Page 181 of The Wild Charge

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“Keep going,” Fox said, like a mantra, at each landing. They had a good lead, to start, but the thunder of footsteps continued to chase them, up and around, up and around. Devin moved quickly, for someone his age, his steps smooth and even, athletic. Tenny was torn between wanting to lead…and being glad he had a human shield in front of him. The constant, throbbing pain in his shoulder made it hard to maintain his earlier detachment; emotion kept flickering through. Rage in all its shades. And, like now, impatience, and the satisfaction of knowing, should more hostiles pop up in front of them, he could fire over Devin’s shoulder and worry only about offense, rather than tactics.

On the thirty-seventh-floor landing, Devin paused, fist lifted.Hold. “I hear–” he started.

Then Tenny heard it, too. A scrape of movement on the other side of the hallway door to his left. The click of the handle.

Tenny shoved Devin forward and spun, drawing a knife in the same movement. The door swung open against his face, blocking his view of the enemy – and of Fox and Abe beyond that.

Tenny heard a thud, a handful of muffled thumps. And then Fox’s voice: “Go! We got this, keep going!”

A good brother would have stayed to assist.

But Tenny wasn’t one of those. For most of his life, he hadn’t known he was a brother at all. So he sheathed his knife, sidestepped Devin, and continued up.

Until they hit the thirty-eighth-floor landing…and a dead end. The landing just outside the door was the last.

Tenny looked behind him, where the sounds of a confrontation echoed; glanced over the rail,all the waydown until the light failed somewhere past the twentieth floor. Back to the door in front of them, a big, yellow 38 painted on its gray surface.

His heartrate picked up. “Is it mislabeled?”

“No.” Devin’s face, when he darted a glance to it, had settled into grim lines. But his gaze, when it slid over to meet Tenny’s, was almost gleeful. He liked fighting, Tenny realized. Liked the challenge of it. “There’s gotta be another staircase through there somewhere.”

His pulse accelerated another notch. Would he find Reese on the other side of the door? Or a gauntlet to run through to get to him? “That means someone’s waiting for us.”

Devin clipped a new magazine into his rifle. “Well, then. I suppose we shouldn’t disappoint them.”

He gripped the door handle.

Tenny snugged the butt of his rifle into his good shoulder, and nodded.

Devin yanked the door, and they swept inside.

Only to halt again.

It was another expansive, room, half-filled with abandoned office furniture, desks and filing cabinets at odd angles. White walls, droning tube lights overhead, their glare reflecting off the pale gray floor tiles.

Two black-clad figures stood across from them. In the wash of fluorescent light, their blue eyes were ice-colored.

Reese’s brothers.

The real test.

He clocked them the moment they entered, which gave him just enough warning to grip Devin’s sleeve and drag him down behind a cluster of desks as the older one, Jax, opened fire on them.

Bullets pinged off the metal fronts of the desks. 9mm, based on the report of the gun, Tenny thought. Same as them. He pulled his .45 off his hip, and watched Devin do the same beside him.

“They’re his brothers,” Tenny said through his teeth, as more shots rattled off the desks.

Devin’s brows lifted. “Do we care about keeping them alive?”

“No.”

Silence fell, punctuated by the metallictingof the last shell casing hitting the tiles.

A voice floated across the room. “I guess you think you’ve proved something, getting past Waverly’s dipshits.” That was Jax. “But they were just speed bumps.”

“Let me guess,” Tenny called back. “You’re therealchallenge.” He caught Devin’s gaze, and gestured.Stay here. Silently, awkwardly, he moved around the desk and behind a filing cabinet, hunkered low and out of sight.

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