A slashed doorway. A corridor that smelled of old paint and something metallic. A faint beam of light escaping from under another door at the end .
And I was running.
Isabella POV
My mouth tasted of dust and metal. Every nerve in me felt raw, like I'd been rubbed with sand. When the shouts started, they were distant, an animal noise that seemed to come from the walls themselves. Footsteps. Boots. Men moving fast. My heart clattered against my ribs and for a maddening moment I thought it was the same panic that had chased me through alleys.
Then another sound threaded through it a pattern I knew the way a drowning man knows a shoreline. Voices. Yelling. Not the same cadence as the men who'd taken me someone else. Orders, sharper, close.
