Page 75 of The Sin

“There’s the back entrance,” Roman whisper-shouted and up ahead, at the end of the long corridor, I saw the fire door with its panic bar and glowing Exit sign.

We were halfway there when our escape fell apart. The fire door opened and four guards streamed in. The guards at our back had finally rounded the corner at the other end of the passage. We were trapped.

Roman tried the door handle of the nearest office. Locked. He tried the next one. Locked. He tried the next one, and it opened. We slipped inside and he slammed the door closed behind us.

My breaths were coming fast, more from the tension pinching my lungs than the physical exertion.

We were in a boardroom, the large table filling most of the space. The wall directly across from the door was banked with tall windows.

A fist hammered on the door.

“Go,” Roman barked, his eyes prodding at the windows. “Get to the train tunnel. The access point. The streets are busy tonight. You should be okay.”

I knew what he was doing, and that wasn’t happening. His hands were wrapped around the door knob, and he was putting his weight against the door, to hold back the guards.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he promised, then ruined it with, “Give me two hours. If I’m not there, find another way to The Smoke. I’ve heard of people getting out on the supply train. It can be done.”

More pounding on the door.

His jaw strained with the effort of locking the knob with his bare hands, twisting it against the direction that someone on the other side was fighting for.

“No!” I cast my mind around frantically. The door had a key hole, but there was no key in the hole. The handle was a knob, so hooking one of the boardroom chairs beneath it wasn’t an option.

“Georga.”

“I’m not leaving you here.”

The door shuddered, but he managed to hold onto it.

“It’s not me they want,” he ground through his teeth.

I hesitated. But he was right. Of course he was. I was the problem, not Roman. If they broke through that door while I was here, he would fight to give me more time.

I nodded and darted around the table. The windows were high. The ledge started at my shoulders. I grabbed onto the ledge, thinking to jump and somehow pull myself up the rest of the way. I bounced up off my toes, and slid back to the floor. I didn’t have the arm strength at this awkward angle.

A thudding noise crashed through the room. My gaze flashed to Roman, my heart thundering between my ears. They’d burst the door open. Roman hadn’t gone sprawling, but he had been shunted aside.

He was quick though, regained his balance, and greeted the first guard through the doorway with a strike to the throat. The guard spluttered and choked.

My eyes swept over the boardroom table and hitched.

The chairs!

Mentally kicking myself for the lost time, I dragged the nearest chair over to the wall.

I needed to think faster, and smarter, but I couldn’t stop myself from checking on Roman, again and again, as I hiked my skirts up and scrabbled onto the chair.

Two guards shoved the spluttering man out the way and barged into the room.

Roman was there with a roundhouse kick to one, and some kind of elbow jab to the other. They went staggering back from him with grunts, and he went after the one with a high kick to the chest. That guard went down, and stayed down. The other one was reaching for his Taser and more guards were coming through the doorway.

I hefted myself up onto the ledge, throwing another glance over my shoulder—to see a guard swing his baton. Roman evaded and dropped low, kicking the man’s legs out from under him, but the other one, the one with the Taser, fired and two probes shot out. One probe went wide. The other barb snagged Roman’s arm. He ripped it out, but the distraction cost him a punch to the side of the head from another guard.

He recovered and attacked with a series of lightning quick hand jabs and punches at the three men that converged on him. His chin knocked backward as one landed an uppercut. He rattled his head and hit out with a side-kick one way, a throat punch to his other side.

My heart raced, a thunderous roar beating inside my chest. I was desperate to go to him, to help, do something, anything, but I knew Roman. Removing myself from the equation was the only way this would end.

A guard had his eyes on me as I fumbled with the window latch, my fingers were shaking uncontrollably, and he was sneaking around the edges of the fighting.

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