Page 228 of Gathered Sparkle

“Don’t you dare, Little Thief.”

“Sylus—” I start, but I get cut off as Levi lets out a panicked shriek that makes my blood freeze.

“Ezy!”

This isn’t looking good.

“Get your fucking hands off him!” Ezra rumbles, but the sound of the crowd around them grows louder.

“Sparkle, baby. Talk to me.”

“What do I have to do to get the evidence on the transmitter?”

“Nothing. We don’t have time. Everything’s set to hit the cops anyway. This was for dazzle, but the dazzle just left the fucking building. Get your pretty ass down here.”

But I’m already moving, flipping the switch on the transmitter and gripping the wheel tighter. My pulse races, every nerve alive with fear and adrenaline.

If this is going to work, it has to be perfect.

“Baby,” Sylus tries again. “Look, I love your style, I really do, but I don’t love it enough to scrape you off the Heights.”

“Don’t act stupid, Sweetness. I know you’re not!”

I don’t even have a license. The last time I was behind the wheel, everything spiraled. And now here I am, in a Lamborghini no less, contemplating a jump that could end just as disastrously. If I let that fear win now, chances are they get caught or crushed. And I can’t. Iwon’tlose anyone else.

The comms crackle, more frantic yells slicing through my thoughts.

“Ezra, stop pulling me along. Get Dove out of here!” Koen roars.

“I’m fucking trying!” Ezra snaps back. “Dove, don’t let go—”

“I can’t hold him much longer!” Nicholas sounds frantic now.

“Fuck.”Ezra yells again. “Dove!”

I close my eyes, the noise around me fading to a dull roar as I force my mind to quiet. The fear, the doubt, the memory of that night, they all crash against me, but I plant my feet.

I can do this.

I’ll make this jump, allowing them to get out of there.

The decision locks into place as I take a deep breath, and Koen’s voice fills my mind.

“Sixty-seven miles per hour at the exact moment it leaves the ramp. No more, no less. Any slower, and you don’t make it across. Any faster, and the momentum’s wrong, you’ll overshoot and crash. From zero to sixty in three-point-two seconds.”

Three-point-two seconds. That’s all the margin I have.

Koen spent years perfecting this down to the millisecond, and I’m about to attempt it on adrenaline and sheer dumb luck.

The driver’s door next to me wrenches open, and my heart leaps into my throat.Did I just run out of time?

But then my eyes meet ice-blue ones.

“Scoot over, Trouble.”

“Ace,” I breathe out, half a gasp, half a curse.

“Move,” he repeats, climbing in even as the chaos below echoes through the comms. “We have to jump a gap, and let’s be honest, you’re a shitty driver.”

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