask, spinning on my heels with the girl still in my arms.

"He's not coming," Tom responds. "And neither is she!"

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