Chapter 128: Calculating the Catch 2

Damon’s POV

Noah didn’t say a single word. He walked forward, his icy eyes completely dead. When the guy panicked and swung wild, Noah ducked beneath the wooden beam, grabbed the guy’s wrist, and twisted it completely backward. The bone snapped with a wet pop. The guy opened his mouth to scream, but Noah grabbed him by the throat, lifted him off his feet with terrifying raw strength, and slammed his spine hard against the concrete doorframe.

The thug went instantly limp, slumping to the ground unconscious.

Three men down. In less than forty bloody seconds.

Noah stood over the bodies, his knuckles dripping with someone else’s blood, breathing as evenly as if he had just finished a light morning jog.

’Jesus Christ,’ I thought, my heart thumping wildly against my ribs. ’The guy really is a demon.’

Noah had guessed the number of guards almost down to the exact man. But this wasn’t the time to stand around admiring his violence. If I wanted to fulfill my end of the bargain—if I wanted to look Micah in the eye ever again—I had to get up there right now.

"Stop watching and move, Silver," I cursed at myself, tearing my eyes away from the slaughter.

I scrambled around the rear corner of the building. The ground level was a mess of shattered concrete blocks, wheelbarrows, and deep mud puddles. I found a narrow metal staircase bolted to the exterior wall... temporary scaffolding stairs used by the construction crew.

I took the steps three at a time, moving as silently as my heavy breathing would allow.

When I reached the landing between the second and third floors, I stopped, pressing my back against the cold, rough concrete wall.

A sharp, stabbing pain flared along the right side of my ribs. I hissed through my teeth, pressing a hand against my side. The lingering effects of my fever combined with the stress were catching up to me, but I shoved the sensation down. Pain didn’t matter. Dying didn’t matter. Saving Micah was the only thing on my agenda.

I leaned forward slightly, peering through the gap between the exposed support beams onto the third-floor slab.

My breath caught in my throat.

Noah had been right. He was right about every single goddamn thing.

Standing right at the very edge of the open floor was a greasy-haired guy holding a rope. And tied to the other end of that rope, standing on the absolute brink of a thirty-foot drop, was Micah.

Micah was shaking so violently that I could see the fabric of his sweater trembling from fifteen yards away. His face was soaked in tears, pale as a corpse, bruised red across his left cheek. My stomach churned with a sick, burning mixture of fury and despair. Seeing him like that... bruised, terrified, completely helpless... made me want to tear that kidnapper apart with my bare hands.

Then I looked down past the edge where Micah was standing.

My blood ran completely cold.

Directly below the third-floor ledge, the ground was a nightmare of construction hazards. There was a massive pile of jagged granite boulders meant for foundation leveling, and sticking right through the dirt around them were dozens of rusted, vertical iron rebar poles.

If Micah fell from this height, he wouldn’t just break his legs. He would be impaled. He would die instantly.

"Fuck," I whispered, the terror clawing at my throat so hard I felt suffocated.

How was I supposed to stop this?

I didn’t have a gun. I couldn’t tackle the kidnapper because the guy was standing right behind Micah; any sudden movement would cause him to pull Micah over the edge with him. And from where I was crouching on the second-floor scaffolding platform, I couldn’t reach them in time.

I glanced toward the interior stairwell just as heavy, steady footsteps echoed from inside the core of the building.

Noah stepped onto the third floor.

He looked terrifying. His hand was covered in fresh blood, his posture relaxed, his face completely hollowed out of humanity.

"Get your filthy hands away from my brother," Noah spoke, his voice cutting through the wind like a frozen blade.

I watched the kidnapper’s reaction. The guy wasn’t just scared; his mind was snapping. He realized his men downstairs were gone. He knew Noah was an unstoppable monster.

"A living hell?" Noah murmured, taking a slow step forward. "Release that rope right now... and I’ll show you what real hell actually looks like."

The kidnapper started laughing.

"If I don’t finish this... Jenson’s father will kill me anyway," the guy stammered out, backing up so far that his own heel hung over the void. "I’m dead either way... so fuck it! We’ll just die together then!"

My heart practically stopped beating.

He’s not bluffing. The bastard is going to throw him!

I didn’t have minutes. I didn’t have seconds. I had fractions of a second to figure out how to keep Micah from being torn apart on those iron spikes below.

My eyes darted frantically around the concrete floor of the second-level scaffolding where I was standing.

Pipes. Broken bricks. Piles of dust. Empty paint buckets. None of that could stop a falling body.

And then, my eyes snapped to the far corner of the concrete platform.

Tucked behind an overturned metal wheelbarrow was a massive, tightly folded bundle of thick, green industrial netting... heavy-duty debris catchment netting reinforced with thick nylon ropes and metal carabiners, designed to catch falling tools and workers on high-rise sites.

My eyes widened in revelation.

Oh! I could use that!

If I couldn’t stop the shove from up here, I could anchor the net below and catch him before he hit the iron spikes!

Right at that exact second, from the floor above me, the kidnapper let out a savage roar.

I looked up just in time to see the man’s hands slam violently into Micah’s chest, shoving him completely off the edge of the third floor.