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“I wanted to know what you were doing here?”
“Are you going to throw me out?”
Her question surprised me. “No, why would I do that?”
“Because you don’t want me here.”
“I never said that.” I growled and tugged my hand through my hair in frustration. “I wasn’t trying to imply you needed to leave. I just wanted to know why you’d come.”
“My friend, Layla, got an invite because of her journalism course.”
A heavy weight pressed on my chest. “Oh, right. You didn’t come because of me then?”
She pressed her lips together and didn’t answer, and that was enough for the weight to vanish and be replaced by hope.
“Why didn’t you contact me, Tam? Not even a text to see how I was.”
“I thought you wouldn’t want to hear from me.”
“Maybe I didn’twantto at the time, but knowing you didn’t even bother is worse.”
“I thought you’d assume it was because of my family, that they’d have pressured me into it. I didn’t want you to think that was the only reason I wanted you back.”
“I wouldn’t have thought that, but the fact you didn’t contact me at all, and that my father hasn’t been insisting I go back to you, only made me assume you’d refused to take me back.”
I couldn’t help myself; I grabbed her hand. “No, that’s not how it is at all. I guess I was ashamed of myself. I got defensive. I tried not to let you leave that night, Hallie, but you did anyway. You could have stayed and we’d have worked it out.”
“I needed some space. I needed to be able to think.”
“And now—”
Thera-ta-tata-tatof sub-automatic gunfire exploded through the club. Screams filled the air, people diving for cover. Automatically, I threw myself at Hallie, pushing her to the floor and shielding her with my body. I reached to beneath my jacket where my gun had been hidden in a holster in the small of my back and yanked it out. I aimed the weapon and swept it across the crowds. Where the fuck was the gunman?
There were too many people—some running, some hiding, others lying injured or possibly dead. The lighting had already been low, and now it served to hide whoever was attacking us. It was impossible to see who’d been shooting.
More gunshots shattered through the screams. Had that come from a different direction? Had the shooter moved, or was there more than one? Beneath me, Hallie cringed.
“Tam? What’s happening?”
“We’re being attacked.”
“By who?”
“I don’t know.”
Could it be the Gilligans? This wasn’t their style, was it? They wouldn’t risk attacking us with half of London’s press here.
Where were the rest of my family? And the men who worked for us? I wasn’t someone who reacted through fear, but losing Harvey as we had must have changed something inside me. Now I was terrified of losing yet more of the people I loved, including the woman beneath me.
The flash of a muzzle pinpointed one of the shooters, and I rose to my feet and fired off a quick couple of shots. The shooter ducked behind a pillar. Had I hit him? I couldn’t be sure, but he wasn’t firing back. I also hadn’t recognised the man.
“Tam!”
Hallie’s shriek cut right through me, and I turned to find her in the grip of a man. He had his arm locked around her throat and a gun pointed at her head. My heart stopped, my blood turning to ice in my veins.
Rasmus Valk.
Fuck, of course. This was the work of the Estonians. I should have known.
