Page 82 of One Shattered Crown
I glance at Wynd. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” He rolls his shoulder. “Rattled my brain a little, but I’ll live.”
“All right. You need to get Bronco to a doctor. He’s definitely concussed. Could have internal injuries too.”
Wynd brushes glass off his pants. “I’m on your six.”
I stare at him. “Right, because I may need help checking out my penthouse.”
He rolls his eyes. “We didn’t think we’d get hit by a car today, now did we?”
“No. That’s fair.”
And they had shoved us into an alley to box us in clean.
I whistle at two of my men. “Get Bronco to the hospital. Keep me updated.”
They rush forward, taking him by the arms, steadying his bulk between them.
I turn to Wynd. “Secure us another vehicle.”
He glances at me. “Do you want to change clothes?”
“No. We don’t have time. Let’s go.”
When I find Ella, she’s going to learn that this isn’t a game, even though I suspect she feels it is. She better be safe.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Ella
“Iknow you’re good at this,” Wesley says to me, “but you seem familiar with this particular code. Have you, ah, seen it before?”
“It looks somewhat familiar, but I don’t know why.” I sit back as I lie to him. “I think I purged it from the system.”
He sits close beside me, glancing over his shoulder at the diamonds. They still glow with that sickly yellow tint, as if the sickness in the code has seeped into the stones themselves.
“I don’t think I can restore the stones,” I say.
He leans back, eyes flicking toward the sealed door. “We’re coming up on the two-hour deadline, and this place is airtight.”
“I know it is,” I murmur. “Hopefully she doesn’t want to kill us today.”
“I think she would love that,” he mutters.
I almost smile. “We didn’t save the diamonds now, did we?”
His gaze sharpens. “Did you do that on purpose?”
Of course I did it on purpose. I lie smoothly. “No. I can’t save the diamond. She’s going to need citrines if she wants my help with the energy.”
He appraises me. “Won’t that give you an in to the entire system?”
I shrug. “Not if she locks me out of the computer.”
The hum of the servers fills the pause. The room is colder than I first noticed, the air biting my skin the longer we sit. Rows of black towers line the walls, blinking in uneven rhythm, throwing off pulses of pale yellow light. It feels less like a server room and more like a machine breathing around us, steady, endless, watching.
He leans over, brushing his knuckles across my cheek. The touch is unexpected, and guilt stabs me hard. “So I’ve been thinking.”
