Page 173 of Lethal Obsession

I’m not sure what kind of news I’m expecting, exactly. But the idea of standing around in a waiting room for God knows how many hours with nothing to do but envision the injury to Lars’s head is nightmarish at best.

Benny is slumped in a chair on the opposite side of the waiting room. Leaning forward, he clasps his hands between his knees and stares at the floor.

I stare at the wall, willing my brain into the neutral state I mastered during my years with the Orlovs. It’s a place where nothing really touches me, where I just focus on the smallest thing—a chunk of plaster, a speck of dust, the curve of a window—then study it in microscopic detail. There is nothing more destabilizing than the scenarios our own minds can conjure, so I learned to discipline myself to block them out.

Except I never realized that Lars was always with me in that neutral space, whispering inside my head.

His slightly mocking voice, commenting on the window frame color: Was that painter on acid, dude?

Offering a dry aside when Vilnus Orlov was in the middle of one of his insane rants about my family: Oh, this fucker needs an ecstasy pill and a blowjob.

Whether with me in person or simply a presence in my head, Lars has been my escape, my shelter, and my comfort for almost as long as I can remember. The thought that he might be gone is unfathomable, like being suspended midair over a crevasse of grief that has no visible end.

“You know about guns.” Benny’s rough voice cuts through my thoughts. “How many people survive a bullet through the eye?” He speaks without looking at me, just staring at the floor.

“It depends what kind of round it was.” Weirdly, it’s a fucking relief to speak aloud the nightmare scenarios running through my mind. “The velocity and trajectory of the bullet. Mostly it depends on whether or not it lodged in his brain.”

“Jack Bellini told me these guys were highly trained. Probably ex-Navy SEALs or whatever they’re called.”

I nod. “Likely.”

“Unlikely to be a bad shot, then.”

“Yes.” There’s no point in lying to him. “But they were also aiming from the water, under pressure. That doesn’t make for a good shot.”

“Jack said there was a sniper onshore,” Benny says slowly. “Snipers use high-powered rifles and big rounds. I watch movies,” he says, glancing at me. “What if it was the sniper who hit him?”

Since the same thought has run through my mind countless times, I swallow another wave of nausea. “The sniper would have been firing from two miles away, amid chaos, at a moving target on a yacht. It’s extremely unlikely it was a sniper’s round that hit him.”

Which hasn’t stopped me from imagining it a hundred times. I didn’t miss the careful way Jack described Lars being shot. Phrases like must have and the men think that are what people say when they really don’t fucking know.

Not that I wanted any more specifics.

I knew from one look at Jack’s face that whatever kind of shot hit Lars, the damage was fucking bad.

“It’s fucking bad, isn’t it.” Benny reads my mind with Lars-like accuracy.

“Yeah.” I lean back against the plastic chair and stare at the ceiling. “Yeah, Benny. It’s fucking bad.”

He nods gravely. “Well, there’s no point in both of us waiting around here for bad news. Make sure they know they have to tell me what’s going on, then you can fuck off. Go and shoot whoever did this. Oh, come on,” he snaps. “You know you won’t relax until you’ve killed something.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” I glare at him. “Not until I know what is happening.”

“The nurse told Jack the surgery will likely go for hours.”

“So we’ll wait for hours.”

“No.” Benny shakes his head with quiet certainty. “No offense, Alexei, but I’m not sure I can sit in the same room as you for that long without saying something I’ll regret.”

I tense. “If you have something to say, then fucking say it.”

He inhales sharply, fists clenched. “I doubt there’s anything I could say that would come close to whatever sorry bullshit you’re busy telling yourself.”

“Look.” I lean forward, clasping my hands in a conscious effort to stay calm. “We both know this is my fault. And we’re going to be here for a while. So whatever is on your mind, now’s the time.”

Benny stares at me so long without speaking that I begin to feel uncomfortable, and I’m a man who mastered silence a long time ago. When he finally does speak, it’s far from what I expect.

“The first night Lars and I were together,” he says slowly, “was in Paris, after you blew up a city block, then disappeared. Not that I knew about any of that at the time.” He half smiles. “One minute I was in a Paris nightclub, flirting with a hot, hilarious, sexy-as-fuck tech genius who couldn’t wait to get me back to his penthouse for a wild night of debauchery. The next, I woke up in his bed—with no memory other than a vague recollection of drinking cocktails in the Jacuzzi with Lourdes—to find he’d turned into an intense stranger, wired tighter than a control freak who’d just lost the remote.”