Rebel

“Dad!”

What in the hell had happened to him? Had he been picked up?

Okay. It was okay. We’d never once trained for the possibility that a job would be botched in some way. I didn’t know what to do. I forced myself to take a breath and exhale before I moved.

I could stay in these ducts all night if I had to. No one knew I was here.

But as soon as I had the thought, I got claustrophobic. It didn’t make sense–I’d never been this way before, and I had a fair amount of practice with scrabbling through ducts and other small spaces.

I army crawled through the narrow passage as fast as my forearms could carry me, praying I wasn’t making too much noise. I arrived at the drop-down, a ten-foot free fall, and didn’t blink before taking it.

I landed hard, and my ankle wrenched beneath me, sending a lightning bolt of pain up my leg. I didn’t quite manage to keep my cry muffled, and I reached down instinctively to wrap my fingers around the spot. It was okay, though. I was almost out. Once I was on the street, I could slip into the night. Or hobble.

I went to the next set of ducts and slithered forward until I got to the end in the boiler room. From there, I only had to crawl through an upper window, and I was out.

I hoisted myself up and tossed my legs through the opening then dropped quietly to my feet, my right leg buckling a little because of the sore ankle.

“Face down, hands behind your head!”

I froze at the shouted command. Three officers had me cornered with guns pointed at me. They were big, burly, and very angry.

“I said, face down!” the guy snapped.

“Nice and easy, no fast moves,” another added.

Slowly, I dropped to my knees, hands in the air.

“Where’s your partner?” the first guy asked. “You couldn’t have pulled this off alone, kid.”

That was when I realized that they hadn’t caught my dad. They didn’t know where he was. Or who he was.

They hadn’t caught him. Why? Because he’d run away. The comm in my ear was silent because he was gone.

As the Empress sapphire ring was taken from me and cuffs slapped on my wrists, I knew what he’d done. He’d left his seventeen-year-old daughter to take the fall for his crime.