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The crowd tripled in size. It was chaos. Flashes were going off. People were shouting questions. People were shoving. And for once, the attention was no longer on us.
I lovedthat.
Maybe this wasn’t such a dumb plan after all.
But then Matt was shoving through the crowd.
I was still standing back, but he turned, grabbed my arm, and dragged me behind him.
I glanced for Tony, but he was already doing his part. He was skimming the back end of the crowd, and he was hunching down so I was close to losing him in the crowd.
Wow. He was good at this. They really had done this before.
Fitz was on the outskirts. He and Scott were both watching us. Both wearing slight frowns. Both looking resigned to letting us do whatever we were going to do. They’d been like that since Kash left, so I assumed either they hadn’t been given orders to directly stop us from doing certain things or they were given the opposite order—protect from afar, but still let us do idiotic things.
Quinn’s lawyers were leaving the room, Quinn right behind them.
I had another burst of fear and grabbed for Matt’s shirt. He stepped out from the last edges of the crowd, and his shirt slipped right through my fingers.
Was that fate?
At first, they didn’t see us.
They kept going.
Matt stepped even more out of the crowd, right in their way now.
The first lawyer guy had no option. He was blocked, but his glance was distracted as he began to move around Matt. Then recognition flared and he ground to a halt. He was raising his briefcase, but I was certain that was a reflex, because he didn’t do anything with it, just held it up to his chest and looked at his partner.
They’d all seen Matt.
Eyes slid to his right, and there I was.
Now cameras were swinging back to us, because apparently they’d forgotten we were present, and I had a thought in the back of my mind that the whole reason we came ahead of time hadn’t worked. Word had not gotten to Quinn, because both of her lawyers looked shocked to see us.
They were dressed in their sleek business suits. One lawyer had a head of white hair. The second lawyer was younger, his black hair combed back, and I wondered if he was sleeping with Quinn. Seemed like her type; he was very Drew Bonham-ish.
Then there was Quinn. She had paused behind the two lawyers. They closed ranks, as we knew they would, and the younger guy tugged at his collar.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “There’s to be no interaction between your family and our client.”
Matt was talking.
I wasn’t paying attention to his words, but I heard his tone. It was the same voice he used when he wanted to get a reaction, when he wanted to piss someone off. He was doing it amazingly,because the white-haired lawyer went all rigid. Quinn, too. Her gaze had been latched on me, but whatever Matt said, Quinn’s head snapped to his and she began to step forward.
That’s when it happened.
The guy in the black hoodie, his head slouched down, moved behind Quinn. There was a surge in the crowd, and I knew it had been created by him, but also by the press suddenly jostling forward to get whatever Matt was saying on camera, and Tony was there.
And he was gone.
It happened that fast.
Quinn had been jostled from the crowd, too, but it happened so smoothly that she never reacted.
Shit. Holy crap.
It was done. Already.
