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“Let her in.” Clary drained her glass and then picked up her cat-shaped purse. “She was a blast at the gala.”
“Oh, we’ve been talking since then.” William gave Egerton a wicked grin. “Sometimes you don’t want to let a girl off the hook completely. I mean, why let it go to waste?”
Egerton laughed and turned to his butler to instruct that Anne be let up. William thought his heart might very well stop. Anne was coming up here while William was wearing a wire in the den of the lion. They couldn’t have come up with a stupider plan if they’d been trying.
When Anne appeared, she was barely disguised. William recognized the pants and boots she normally wore during work hours, but the rest was odd. She wore a dark gray tank top, with the arms of a fuchsia sweater tied around her shoulders, and she had pulled her hair into pigtails.
“Hi!” She waved at William and came up to give him a hug. “Did you forget about our date? I mean, I know you said you were doing business today, but um…” She tapped on her wristwatch. “Lunchtime.”
“You can stay and have lunch with us, young lady,” Egerton said. He was looking Anne up and down in a way that made William want to twist his tentacles into a knot.
“Oh, um, we could. But—” Anne looked at William with big eyes. “We had a reservation. At Evie’s.”
What the hell? William looked into her eyes, trying to suss out what she could possibly be trying to tell him. Was she trying to get him to leave? By mentioning her daughter?
“No, Anne.” Clary cooed. “Stay with us. I haven’t seen you in forever.”
“I know! But maybe we could meet up sometime? I work a lot. I don’t have a lot of time just to hang with the girls,” Anne said.
“I’ve never really had much in common with girls my age, unfortunately,” Clary replied, opening her purse and searching for something in it.
William frowned as he caught the look in Clary’s eye. He’d seen that look once before; right before she’d hopped on top of a boy in boarding school and beaten the shit out of him. At the time, he’d assumed the guy deserved it since so many of the guys at school were such spoiled little shits. She looked like a predator spotting her prey.
William took Anne’s hand. “Give us a moment?”
“Certainly,” Egerton said.
William had half-turned toward the door when Anne reached behind her and pulled a gun from under the ugly sweater.
“Hands up!” she shouted, just as the sound of a bullet rang in the air.
William didn’t think. He didn’t breathe. He just turned to Anne and pulled her against his chest, holding her there as tightly as he could.
Chapter Fourteen
Anne would never forget the look on William’s face as he held her and blood dribbled down his lips. Pain. Shock. Fear. Anger. No words came from his practiced lips. No tricks left up his sleeves. Never before had Anne felt so keenly what it would mean for William to be out of her life, permanently.
Harrold Egerton had shrieked William’s name. Clary had smirked and aimed her gun again. But Anne was a good shot, even with William’s body sagging heavily against her as a grisly human shield. She caught the side of Clary’s arm, causing the woman to drop her gun.
“You shot me!” Clary protested, as though offended.
The scene had been truly surreal.
Moments later, the other officers on the scene, including the captain, had come sweeping up, taking father and daughter in on charges of conspiracy to murder, smuggling, racketeering, and on and on. Clary, however, was going to be facing multiple accounts of murder one. She had smiled all the way to the cop car.
Now, Anne sat by William’s bed in the hospital. He’d been in for surgery to remove the bullets, and the doctor had said William had done well. He hadn’t woken yet, though, and Anne felt almost continuously that she might just vomit everywhere. She couldn’t do that though. Because she was in a hospital. Where William could die from a gunshot wound.
“Wake up, you idiot,” Anne whispered occasionally. She worried they’d make her leave, soon. She wasn’t his wife or anything. When pressed, she’d blurted to the nurse that William was her daughter’s father, and they’d made their own assumptions, or maybe the nurse had thought it was close enough.
She clutched his hand and closed her eyes. She’d cried so much already that she couldn’t imagine having any tears left, but her body clearly had other plans.
“Rude,” William murmured.
Anne looked up and squeezed his hands. “Will? William! Are you awake?”
“Yes. Please don’t shout. Think I’ve got a mother of a hangover.”
Anne clicked her tongue in annoyance. “You don’t have a hangover, you idiot. You were shot. Oh, my God, are you teasing me? You nearly died. How dare you tease me?”
