Page 85 of The Steel Rogue

She got to the far end of the room and a crash thundered above her.

Screaming, shouts, a boom. A boom of a pistol.

Her heart in her throat, she found the staircase against the adjacent wall and ran to it.

Please let that gunfire be outside. Please. Outside.

Her feet slow, too slow up the rickety stairs, she poked her head up into the cut-through in the floor above, her look frantic.

A wide open room lit by several simple chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. One body on the ground. Motionless. Bockton standing five paces away from the body looking at a gold watch dangling from an obnoxiously long chain attached to his jacket.

Another body on the floor. This one twitching.

Roe.

Roe lay flat on the middle of the floor—his left leg unnaturally bent. His face so badly bruised and cut, she barely recognized him.

A boot swung at Roe’s face.

It connected, smashing his jaw and sending him flying across the floor. Blood splattered across the wood planks.

She jerked back, hitting the wall and cringing so hard she almost slipped down the staircase.

The smell reached her before she could open her eyes. Before she could run to Roe.

Fire.

Fire somewhere below her.

Before she could react, an explosion ricocheted through the building below.

The force of it sent the wall behind her shoulders vibrating, the staircase below her feet shaking, splintering, Hell, it was crumbling. Crumbling beneath her heels.

The blast echoing in her head, muting everything around her, Torrie leapt upward, swinging her right leg up onto the floorboards and scrambling onto the safety of the second floor just as the staircase below her crashed to the ground.

She rolled onto what she hoped was solid floor and opened her eyes just in time to see Roe swinging a dagger up into the belly of the brute that had just smashed his head with his heel. Roe twisted the blade viciously, gutting the man in under a second. The brute fell back, staggering, dropping far slower than the death that was just handed to him.

Roe watched him drop, not knowing behind him Bockton had pulled a sword, lifting it above his head as he stalked his way across the room to Roe.

Murder in Bockton’s eyes. Nothing but murder.

She shrieked, more to draw attention to herself than from a need to do so, and she scrambled to her feet, wedging free from her skirt the loaded pistol.

She slid it across the floor to Roe as she ran at an angle from him, aiming for Bockton.

“Tor—no!” Roe’s agonized bellow cut through the ringing in her ears, but she ignored it. Roe wouldn’t have the pistol ready in time and his dagger was still stuck in the gut of the brute that had fallen.

Just as Bockton recognized her intention to tackle him and veered his sword to cut down upon her neck, she dropped, flattening herself long and lunging straight at his legs.

Too low for his swing.

She rammed into Bockton’s shins with the full force of her body and he crashed to the ground next to her, his legs taken out from under him.

But he still held the sword. The blade he was already swinging at her belly with enough power to slash her in two.

Crack.

A deafening shot filled her ears, her head.