Some motherfucker had just tried to catch me on camera killing someone.
To what fucking end?
Crouching low, I put my face level with my attacker and peered into his angry eyes. "I hope you know someone sent you here to die," I told him in a quiet voice, dabbing more blood from my nose. "Who hired you?"
"Fuck you," the guy snarled, and I gave a shrug.
"You're kind of lucky cops are already on their way; otherwise I'd be hauling you into my office for questioning myself. Don't worry, though. One of my associates will pop past your cell for a chat later. Be sure to tell him everything you know." I gave him a cold smile, letting him see the violence in my eyes before I patted him on the cheek and straightened up.
My helper frowned at me. "You'll want to get some ice on that," he said, nodding to my face.
I touched my fingers to the bridge of my nose and right eye, where the dickhead's elbow had connected, and sighed. Great. Now I was going to have to explain a black eye to Zed when I saw him. Not to mention the blood that kept dripping from my nose. I had a weak blood vessel on the right side where my nose had been broken years ago and it didn’t take much to set it off.
"I'll do that," I said with a tight smile. "Thanks for your help here."
Without hanging around to deal with the cops, I slid into my somewhat dented car, ignoring my helper’s protests that I needed to wait. I just gave him a little wave and drove away, passing a police cruiser on my way. When my nose continued bleeding, I got annoyed and twisted up a piece of tissue to pack it. Such a good look.
The further I drove from the scene, the angrier I became. That had been a deliberate setup. But to what end? Sure, killing someone in the street in broad daylight wasn't great PR, but it was the sort of thing that could be cleaned up. Especially when there was no physical evidence left by the time law enforcement got on the scene.
"Fucking fuck," I exclaimed when I stopped at a red light, slamming my fist against my steering wheel. It was a damn good thing I'd gone for my knife and not my gun, or I wouldn't have had that time to contemplate my options. Then what? I'd have been arrested?
A sick feeling churned my stomach. Whoever had it out for me definitely had a good majority of the SGPD on their books. So what in the hell did they plan to do with me once I was incarcerated?
My imagination was a dark and scary place, so the number of things that flashed across my mind were enough to make me shiver. Thank fuck I'd thought it through... this time. I needed to be more careful in general, though.
By the time I pulled into 7th Circle, I was a tight bundle of anxious energy. There was still forty-five minutes until the special agent would be coming to meet me, though, so I headed into the bar to grab some ice for my eye.
Staff wouldn’t start arriving for several hours yet, so the ice wells were all empty and I needed to go through to the storeroom to grab some from the ice maker.
After wrapping a handful of cubes in a cloth, I pressed it to my face with a grimace and made my way up to my office, flicking on lights as I went. The cleaning crew must have only recently left because the whole place smelled sharply of disinfectant, and I sneezed twice on my way up the stairs, setting off the bleeding again.
Once in the office, I sat down with a heavy sigh and placed my ice down on the desk so I could re-pack my nose with tissue, then hunt through my bag for my phone. I needed to call Zed and inform him what was going on. Maybe he had some ideas... or at the very least, he could sort out a visit to my wannabe attacker in his holding cell.
"God shitting dammit," I muttered when I realized my phone wasn't in there. It had likely fallen out when I’d dropped my bag, and I hadn't seen it when I picked up. Security wasn't such a concern—my phone was passworded. But it was an inconvenience I didn't have the patience for.
Grumbling to myself, I turned on the desktop computer, activated a remote wipe of my phone, then sent Zed an email asking him to grab me a new one on his way into the club later. Then I moved onto the nightly reports and started my analysis of the stock variances that had been mentioned several times by my managers.
I hadn't been working on it for long when my eyelids started drooping. The third time my lids started to flutter closed, I straightened up in alarm. Spreadsheets and numbers did not bore me enough to put me to sleep, and I'd had plenty of sleep. Was I concussed?
Pressing my fingers to my bruised eye, I frowned. Nope, it wasn't that much of an injury; it'd probably barely even darken. The bridge of my nose was a bit puffy, but nothing drastic. A concussion bad enough to make me drowsy had to be from harder hit than that.
Alarm tripped through me, and my instincts screamed that something else was going on. Something else was wrong.
I tugged the tissue out of my nose now that the bleeding had stopped and stood up from my desk. A wave of dizziness washed through me and I staggered. The only things that stopped me from falling flat on my face were my hold on the edge of my desk and sheer determination.
Something was very wrong.
Gritting my teeth, I kicked off my heels and carefully made my way to the door. I needed to call someone for help and get the hell out of the office.
The farther I went, the worse my dizziness seemed to get, until I found myself clinging to the stair railing as I halfway fell down the narrow staircase. The smell of disinfectant was still strong in the main club—distorted by the swelling and blood in my nose—but I doubted a bit of bleach would make me this messed up.
So I gritted my teeth and pushed forward. The club was still totally empty downstairs, and I used furniture to keep my balance as I staggered. After what felt like three years, I finally hit the front door and shoved it.
It didn't move.
"What the fuck?" I moaned, trying the handle again and finding it locked. I hadn't locked it when I came in, knowing the bar staff would be arriving soon.
Most of my staff—the management mostly—had keys to the clubs for access, but I hated needing to remember keys for everything. It was bad enough that my cars still needed them, but I'd decided ages ago I didn't want to carry around a huge bunch of keys for the clubs too.
That was a diva moment I was eternally grateful for now because it meant I could slide open a keypad panel beside the door and unlock it with a biometric lock, same as I'd had installed on my apartment.
The lock bleeped, blinking green and clicking open a moment later, and I grabbed the handle to wrench it open. But I was too slow.
I stumbled out, only making it two steps before the explosion detonated, blowing up 7th Circle and throwing me into the air with all the force of a freight train.
A lightning-fast moment of realization passed through my mind before everything went black. It had been a gas leak. The dizziness, the nausea, the sleepiness... there had been a gas leak. Just like at the Lockhart house the night I killed Chase.
30
High-pitched ringing wailed on and on as I woke up, and I groaned in pain. I wanted to cover my ears and shut out the noise, but I couldn't move. Why the fuck couldn't I move?
Pain radiated all the way through me, every single inch of my body in agony, and I winced as I blinked my eyes open. What the hell had just happened? Where was I?
It took several moments to figure out what the fuck was going on, but once my brain connected the pieces, there was no denying the sight in front of me.