Page 117 of Forging Caine

“Dashingly handsome?”

Cam-ron chuckled.

“Keep your volume down, you two.”

Antonio used humor for almost everything. To flirt, to entertain, to convince, to express boredom. Sometimes to deal with fear. We were going to survive this. We were almost at the—

“I see it! The fence!” It was tall, vertical bars in powdered black with some shapes along the top. I ducked out from under Cam-ron’s arm. Jason would have mentioned if it was electrical, but I reached for it slowly, just in case. Nothing but cool metal. I tried to shake it, but it was sturdy.

Antonio said, “That’s awfully tall.”

“Ten feet.” I knelt to check the bottom, where the bars met the ground. There was no hole. No goddamn hole! Every cell in my body wanted to scream.

“We must have veered off the straight line.” Antonio was far too calm. Maybe he could make another joke about it.

“Do we climb or look for the hole?”

Cam-ron continued staring at the top.

If I climbed it, Antonio could lift Cam-ron and I could help him the rest of the way. But Antonio? I couldn’t pull him up. “If I boost you, could you climb over?”

The light was dim with the partial moon hidden behind the tree leaves, but my eyes had adjusted enough to make out the tense look on Antonio’s face.

“Your arm isn’t fully healed, is it?”

“No.”

My heart sank. I wasnotleaving him. “Alright, we can go left toward the water or right toward the front gate. The hole’s got to be here somewhere.”

Antonio said, “If we assume we don’t find the hole, the water’s our better chance. The fence will end and we can go around it to get to a house.”

I scanned the bottom of the fence to the right until it vanished in the darkness. “I’ll explore ahead. You two follow behind, and I’ll circle back when I find it.”

Chapter 41

Antonio

Cam-ronandImovedat an excruciatingly slow pace. Voices carried on the wind. Joyous ones from the neighborhood on the other side of the fence—apparently gunshots didn’t impact their moods—and frantic ones from the direction of the house. They were still far enough away I didn’t fear being caught yet, but we walked in silence, all the same.

Samantha had been gone too long. How many men could Fiori have looking for us? How had they not found us?

Marone, what if they already found her?

Ice splintered through my veins.

What if they’d already caught her and were waiting for me to arrive? The earlier gunshots had been suppressed, so if all the guards did that, she could already be dead. Surely if she was, I’d feel it. Just like when she came back into my life, I felt something change in the air. The axis of my entire universe shifted. If she was dead, I would have felt it shift back, putting me out of balance.

Cam-ron groaned quietly.

“Let’s stop for a moment.” I leaned him against a tree and knelt as he slid to the ground. “Does that help?

He nodded. “It hurts a lot.”

“You’re going to have to fight through it. Take some deep breaths and calm down.”

“I heard a saying once, that fear is just excitement without the breath.”

I spluttered a laugh. It would appear I was not the only one coming up with cheesy lines to avoid my feelings. “Sì, I’ve heard this, as well. Perhaps if you breathe enough, you’ll get excited?”

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