Chapter 40 - Shattered Glass
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My heart slammed against my ribs. I looked at Irene, bruised but defiant. Her emerald eyes locked onto mine, silently screaming at me not to surrender.
"Drop it!" the mercenary holding a gun to her head barked.
I slowly lowered my pistol, letting it fall to the plush carpet.
"Excellent," Thorne said, standing up and walking toward the computer terminal. "Now, bring her to the scanner."
As the mercenary shoved Irene forward, she intentionally stumbled, throwing her weight violently to the right. The sudden movement threw the guard off balance.
That was my window.
I lunged forward, grabbing a heavy crystal decanter from the wet bar and smashing it brutally across the face of the second guard. He screamed, dropping his rifle. I spun around, sweeping the legs of the guard holding Irene.
Gunfire erupted, shattering the expensive liquor bottles behind me.
"Julian! We need an exit now!" I yelled into my earpiece, diving behind a marble kitchen island as bullets chewed through the drywall.
"I've hacked the building's fire suppression system! Hold your breath!" Julian shouted back.
Suddenly, the ceiling sprinklers exploded, raining a torrent of cold water down on the penthouse. Thick, blinding white smoke from the fire alarms flooded the room, dropping visibility to zero.
I crawled through the water, grabbed a discarded rifle from the floor, and blindly fired a suppressing burst toward Thorne’s guards. I reached Irene, pulling a tactical knife from my boot to slice through her zip-ties.
"Are you okay?" I gasped.
"I'm fine," she coughed through the smoke. "But we are trapped!"
I looked at the floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the Miami night. The neighboring hotel tower was only thirty feet away, featuring a large rooftop pool.
"Do you trust me?" I asked, grabbing her hand.
May you like
Irene looked at the window, then at me. "Always."
We sprinted toward the window. I raised the heavy rifle and emptied the rest of the magazine into the reinforced glass. The pane shattered into a million glittering diamonds just as we leaped out into the open night air.
