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Frank comes around to the door and opens it. Arran steps out, then extends his hand to me. I take it and allow him to pull me out into the cool night air.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, sir,” Frank says as he goes to get back into the vehicle.
“Have a good night.”
We start to make our way to the front door, but Arran stops, his brows pinched together tightly as he stares ahead, then all around us.
My heart leaps into my chest at his expression. “What is it?”
“Something’s wrong.” He tugs me a step back. “The lights—”
He throws himself on me just as a loud boom erupts. A hot blast of air hits us like a sledgehammer and we both go down hard, my head bouncing off the sidewalk with a nasty crack. Sharp pain spreads through my skull like a wildfire, and I scream.
Then everything goes black.
17
SKYE
“Skye! Skye!” I hear someone calling to me in the distance.
I open my eyes and realize it’s not distant at all, but right before me. The blurry image of a man hovering over me begins to clear, but his voice is still muted and hollow-sounding. Behind him, huge orange flames lick the dark sky, weaving in and out of rolling clouds of smoke.
“Arran?”
“Can you stand?” he asks, concern written all over his face.
I shake my head, trying to clear it. I can hear better, but I’m still a bit dizzy.
“Shit.” He lifts me, and then he’s running with me in his arms toward a vehicle coming at us in reverse.
It screeches to a halt in front of us. Arran opens the door and shoves me inside before he gets in too.
“Go, go, go!” Arran yells.
I’m pressed into the seat as Frank floors it, and it takes me a few tries to right myself and strap in. He makes so many turns that I eventually lose track of where we are. That is, until we get on I-76 and Frank merges into traffic.
“Are we being followed?” he asks, peering through the rearview mirror.
Arran looks out the back window. “No.” Then he turns to me, and in much the same way he examined me at the auction house, his hands are everywhere, searching. “What hurts?”
I touch the spot at the back of my head and wince. “I think it’s just a bruise. What happened?”
“Someone bombed my house.”
He says it so matter-of-factly that it takes me a moment to ask, “Who?”
“I don’t know, but I can guess.” Arran tugs out his phone and dials someone.
“The man at the table,” I say. “Gideon Black?”
He nods. “Fuck! Charles isn’t answering.”
Even though they don’t believe we’re being followed, I can’t help the occasional glance through every window, just to make sure. Arran is doing the same thing.
“How did you know?” I ask. “You figured something was wrong.”
He dials another number and presses the phone to his ear. As it rings, he says to me, “All the lights were out in the house and the guard’s station across the street.”
