Proof of Life (The Potentate of Atlanta #4) - Hailey Edwards Page 0,58
if he hadn’t caught me before I fell.
“You didn’t call.” He crushed me against him. “You didn’t call.”
“Shh.” I pressed my hands to his cheeks. “I’m okay.”
I stroked his face, his throat, his chest, reassuring myself he was here, that I was alive.
Around us, the others began stirring, and it was as if they were waking from a dream too.
“The circle held.” Linus helped Grier to her feet. “You are remarkable.”
“You’re just trying to butter my biscuits.”
“I’m not sure what that means,” he confessed, “but I suspect the answer is…yes.”
“I’ll explain later.” Beaming, she kissed Linus hard. “Let’s evacuate the others.”
“What happened?” I didn’t have the heart to tell Midas I couldn’t breathe past his hold. “A bomb?”
“Oh yeah.” Grier dusted off her palms. “It smacked us all around like pinballs.”
Uncertainty mingled with confusion, but everyone looked okay. “Did the sigil work?”
“You wouldn’t know if it didn’t,” Linus said darkly. “You would be ash.”
“Good to know.” Swallowing hard, I focused on the devastation. “I don’t get it. The pinball analogy.”
Maybe my brain was still too rattled to make all the dots connect. No, wait, I couldn’t even find the dots.
“I used a sigil on each individual person,” she explained patiently. “Think of it as a bulletproof bodysuit.”
The impervious design, the one no one was supposed to know existed because in the wrong hands, para or human, invulnerability could prove world-ending.
“I’ve never tested it under these conditions,” she admitted. “It seemed prudent to add another layer of protection.”
Had I been able to move my arms, I might have smacked her for not telling me that in the first place.
Linus must have read my mind or noticed the clench of my jaw, because he cut me a warning look.
“The problem is, the explosion was so intense, it tripped the wards I set. Well, that’s not the problem.” A sigh moved through her. “The actual problem is, the wards activated a second after the initial blast, allowing the momentum to knock us off our feet and into the ward that sealed around us.” She checked with Linus, who nodded, then kept going. “The ward was solid, and usually people are…squishy…but we were all impervious at the time, so we kind of flounced around and knocked into each other.”
“Like pinballs in a machine,” I finished for her.
“Well, Teach?” Grier ribbed Linus. “Did I ace the test?”
Smiling at her in a way I hadn’t known he could, with his whole face, sparkling eyes included, he promised, “I’ll let you know once my brain stops bouncing in my skull.”
“Meanie.” She elbowed him harder. “It kept us alive, didn’t it?”
“It would appear so,” he allowed, “but that might be the brain damage talking.”
Fighting her own smile, Grier gestured to him. “Do you see what I have to put up with?”
“I’m not sure this is the same Linus.” I wouldn’t have recognized him. “He’s so…”
It was interesting to watch Linus’s usually pale face cycle through so many shades of red. I hadn’t known he could blush, let alone so spectacularly. I was pretty impressed. It was almost like watching a laser light show cast over his features.
“I was thinking happy, or maybe relaxed, which is weird considering a bomb just went off.”
“Grier yanks the stick out of his butt.” Bishop picked his way closer. “That’s what you’re seeing.”
“He’s not that bad.” Grier slid her arms around Linus’s narrow waist. “For the record, I like his butt.”
“He’s my boss.” I found somewhere else to look. “I don’t want to know about his butt.”
“Can we please stop talking about my butt?” Linus sounded pained. “And myself in general?”
“The restaurant is clear,” Bishop announced. “The staff and guests are out on the street, safe and sound. Ford is corralling them until the EMTs arrive.”
“Good.” An exhale shuddered through me. “We need to debrief them and send them home.”
“EMTs,” Grier said thoughtfully. “We can pass the kit over to them and let them BS their way to getting us blood samples to test everyone who was in attendance.”
“Except for Ares.” I fisted my hands in Midas’s shirt. “Tell me she didn’t walk in on you.”
“Let’s get you home, and then I’ll show you what I found.”
“But Ares—”
“—got away.” Midas rubbed my arms. “I couldn’t reach her before she ducked back into her Swyft and vanished into traffic, and honestly, I wasn’t worried about her just then. All I could think about was you.”
“Hey, I don’t get blown up that often,” I protested. “Hardly at all, really, if