Taking Flight (A Devereux Novel) (22 page)

The brothers finished the
trip in silence, each occupied with their own thoughts.

Home couldn’t come soon
enough. Derek barely waited for the car to stop before he hopped out. After a
moment with his hand on the vehicle to steady
himself
,
he marched toward the house, refusing to let his body hold him back any longer.
Gary kept up with him, practice with the crutches letting him move surprisingly
quickly.

Loud music blared as they
approached, and Gary looked at him with a smile. “You know, I kind of like that
Becky girl. She knows how to make herself at home, doesn’t she?”

The strains of the latest
Taylor Swift chart-topper became almost painfully loud once the front door
opened. Derek’s jaw dropped at the sight of his living room. It had been taken
over.

Piles of fabric lay on every
surface, and there were different arrangements of cut pieces laying out
everywhere. It wasn’t a sight of his house he had ever expected to have.

Becky moved through the
chaos in an elaborate dance, in time with the music. She picked through fabrics
and brought them to a sewing machine where she set to work on them. She was
oblivious to their entrance, the music drowning out any other sounds.

Derek found the control for
the house’s electronics on the kitchen counter and cut the music.

“Oh, hey, guys! You’re back
earlier than I
thought,
I planned on trying to get
something together for dinner when you got back. Sara’s the cook, but I can do
a couple basic things here or there.” Becky smiled.

Despite the urgency tugging
at the back of his mind, Derek couldn’t prevent himself from asking the obvious
question. “What is going on here?” He was going to elaborate further, but found
himself unable to do anything more than point to the room.

“This may be my fault, bro,”
Gary said. “Becky and I are going into business together, except she lost all
her stuff in the attack on their apartment. I wasn’t about to let that stop me,
so I told her I would finance whatever she needed to get back on her feet and
creating again.” He looked around the room and picked up a swatch of lavender
satin. “I wasn’t aware it would be so… pervasive, though.”

“Pervasive…” The word made
it sound like an infestation.
I hope I
don’t come to view it like that!
“Becky, have you heard from Sara?”

Becky looked at the two
brothers as if they were daft. “Sara? Wasn’t she with you all day? I haven’t
seen her since I gave her that dress last night and you took her away for that
super romantic date, hot stuff! I’ve been dying to hear all the details!”

Gary caught his eyes. It
wasn’t what they’d hoped to hear.

“Can you call her? I left my
phone back at the airport, and I want to make sure she’s okay.”

Becky still looked
perplexed, but dug around in the piles of fabric on the kitchen table until she
found her phone. After dragging a piece of floral print away, she frowned at
the display. “No messages from Sara, but I have a voicemail from a blocked
number. What’s going on?”

Gary shook his head, eyes on
Derek. They traded thoughts as brothers could, and the younger man turned back
to the woman. “Derek and Sara had a kerfuffle at the restaurant last night, and
Sara didn’t come back here, so we haven’t seen her since yesterday either. We
expected to hear from her by now though, and considering what happened at the
race, we’re worried there might be more to it.”

“What happened at the race?”
Becky asked. “Something bad?”

“I’ll tell you after,” Derek
said. “Can you check that voicemail?”

Becky’s eyes narrowed as the
message played. “It’s from Sara!” She stared at him as the recording played
out, and her eyes widened by the second. “She wants me to get you, Derek. She…
oh, my God!” Becky’s voice died as she listened intently to the final words of
the terse message. Before too long the dim sounds of Sara’s voice faded away,
replaced by the machine voice giving menu options.

“Becky?” Derek asked. “What
is it?”

“She… she’s been kidnapped.
And she thinks they’ll kill her!”

Derek’s heart jumped into
his throat at the words. This was
all his
fault. If he
hadn’t needed his space, hadn’t shoved her away from him last night at the
wrong time, when it was dangerous out there for all of them…

“Let me hear that!” He
grabbed for the phone and fumbled with the touchscreen, trying to bring up the
recording again on the unfamiliar interface. Finally he got it and put it on
speakerphone for good measure.

They stared at each other as
they listened to Sara’s hushed tones and dire words. Derek could feel her
rising panic, the fight in her voice. By the time the words died out, he was
halfway to the back door of the house.

“Where are you going, bro?”
Gary asked him. “Sara needs us!”

Derek paused only for a
second, his heart tugging him onward and screaming at any delay. “You and Becky
take your car. And call Evan. I know where Sara is, and I’m getting there the
fastest way I know.”

“But where, how do you
know?”

“Because I was there just a
few days ago, at the Onyx headquarters downtown Los Angeles, in the U.S. Bank
tower.”

