The Frame-Up (The Golden Arrow #1)(62)
The sky behind my eyelids bursts a brilliant and ferocious orange and magenta. Thunder rolls across the sky. I’m breathless and flying through the stars, my body alight with a fire that stems from the point where my body meets Matteo’s.
That is, until I realize that the fireworks and thunder aren’t just in my head. They’ve actually happened.
Matteo and I jump apart, realization dawning at the same moment.
“W-what was that?” My voice shakes as I draw a deep gasping breath. Maybe because I’d just had the most intense first kiss of my entire life in the alcove of a warehouse? Or because things are exploding and the man I was just kissing is already holding a gun?
Matteo grazes my cheek with one hand. “You stay here, okay?” His gaze lingers on my lips for just a moment. He leans in, brushes my lips ever so briefly with his, then dashes out of the alcove, while I’m a little slower on the uptake. My brain still fights with the intense wave of lust that crashed through me, my head still spinning from the kiss, but my eyes are searching the street outside, looking for danger. And my ears are straining to put a label on the rolling, thundering noise I heard.
With one good mental slap, I’m back on my feet, all senses firing together. I don’t want to stay here all by myself while someone’s bombing the neighborhood. I feel vulnerable and alone without Matteo’s solid mass beside me. He’s already sprinting up the street, and I follow at a safe distance, constantly glancing behind me to make sure I’m not being followed. A plume of smoke and fire rises above the warehouse district. What looks like an explosion only a few blocks away.
Other people are running up the street now, but they don’t seem to be chasing either one of us. The fireball in the sky even draws the crew loading the crates. I don’t have much time to scan the faces because I’m already sprinting up the street after Matteo. Don’t trip, don’t trip, don’t trip beats a staccato in my head as I run. One errant rock and I’d have road rash.
“What’s going on?” I wheeze as I flop to a stop next to Matteo’s dark sedan. He’s already halfway inside, the key in the ignition, the radio in his hand.
“Jesus, MG. Do you ever listen to me?” He runs his hands through his hair in frustration, then seems to shrug it off. Bigger fish and all that. “I don’t know what’s going on. I’m listening to the scanner.”
I fall quiet. Well, as quiet as an out-of-shape girl who hates running—much less in stilettos—can be. Which isn’t very.
The fire’s intensity already diminishes, though enough of it still burns for me to see clouds of smoke filling the sky. Even here I can smell the faint hints of burning wood and an acrid smell that reminds me of fireworks.
Matteo says a string of gibberish into the radio, letters and numbers that mean nothing to me. Matteo looks concerned. No, he looks pissed. A garbled response immediately, and somewhere in the distance a chorus of sirens lifts into the cloudy night.
“Get in.” Matteo reaches over and pushes the passenger door open.
“I—what?”
“Get in the car, MG. Please.” All business. “I need to respond to this. I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m not leaving an unarmed civilian here alone.”
So now I’m not Michael-Grace. I’m hardly even MG. I’m an “unarmed civilian” he needs to protect.
His face softens. “I’m not leaving you alone. Not here. I need to know you’re safe. Get in, please.”
I cross quickly in front of the car, slide in the passenger side, and the car lurches forward before I even have the door shut. I glance over. Matteo clicks his seat belt, and I do the same. There is zero conversation as we speed along the street. At each stop he flips a switch for his lights and we fly through the intersection. A mess of static and different voices fills the radio. Some must be dispatch, and some are officers responding to the scene we are headed toward.
I catch a word I recognize among the gibberish. “Did they just say Marvelous?”
Matteo’s face is grim, focused on the road as he drives. “Yes. There’s been an explosion and a fire. While I was requesting backup at the warehouse and talking with the Coast Guard and . . .” He trails off, and I know he’s reliving our kiss. My stomach drops through the floor of the car. “While I did all of that,” he continues, “we guessed wrong. Not only were those guys loading crates into the warehouse; we missed the Golden Arrow. We chose the wrong lead, and it literally blew up in our faces.”
We. At least we are still a team in his mind.
“What do you mean?” I rock violently from side to side as we fishtail into a parking lot filled with police cruisers and a firetruck. The sign that just flashed by my window confirms my suspicion.
“I mean”—Matteo throws the car into park and is halfway out the door before he turns to me—“the Golden Arrow just blew up Marvelous Printing.”
He shuts his door with a slam, and my mouth falls open. How could he possibly know that? I start to open my door when I see it.
I know how he knows.
The fire inside the building has all but burned out, but on the lawn, just off the quiet commercial street where Marvelous Printing resides, there’s a fire still burning. Artfully drawn with some sort of long-lasting fuel and set aflame, an arrow burns bright in the darkness.