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Except, Theo was there—intervened?—and convinced Neri he didn’t need to go through with the hit, because Theo had money. He must have paid Neri more than the value of the price on my head to keep me alive.
Neri was going to have me killed, at the behest of Gordon Saxon.Thatwas his intention from the very beginning, well before I set foot in a hotel ballroom.
Oh my God.
Neri and his bodyguard passing out from my drugs turned out to be crucial happenstance. No wonder Theo was so bowled over by it, and Kai even more so.
Kai? Did he know? Was that why he’d participated in Theo’s plans to shepherd me out of the United States?
“How…” My throat crunched against the words, but attempted bravado was my only available weapon. “How much am I worth?”
“You’re not the end game,” Bo said, laughing. “But you’re definitely at the end of the line.”
I became aware of my slip of a dress, my bare feet, my tousled, useless long hair. Bo was leaning forward like he was about to pounce.
Bo ran his tongue across his top teeth. “And guess what? I want that money.”
He leaped.
I was quick. And much lighter than his heavy, muscle-laden frame. I dodged his grab, sprinting to the far corner, bouncing against the wall, then tearing down the hallway. He caught me by the end of my skirt. My chin cracked against the floor and I rolled over, arms up in defense. Bo crawled on top of me, his meaty hands climbing over my thighs, latching onto my breasts, then heading to my neck.
Screaming, I clawed at the skin on his forearms and kicked at his weight, but any footprints I left on him were pain-free, because he kept coming, his fingers reaching until they landed around my throat and squeezed.
Stars came immediately. My vision wavered, my tongue bulged, and my face felt like it was about to crack into a thousand pieces that would never fit together the same way again.
Fumbling, desperate for time, my dress was hiked past my thighs, naked legs exposed. My fingers hit cool metal and slipped, then grappled for it again. I pulled it out of my garter—my other hand still digging into his wrist, arm, fingers, peeling back his nail beds, begging for life—I flipped the safety, pointed at his temple, and pulled the trigger.
His lids peeled back from his eyeballs, a garish picture forever imprinted on my mind, before the image exploded with blood.
Bo flopped on top of me, the full weight of him a crushing reminder that what was once a lively individual hellbent to kill me was now a dead person. I suddenly wanted him off me—off,off—the sounds echoing throughout the hallway sounding inhuman, animalistic, and containing the most basic language of survival. Eventually, I discovered those sounds were my own.
Trembling, I pushed out from under, his body making a flopping sound reserved only for the lifeless before rigor mortis set in. My shoulders were wet with warm, thick, syrupy blood, my feet slipping on the same, but I managed a stand, then a topple into the wall, before sliding into the bathroom and turning on the shower. I peeled out of the gown, my cheeks suspiciously dry throughout the process of washing somebody else’s blood off my limbs. When I clambered out, soaking wet, I traveled from the bathroom to what was Drea’s temporary quarters on the other side of the apartment. Bo didn’t move as I stumbled by, and was in the exact same, face-down position I’d left him in.
I searched through drawers, finding a basic sweatshirt and leggings, and slipped them on. There were also a pair of worn-white sneakers that were a half-size too big, but I put them on, too. Still, no tears. But I dropped the clothing a few times due to my jerkier-than-normal movements, the trembles in my fingers that were refusing to ebb. Forget tying the laces.
Bo’s body remained immobile when I went back to retrieve the small, pearl-handled gun I’d filched from Rada’s closet and stuffed into my waistband. Despite my body’s seizures, I remembered to turn the safety back on before doing so.
My gown, I shoved into a plastic bag. A jug of bleach was discovered under the kitchen sink, and I dumped it down the shower’s drain. I wiped down anything I touched. Then, I exited the apartment.
Forty-five minutes.
That was how long it took to clean the parts of me that I could and remove any incriminating evidence from the crime scene.
I hadn’t said a word.
