Shadow Thief - Eva Chase Page 0,66
smoke—from the flavor of it, it was a trash can fire. Great neighborhood we’d ended up in.
Since we had the pilfered keys now, I went in through the lobby as if I belonged in the building while the trio followed via the shadows. No point in drawing attention to ourselves with the guys’ striking good looks and Thorn’s nearly inhuman physique.
A middle-aged woman in turquoise scrubs was looking through a few envelopes by the mailboxes. She didn’t even glance my way as I breezed past her to the stairs. I didn’t think anything of her, or of the fact that she ended up ambling along several steps behind me. Only when she came out into the second floor after me did I realize I could have a problem. She might be familiar enough with her neighbors on the same floor to know I didn’t belong in the apartment I was heading to.
It only took a small trick. I stopped and muttered a curse to myself as if I’d remembered something that frustrated me. Then I stepped closer to the wall to rummage through my purse. The woman walked by… and kept going all the way to the stairwell at the far end of the hall.
That was odd. Maybe she’d taken a longer route to her own floor to get some exercise? My skin prickled as I hustled the last short distance to the apartment door and ducked inside.
The guys took a few more seconds to appear, and when they did, it was in mid argument.
“How could they already know we’re here?” Ruse was saying. “We only just got back from Meriden’s house, and she was already in the lobby.”
“They could have followed us from the office building,” Thorn said, and spun toward me. “We have to leave. That woman who followed you—she stopped and watched to see which apartment you went into, and then she immediately took out her communication device. She must have been waiting for us. And if our enemies know we’re in this building, the rest of them will be waiting nearby.”
My pulse stuttered with a jolt of adrenaline. Fucking hell. Thankfully I’d brought my backpack along for the drive, so I had almost all of my things. But I couldn’t take off without—
“Pickle!” I called, pitching my voice low but urgent. “Pickle, come, we’ve got to go.”
The little dragon dashed out of the room I’d slept in, tufts of feathers clinging to his scales and floating into the air in his wake. He must have found a down pillow to nest in, damn it.
There wasn’t time to make amends for our unwitting hosts’ destroyed property. I bent down with my purse open and motioned for him to jump in. He balked for a second and then made the leap. My jerk of the zipper, closing it to hide him, was met with a snort of protest.
While I’d gathered him, Thorn had slipped away into the shadows again. He wavered back into the front hall with an expression even graver than before.
“They’re just coming out from the stairs at both ends of the hall,” he said. “More than a dozen of them—and this time they’re fully equipped like the ones who took Omen.”
I yanked the dangling strap of my backpack over my other shoulder and held my purse close. “There’s no fire escape this time. Do you think we have any chance of making it past them in the hall?”
“The three of us could take a shadow route, but you—” Thorn’s head jerked to the side as if he’d heard something from the hall. His expression set with resolve. He swiveled on his feet. “The vehicles are… that way.” Grabbing my wrist to tug me with him, he sprinted down the hall toward the bedrooms.
“What—?” I managed to get out as Ruse and Snap dashed with us. Before I could complete that question, Thorn had let go of me to charge straight through the bedroom door. It burst off its hinges with a crackle of splintering wood… and Thorn kept going, his fists rising in front of him, straight at the far wall.
He slammed into it arms first and drove straight through, plaster and plywood crumbling around him to rain down on the floor. As my feet jarred to a stop in the middle of the room, I gaped at the Thorn-sized passage he’d opened up between this apartment and the one next door. Oh my freaky stars, the guy didn’t do things by halves, did he?