Calore Dance Academy// Red Queen AU

Chapter 42

Too many shoes pound the pavement around me.

Shade and I practically charge through the parking garage, winding down and around for the car that my brother apparently owns. A dozen cops clad in black pants and jackets surround us, guns drawn at the cement pillars and luxury cars and limousines parked within the ramp. Compared to the rest of Calore Industries, this place is outright depressing with its grey motif and fluorescent lights.

Not that Calore Industries is so impressive anymore. The skyscraper has become more of a beehive than a building, swarming with cops, the FBI, SWAT teams, detectives, and all other kinds of important people. As we descend the ramp, teams of agents pass us and bark out commands into radios and phones. The elevator ride the rest of the way down took too long, stopping at nearly every story to fill and empty with new people—none of whom ever stopped talking about the two terrorists who got away from Davidson in a cloud of strange smoke and a power outage on the eleventh floor.

Farley and Kilorn could be anywhere. For Tiberias Calore, I imagine that at the moment, he's thinking about how unfortunate it is that his building is seventy stories tall and plenty big. He might be able to call in as many cops as he wants, but those cops are currently congesting his elevators and flooding his staircases. For all that the Scarlet Street Fighters have managed tonight, the chances of finding the two in the immediate future seem bleak.

They ordered the building back on lockdown, have men positioned across floors and at the entrances to elevators and stairwells. But they can't cover everything.

It's like a life-or-death version of hide-and-go-seek.

The blood went out of Cal's face when Davidson told him what they did, as he realized that his moment of heroism was for nothing. Farley and Kilorn had escaped—though the means in which they managed it remain unclear aside from a number of unconscious police and a series of power outages across the building—and the two of them were simply gone like they were never here at all.

Cal's anger was more subtle than his father's. I watched silently as his face turned flush and his lips twisted and his eyebrows contorted. As his jaw worked to find words to express whatever he felt.

Instead of speaking, Cal just stalked out of the elevator and headed towards his father. On his way, he ordered that a dozen police be sent with me and Shade so that we could leave rather than return upstairs to the lockdown. By then, he was too far away for me to prove Shade wrong and thank him.

After he saw the way that I cried, he wanted to get me out and knew he had the power to make it happen. That act is just another thing that I'll never be able to repay him for.

"It's common protocol to search the car, sir."

We've stopped in front of a slick red SUV. Compared to the rest of the town cars, sports cars, and limousines parked within the sloping, cave-like parking garage beneath Calore Industries, Shade's car is kind of lame. At the same time, it matches his new preppy, suburban look.

Shade clicks a button on the car key he's pulled out. "Then by all means, go ahead."

I realize two things.

My brother can suddenly drive, and he has enough money to buy a car.

Then again, the money was probably stolen.

The hatchback of the SUV pops open, and the police open all four of its doors. Most stay positioned around us, while one checks the back and another two poke around the interior of Shade's car.

"You must be incredibly important for Cal to order you be escorted out of his father's building by a miniature squadron of police," the man at my side notes as he watches the men scour the car. "Miss Barrow."