“Wait, Derek!”

He was already out the back
door, not willing to waste another second.

Not when his love was in
mortal danger.

Sara put her back to the wall next to the corner,
peeking her head around the edge. Another long hallway, same as most of the
others she had crept through, stretched away for far too long of a distance
considering the extreme height over the city.

Buildings shouldn’t be this big and tall. It’s not natural.

To her surprise, there was
no sign her disappearance had been discovered. She couldn’t help but continue
feeling as though this whole exercise was fruitless—as though Chad sat in
a room with a security guard somewhere watching her progress on a monitor,
laughing at her as she crawled along through the corridors like she stood a
chance of escape.

The need for secrecy and
silence had slowed her, and every step down the halls was enough to tighten her
shoulders and make her want to duck into a random office and hope she could
hide and wait things out. She constantly jerked her head around to look behind
her, convinced she’d been spotted from the rear and was mere seconds away from
being tackled to the ground by the imposing cybernetic man.

She left the corner,
exposing herself to being seen as she stole past closed doors and large windows
that framed what would have been a stunning view for anyone else, but summoned
nothing but pure terror for Sara.
People
shouldn’t be this high off the ground.

The windows at least told
her she was alongside the outer exterior of the building—the elevators
were likely closer to the
center which
would explain
why she hadn’t found them yet. The longer she lingered on this floor, the
higher the risk of being discovered.

As the thought crossed her
mind, her luck ran out.

At the end of the hall a
figure rounded the corner—none other than Chad himself.

He stopped dead as he caught
sight of her, and the look on his face chilled Sara’s blood. She expected a
yell, but he just broke into a dead sprint in her direction.

It was a long hallway, but
he made up the ground between them terrifyingly quickly.

Shit!

The quietness of the pursuit
was even more eerie than the chase itself. She turned and ran the way she had
come, charging around the corner to find the last intersection she’d passed.

Come on, Sara
,
run
!

She huffed as she motored as
fast as she could. Chad’s quietness meant she had no idea how far behind her he
was, and she didn’t dare look. Doors and windows whizzed by as she sprinted
down the hallway, finding the hallway and taking the other direction.

Seconds later, an exit sign
pointed her to a doorway that opened onto a stairwell.

Seriously?

There was no time to kick
herself
for making the wrong choice earlier—the one
that might prove to be her undoing.

Sara glanced behind her, and
Chad hadn’t yet made up enough ground to turn the corner. She had one chance to
throw him off. If it came down to a straight race down the stairs, he would
catch her. She had to lose him somehow.

She headed up the staircase
instead of down.

When she had gotten a flight
up, she slowed enough to make as little sound as possible, but didn’t stop
climbing. It didn’t look like there was much further to go.

The door banged open below
her, and Sara jumped in spite of herself. Echoes of the crash went on forever
in the tall shaft, bouncing through the metal stairs and concrete walls, fading
gradually into silence. She paused on the stairs, willing her breath to calm
and the jittery fear in her chest to go away.

Silence. If Chad was still
in the stairwell, it wasn’t obvious which direction he took. She couldn’t risk
him slowly and silently making his way up to her. She had to hide. Sara kept
moving
,
placing each foot carefully and not letting
her shoes drag on the ground even the slightest bit.

The stairs came to an end
soon after although there was a small landing and a small offset before another
set of stairs. Sara had planned on hiding on the next floor up, but she hadn’t
come across one yet.

Walking across the flat
ground toward the new staircase, Sara wasn’t as careful as she should have
been. She caught a slight bump in the concrete floor and stumbled, scraping her
foot across the ground as she tried to catch her balance and avoid falling.

She waited, failing to
breathe.

An explosion of sound from
below gave her heart palpitations, the beat of steps furiously climbing the
stairs echoing up to her.

There was no more time for
secrecy, and nowhere to go but up for Sara. She launched herself at the
staircase, attacking each step as if she had trained for it her entire life.
The stairs flew by underneath her feet two at a time, hands on the railing to
steady her and prevent a fall as she raced at a breakneck pace.

Finally,
the top.
And a door.
She launched herself at it, praying that
it was unlocked.
What a fine end to a
chase that would be. Cornered like a stray dog and put down the same way.

The push bar clicked under
her hands, and the door swung open. As soon as a crack appeared, a fierce wind
grabbed hold and ripped the door from her control, bashing it open against the
wall. Sara sprinted through, squinting against the sudden onslaught of light
that enveloped her.

It took time for her eyes to
adjust.
Too long.
When she could see, she pulled the
door shut behind her, and looked around for something to keep it closed.

