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Liam comes over and the two men talk. I’m on the verge of panic. I have no clue what’s going on here, but it can’t be good. Based on their expressions and body language, something very wrong has happened.
Finally, Liam climbs back into the car beside me and shuts the door.
We’re quiet. I say nothing. He’s staring straight ahead. He smells like mold, musty and dank, like he waded into an ancient swimming pool. “Jonny’s dead,” he says. “It’s a mess in there.”
I stare at him. The words make no sense. “Are you kidding?”
“No, I’m not. We found his body inside.”
“I don’t believe you. We didn’t even get a meeting with him. I mean, why would he be dead now? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Rustik must’ve heard.” But Liam doesn’t seem convinced. “I don’t know how it happened, but Jonny’s gone.”
I sit back, stunned. Jonny Jeffers was a Portland lifer, practically a tourist attraction in his own right. How could that old man be gone? He was like a piece of the city itself, and now he’s gone, all because he took our call and agreed to a meeting.
“What happened?” My voice is soft. It trembles with the strain. “Are you sure it was Rustik?”
“Jonny was shot in the forehead.” He stares down into his lap. “Both of his hands were cut off. His tongue was removed. His heart—”
“I don’t want to hear more,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut. I feel sick, stifled. Sweat drips down my back. “Was there… is there a note?”
“No note. No sign of struggle. That’s the strange part.” Liam turns to face me. “When you set the meeting with him, did he say anything?”
“He seemed anxious, but nothing that made me pause.”
“Anxious, how?”
“The way everyone’s anxious to get anywhere near you.”
Liam grunts. “You think that was it?”
“I don’t know for sure.”
“Was there more? Could there have been—”
He doesn’t finish that sentence.
The roar of an engine draws our attention.
Sean’s shouting, and Liam’s suddenly on top of me.
There’s a loud explosion, and the world flips upside down.
Chapter 28
Alisa
I slam down against the window. My shoulder’s pinned, painfully digging into broken glass. My face is pressed against something cold and hard—the door, concrete, I can’t really tell—and Liam’s still on top of me, still covering my body with his own. He weighs a thousand pounds. I’m dizzy and can’t tell which way is up.
I hear my name. “Alisa. Hey, Alisa, look at me.” Liam’s dragging me up, shaking me slightly. Everything’s ringing and whining, and the light’s far too bright.
“Liam,” I mumble. “I’m okay. I’m okay.” But am I okay? I don’t know what happened, why the whole car seems like it exploded, or why Liam sounds angry.
“Hold on.” His arms wrap around me and he’s lifting me up, up, across the car—how are we moving up through the car?—until Sean’s pulling me from the opposite window.
Loud explosions break out all around us. Sean curses, and he drags me over the side of the car, landing in a heap on the parking lot.
It takes a beat to understand that the SUV is on its side, flipped so my door was pinned against the ground.
Liam drops down beside us, a gun in his hand, as more explosions go off.
The explosions are bullets.
“Get her to safety,” Liam commands, firing his gun over the top. “Get moving!”
The world restarts like I’ve come back online.
The scene focuses, almost too sharp. Gunfire rings out like rapid thunderclaps, like a storm so violent it’s going to rip the world to shreds. Liam’s men near the restaurant get into cover behind big pillars and their SUVs, while Sean grabs my wrist and pulls me with him toward the SUV that had been parked behind us.
We sprint the very short gap between the two cars, and I spot trucks nearby, their windows facing us.
“Inside.” Sean yanks open a door and shoves me into it. From my vantage, I can see that another truck rammed the side of the SUV we’d just been in, flipping it over. I have blood on my clothes, on my hands, and I touch myself all over. There’s a cut on my forehead, and another in my scalp, but mostly I’m okay. I don’t think anything’s broken, which is lucky. Sean shoves me onto the floor. “Stay.”
I don’t listen.
I peek out the window and watch Liam battling our attackers. Rustik’s men, no doubt in my mind. So many bullets fly through the air, the molten-hot metal bursting against the SUV’s doors. It must be bulletproof because nothing gets through, though each direct hit sounds like a battering ram trying to break through. I swallow scream after scream as pure terror suffuses me.
One of Liam’s men lies dead on the ground. An attacker hangs halfway out a window. There’s blood, and shouting, and gunshots. I can’t think, can barely breathe. Through it, I’m distinctly worried about Liam, afraid that he won’t make it most of all.
