Reluctant thief Baz Barret is tasked with stealing from the formidable archaeologist Rei Collingwood--who happens to also be his college crush and rival--but when Rei goes missing after the burglary, Baz must find her before he's blamed for her disa...
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The entire gallery had all but been reduced to a junkyard of glass, muslin cotton, and splintered wood. The lights overhead cast deep shadows into the wreckage, deep valleys laying between the snapped framework of the model. Specks of insulation fell from the ceiling like a delicate snowfall over the wreckage. An eerie calm after the storm, too quiet.
Rei couldn't see a bloody thing, all the true damage beneath the wings. Sébastien, Gwen, even Cheng were somewhere underneath the fabric. Somewhere between Sébastien's quick dash for freedom and Gwen tackling her to the ground, Rei lost track of Jasper. Let him run. Let him see how far he could get, perhaps sprinting for a fire exit. Who would notice his escape while gunshots reverberated from behind closed doors?
Shaking, Rei pulled herself under the canopy of torn wing skin. The force of the drop had shattered the showcase beneath the behemoth, turning the floor into a minefield of sharp shards. Her ears rung with the memory of it, sounding chaos in her head. It overwhelmed the thundering of blood in her ears, the only thing she could discern. She pulled her sleeves over her hands, pushing aside the pointed edges of glass as she crawled through the debris.
A darker shape stood out among the tinder and fabric. The gun. Rei reached for it, ejecting the clip and tossing it into what was left of the showcase, reproduced journal pages scattered over the base of it.
"Sébastien," she said, finding her voice hoarse. It wasn't until she tried to speak that she realized how hard it was. Her throat had gone raw, both from a scream she undoubtedly let out as the flying machine crashed into the floor and from how hard she fought to hold back tears. Not yet. She was so close, but not yet. She could hold it in a little longer.
Rei shouldered past the snapped braces and there he was, curled into a ball of a person. No bones jutted out of skin, nor did any stakes of wood jut in. Her heart quickened as she flattened to the floor, sliding nearer. Blood seeped into his hairline, trickling down toward his ear.
"Sébastien," she repeated. She could say his name over and over. It rolled so easily off her tongue, but she didn't want to because if she repeated it now, it only meant that he did not respond. Her hand found his shoulder, shaking gently at first, than firmly. "Be alive." It was a demand.
"I'm trying," his voice came gruff. Rei nearly collapsed under the weight of it, a feat considering how low to the ground she already was. The pounding in her ears grew louder.
Except... it wasn't in her ears at all. The more Rei payed attention, the more the ringing sounded like muffled sirens.
"Why did you do that?" Rei demanded weakly. What a stupid boy. How perfectly ridiculous it was, the way he sprang around like a lemur making a run of the place. Over stupid, bloody shares she didn't even want. Her chest felt inexplicably tight, as if someone had wrapped a belt around her and pulled it one notch too far.
"Apparently, I'm worth a million bucks. I haven't been pulling my weight," Sébastien uncurled, resting his weight on one elbow. Rei didn't have the heart to tell him she meant for Gwen to have the shares. Not yet. Maybe another time, when they could laugh about it and it wouldn't hurt bruised ribs and tired lungs.
