and adrenaline rushed through my blood.
And so the fun begins…
I tried to exit through the side door I’d gone through with Rogue the last time I was here, but found my way blocked by some security asshole so I doubled back before he spotted me and slipped down another corridor.
This house was stupidly large and I was definitely pushing the limits of my restroom break already. They either thought I was doing the biggest shit known to man or were gonna start getting suspicious. So I needed to hurry the fuck up.
“Where’s the fucking exit?” I snarled in frustration as I walked down yet another hall.
“Hello?” a distant male voice called and I glanced at a door opposite me which was locked with several bolts and padlocks.
I figured that was none of my fucking business and I was on a time limit, so I started walking again, but the voice called out once more and my blood froze in my veins.
“Is someone there?” he yelled and my brain rattled.
I just stood there like my legs had turned to stone, glancing back at the door as a frown tugged at my brow.
Not possible. I’m hearing things.
But I found myself drifting back towards that door with my pulse drumming in my ears and hope tearing a hole in my chest.
“Hello?” I called back.
“Maverick?!” Chase’s voice came, sounding desperate and doubtful at once.
Not. Possible.
I stood there for two endless seconds then gripped one of the padlocks on the door, the cold metal kissing my skin.
“Rick is that you?!” he called, pain in his tone and I knew it was him. I didn’t know how, but it was. He was in there. Chase fucking Cohen had either risen from the goddamn dead, his ghost was trapped down in the basement of this house, or he was fucking alive.
“Are you still there!?” he called, panic in his tone like he really believed I’d left him. “It’s Chase!”
I tried some of the bolts on the door before yanking on the large padlock, but the door was locked up like an ogre lived down there. My mind worked over everything that was happening and I came to a terrifying conclusion that was the only one which made sense. Chase was here. Alive. And a prisoner to Kaiser Rosewood. I had no fucking idea how those facts had come to be true, but they had. Holy fuck. He’s alive.
I rested my forehead to the door, cursing under my breath as emotion ripped up through my being and I shook my head at myself as I made the most stupid decision of my life. I took the grenade from my pocket, wedged it under the doorhandle, pulled the pin and ran away.
The boom that rang through the house was followed by the fire alarm going off and sprinklers turning on over my head. Chaos descended in seconds, and I was now fully invested in this choice.
I ran through the massive hole blasted in the remains of the door and the wall surrounding it, knowing I had so little fucking time to act that I was probably a dead man already.
I reached the bottom of the stone stairway, finding an old woman there sitting in a wooden rocking chair, fast asleep and I skidded to a halt as my eyebrows shot up in recognition.
“Miss Mabel?” I rasped in shock, my head spinning, but then the hammering of fists on a steel door to my left brought me back to my senses. Is everyone from my past rising from the dead tonight??
There was a bolt on this side of it and I unlocked it, wrenching it open and Chase slumped through it at my feet. The inked map of Sunset Cove on his back was intersected by old wounds and fresh ones, the Harlequin tattoo on his shoulder had been burned clean off and a myriad of cuts and bruises lined the rest of his arms. My gut tightened as I took all of that in within a single torturous second.
I fell to my knees, pulling him up as fear split me open and he stared up at me through his long hair, looking so fucking pale. My gaze settled on his mutilated right eye, a gruesome X carved through it so it was now sealed shut by a savage cut that split through his eyelid. My chest crushed and I found it hard to draw in a single breath, but when I did, I spoke his name.
“Chase?” I gasped, unsure