Chapter 1103
She flicked the lid open. The metallic clink rang out like a gunshot in the tight space.
Outside, she heard the barricade give way with a crash. Footsteps flooded the kitchen.
“She’s in here somewhere. Find her.”
A pause. “Do you smell that?”
“Gas.”
Skye held the lighter steady, her thumb hovering over the wheel. She was shivering, but not from the cold.
She was inside a metal box, surrounded by gas, waiting for men who had been sent to erase her.
“Check the freezer,” the leader commanded.
Skye squeezed her eyes shut.
Come on, Alistair. Realize I’m gone.
The handle of the freezer door turned.
Skye didn’t wait for them to open it. She didn’t wait to see the muzzle of a gun.
She sparked the lighter and held the flame up to the small ventilation gap near the door frame, praying the gas concentration was high enough outside but not inside.
It was a gamble. A stupid, desperate gamble.
Click. Whoosh.
The explosion was not a movie fireball. It was a concussive force that slammed against the heavy steel door of the freezer. The door buckled inward for a fraction of a second, the seal screaming, before the pressure wave tore through the kitchen.
Skye was thrown back against the frozen crates, her head cracking against a shelf. Darkness flickered at the edges of her vision.
Heat — intense heat — seeped through every crack in the door.
She waited five seconds. Ten.
Then she kicked the latch. The door, warped by the blast, groaned and swung open.
The kitchen was a wreck. A wall of fire divided the prep area from the service entrance. Several bodies lay motionless on the floor, scattered like ragdolls by the blast.
Skye coughed, smoke stinging her eyes, and stumbled forward. She needed the loading dock. The blast might have shorted the magnetic locks.
She stepped over a man groaning on the floor, his clothes still smoldering. She didn’t look down.
She made it to the loading bay corridor.
“There!”
A voice from the smoke.
Skye spun. One of the assassins had survived. He was burned, bleeding from the ears, but he was on his feet. And he had a gun.
He raised it.
Skye dove behind a metal linen cart just as he fired.
The bullet tore through the canvas and bit into her left shoulder.
The impact spun her around, a searing line of fire tracing across her upper arm. She cried out and pressed her hand against the wound. It was deep, tearing through the deltoid muscle, but as she held the pressure she realized with grim relief that it hadn’t struck bone or artery. The blood was dark and sluggish — not the bright, spurting spray she had feared. A nasty flesh wound, but it wouldn’t kill her. Not yet.
She slumped against the wall, her legs shaking more from shock than blood loss. She had to keep moving. If she stopped, the shock would take hold, and then she was dead.