What she found was the view
she had dreaded since she first saw it through the office window. Los Angeles
spread out beneath her, a short concrete wall between her and the dizzying
height.

She had found the roof of
the building and was confronted with the stark reality of the sheer height she
dealt with. She wasn’t just at the top of the building—she stood on the
tallest point in the city.

As visceral and biting as
her fear of the heights was, her fear of Chad was even more overwhelming, and
he would come through the door any second now. She took off at a
run,
following the curve of the concrete wall as she
searched for anywhere she could hide or make a stand.

If I could somehow get behind him and keep him looking up here, then
maybe I can race back down the stairs.
It was an unlikely plan, but it was all she had.
Her options had dried up.

There was one last set of
stairs, and she had alternative but to take them. They led up to the helipad,
the tallest point possible. The only saving grace was that it was closer to the
center, further away from the edge of the building and the terrifying fall all
the way to the unforgiving ground below. The downside was that there was
nowhere to hide, nowhere left to run.

Sara was so focused on the
stairs she almost missed Chad’s head
rising
over the
edge of the platform to her right. The ease with which he pulled himself up and
onto the platform reminded her of the attack on Derek she’d interrupted in the
alley the night of the club. Chad—and it must have been Chad—had
run away from the fight with a quick climb up to the roof of the nearest
building, something she had forgotten about and nearly paid the price for.

“Why are you doing this? Is
this what you want to spend your life doing: killing innocent people on another
person’s orders? Is whatever you’re getting paid worth it?” Sara tried to
appeal to Chad’s humanity. The wind tore the words from her lips, and she had to
shout.

“Money isn’t the motivating
factor,” Chad replied. His eyes burned into her, the intensity frightening. He
walked toward her, and for every step of his she took one backward until she
was dangerously close to the edge of the helipad platform. “Mr. Knight took me
in when the company’s experiment took off my hand. He’s the one who made sure I
was taken care of, made sure I had a suitable replacement.” The fingers of the
cybernetic hand flexed as though they were an obedient animal
who
had heard their name.

“Don’t you realize none of
that is Derek’s fault? He had nothing to do with the experiment or the
company’s treatment of you. He barely knows what goes on there!”

Chad shouted back, but a
sudden increase in the wind swallowed his words.

If this keeps up, then we won’t have to worry about anything else.
We’ll get swept off this roof!

It wasn’t until Sara saw her
adversary’s eyes widen that there was a hint the wind wasn’t natural.

When she looked behind her,
the wind buffeted her full in the face, nearly blinding her but not enough she
couldn’t see the helicopter that had risen above the level of the roof. It was
a large machine, and out of reflex Sara ducked down in fear of the blades that
spun so quickly they weren’t even visible.

The helicopter was level
with the platform and creeping closer. It rotated in place just enough to see
the pilot beyond the glare of the evening sun on the windshield.

It was Derek.

“Derek!” Sara shouted,
although the sound couldn’t have reached him.

She could see his lips form
her own name in return, and her heart soared until he pointed frantically
behind her.

By the time she clued into
what he tried to convey and looked back across the platform, Chad was almost
upon her, and she stumbled back at the fury in his eyes.

Derek edged the helicopter
closer until the landing skid was just out of reach.

With a tremendous heave of
her body, Sara flung herself at the tantalizing piece of metal, the
savior
from above. Her fingertips brushed the bottom before
slipping off, and she landed hard on the platform, so close to the edge that
she wobbled and almost toppled over.

The helicopter lowered by
another foot, and Sara gathered herself before jumping with all the energy she
had, hooking her hands over the metal and holding as tight as she could.

Got it!

The helicopter pulled up.
Elation filled her, and for the first time since she had woken up with her
wrists and ankles bound she had reason to hope. Derek had come for her. He
cared about her. Maybe even loved her.

The bar underneath her hands
jolted and dropped a foot. Sara swung wildly and fought to maintain her grip.
She looked over to see Chad staring intently at her across the underbelly of
the helicopter, gripping the other landing skid.

Derek hadn’t flown away fast
enough.

Sara screamed. It was a
nightmare—it had to be. Chad’s dogged pursuit of her would never end
until one or both of them was dead. All the while the same
grim,
focused expression remained burned into his eyes.

She kicked out at the man,
but couldn’t reach across the distance. While she lacked the upper body
strength to do more than just hang, Chad pulled himself up with ease and in no
time was at the door of the helicopter. With Derek so close, Chad no longer
paid her any attention.

He probably thinks I’ll fall by myself.

The thought made Sara look
down for the first time since she had grabbed hold of the aircraft, and she
immediately wished she hadn’t.