Page 13 of Wraith: Lethal Impact

Her voice is clear. It cuts through the sirens with an authority I haven't heard from her yet. It's the first word she's spoken since I found her on the stage.

I freeze, my hand still locked on the handle, and look back at her over my shoulder.

She isn't looking at the door. She's looking down a narrow branching hallway that leads deeper into the backstage labyrinth. A laminated sign hangs above the doorframe at the end of the hall.

Principal Dressing Rooms.

"We have to go back." Her green eyes lock onto mine, desperate.

"Negative." My voice hardens. "The building's compromised. We're leaving. Now."

"I can't leave." She takes a step toward the branching hallway. Her frame is still trembling, but the terror has burned off into resolve. "My father's necklace is in the dressing room. I'm not leaving without it."

A piece of jewelry? With Consortium hitters converging on our location, she wants to risk both our lives for a fucking necklace?

"We're not going back." I step in front of her, blocking her path. "I am not getting us killed over a trinket."

"I'm not leaving without it." Her voice is quiet, but her gaze is tempered steel.

Well fuck me sideways.

4

The Escape

LILY

The heavy steel fire door waits at the end of the corridor, a rusted monument to survival. Freedom is on the other side. Safety. A descent into the neon-soaked anonymity of the Bangkok streets.

But I am not looking at the fire door.

I'm locked on the narrow branching hallway to my right. A laminated sign hangs above the doorframe, lit by the pulsing red glow of the emergency strobes.

Principal Dressing Rooms.

The terrifying stranger standing between me and the exit freezes. His hand is locked around the handle of the fire door, his knuckles white. He looks back over his shoulder. The dim red light catches the brutal angles of his jawline, the suppressed SIG still gripped in his other hand.

"We're moving." His voice is a gravel rumble that vibrates into my chest. "Stay behind me. Do not break visual contact with my back."

My body is screaming at me to obey. Every survival instinct honed over twenty-three years demands I follow this lethal man out of the building. But the compass is in that dressing room. My father's compass. The only tangible piece of him left in this world. It's the only thing keeping me grounded in a reality that has shattered into violence and blood.

"I can't leave." The words tear from my throat, trembling but defiant.

I take a deliberate step toward the branching hallway. The hardened blocks of my blood-soaked pointe shoes slip on the polished concrete, but my core locks, stabilizing my center. I'm a principal dancer. I don't fall unless I choose to.

"Negative." His voice hardens, stripping away any illusion of negotiation. "The building's compromised. We're leaving. Now."

"My father's necklace is in the dressing room." I square my shoulders, forcing my chin up to meet his cold gaze. "I'm not leaving without it."

The silence stretches between us, thick. The distant wail of the fire alarm provides a maddening soundtrack to the standoff. He shifts away from the fire door to block my path, moving with a grace that belies his size. He's easily six-foot-four, his chest encased in black Kevlar, a massive sniper rifle slung across his back. A walking weapon.

"We're not going back." There's no argument in his voice. Just physical law.

"I'm not leaving without it." My voice drops to a quiet, tempered whisper. My gaze doesn't waver.

I'm at his mercy. He could throw me over his shoulder and carry me down twenty flights of stairs without breaking a sweat. But he doesn't.

A muscle in his jaw feathers. He exhales, harsh with frustration. He weighs it—the seconds this will cost against the fight it would take to force me through that door.