Milo would never allow himself something so amateur as a flinch at a sharp sound, like a woman screaming her throat out, but if pressed later, he might have admitted that the sound surprised him. He glanced up and surveyed all corners; for the most part, he assumed he would see another woman who had come in from another location. But no, there was no one in his visual range except for Tess. The look on her face was almost apologetic; he could see the moment when she dropped into a mask of total fear, as if she’d found him there when she was on her way to see Toro. He could understand why she needed to do that. She had to look out for herself. Playing both sides until there was a clear victor was annoying, but he could understand why she’d do it.
Kept women in this world rarely ended up in good situations when their keeper was overthrown. She’d need to demonstrate that she’d tried to help Toro, that she hadn’t been disloyal, if she didn’t want to end up in some low-end bar bending too far over the table to try and get tips. It made sense.
It was annoying as fuck, but it made sense.
Well, he could play along. And if his instincts were on at all, he could get her all hot and bothered again.
He reached into the closet and grabbed her wrist, yanking her out and close to him. She screamed again, but he wondered if that flash in her eyes was anger or appreciation. He spun her, twisting her arm up behind her back as he had in the bathroom. She leaned into him, letting him shove her along in front of him, his weapon showily brandished in front of them. He had to admit, he wasn’t entirely sure that a shithead drug dealer like Toro wouldn’t shoot the woman just to hit him, but, well, it gave her a chance. That was better than nothing.
He pushed her into the office where everyone had guns pointed at him and Tess. Except Toro. Toro lounged behind his desk, fingers steepled, his eyes fastened on the doorway. There were goons watching, their guns generally pointed in his direction. None of that surprised him.
The man standing in front of Toro’s desk, however – that man surprised him. He had to stop himself from hissing Bastille’s name like some kind of bad movie villain. He hadn’t seen the other man since they’d both been young men, learning their trade and struggling to find companionship in a profession that discouraged any kind of connection whatsoever. And then Bastille had destroyed everything that had ever given Milo an identity that he understood, and Milo had spent the intervening years chasing the other hitter’s shadow.
He hadn’t caught so much as a sniff that Bastille had also been following the contract on Toro. Perhaps the other hitter was working a contract for Toro? No, that didn’t track. Milo had looked pretty deep into Toro’s financials before moving on him; there was no way he could afford Bastille. He wouldn’t have been able to afford Milo, either, and the fact that Silk Road had come to Milo indicated that Silk Road considered Toro much more of a threat than his narrow mustache and scrawny build would indicate. So, the odds were that Bastille was here for the same reason that Milo was. But why? Had Silk Road decided not to trust him after all?
Bastille seemed less surprised than Milo was, or else he’d become just as practiced at not showing his emotions. That made more sense; Milo was moderately certain that no hint of his surprise was visible on his face. He did, however, flash a bit of a grin at Milo before he drew the gun he wore in a hip holster and trained it right on Toro’s face. The other man’s complexion went pasty under his spray tan, and his hands gripped the armrests of his chair in a way that betrayed his concern. It couldn’t be enjoyable to face down death for the first time. It had been part of Milo’s life for so long that he no longer remembered how it felt to stare into that black chasm as a novel moment.
Bastille turned to Milo with a smile. Milo couldn’t see the other man’s second weapon, but in all the years he’d known Bastille and followed his career, the man had never been without two guns. He was equally precise with both hands, although he favored slightly different guns in each. It was a matter of time before Bastille had the second gun trained on him. Which meant that as much as he wanted to draw down on Toro and get the job done and over with, he needed to maintain control of the situation. And that meant pointing his gun at Bastille and raising an eyebrow.
There would be no cliched dialogue here, no “How dare you!” He shouldn’t have even waited a moment before pulling the trigger; the only reason he did was that Tess chose that moment to struggle in his grip. His aim went off, and he’d been trained too well to waste the round. He pushed Tess away, knowing she went to her knees and feeling crappy about that, but the woman had chosen to be used as a pawn, and that’s what happened to pawns. He could feel his head shutting down, his body switching into a kind of vision where he was presented with isolated images that allowed him to make decisions without providing any unnecessary information.
Toro, perhaps realizing that the two men were about to fire on each other, saw his opportunity. Milo would have pegged him for a guy who would run around the desk, but instead, he went over the top like he was running hurdles. He crashed into Bastille as the other hitter drew his second gun – damn him and his two weapons, Milo had tried it over and over but couldn’t ever get accurate enough with his right hand to make it worthwhile –, knocking him off kilter. Bastille’s training had rusted, apparently, because he fired a shot into the ceiling. Milo’s brain made a note to feel worried about unrelated casualties later – not because he inherently cared, but because it could bring trouble with the cops – and he stepped sideways to intercept Toro. Toro didn’t go for him, however, trying to run for the door and his escape route. He went for Tess, still on her knees. He dragged her up to her feet, shifting her in front of him just like Milo had done moments before. Bastille let out a snarled curse and brought his gun down on Tess. Tess screamed, and this time, Milo didn’t think she was exaggerating her terror even a little bit. He saw Bastille’s finger tightening on the trigger.
In a moment he wouldn’t understand for the rest of his life, he took the single step forward that put him between Bastille and Tess. He heard the shot fire; Bastille’s gun also bore a silencer, but a thing the movies always got wrong was that silenced guns didn’t make little pbt pbt sounds. They were still goddamn loud; they just weren’t “deafen you loud”. The gun was goddamn loud, and the pain in his shoulder when the bullet entered was also damn loud. It rocked him back onto his heels, and he had to fight to keep his feet.
He didn’t know what made Bastille curse a second time and decide to run. Milo saw both the goons, who were just now realizing where the hell they should be aiming, drop with neat little holes in the fronts of their heads and really goddamn messy disasters on the backs. And then Bastille ran through the main door of the office. Milo wavered again, then turned to face Toro, who was coming up from the ground and trying to hit him. Milo saw the dull metal of brass knuckles on the drug dealer’s hand and ducked just in time. The pain was breaking through his manufactured calm, and he could feel the neat precision he needed shattering in pieces.
And Toro realized that he had knuckles and the other man had a gun, a gun which even now he was lifting to finish the job. And he ran for his life.
Milo felt the adrenaline running out, and he dug into his emotional reserves to pull himself to his feet. Tess was shaking on the ground, curled up into a little ball, her head tucked into her knees. Intellectually, he understood that she had reached the end of her rope with what she’d seen. She’d see Bastille draw down on her and had to know that her life was very possibly about to end. Toro had pulled her right in front of him, ducked down so that she was all of a shield and none of a woman. Even if she knew the man was using her for sex and status, it was something different entirely to know that he was willing to trade her life for his.
He pushed himself to kneel down, knowing that if he didn’t get moving, he was going to be in serious trouble. She had clearly tripped some kind of internal alarm. It might be that Toro didn’t have that hooked up to anything the police would be reading, but Bastille carried a hand cannon that used huge bullets; someone might have died upstairs. The police were very likely on their way. He needed to get gone.
Leaving Tess behind was a possibility. She was going to be dead weight, possibly literally, as he tried to get out of the damn building. But with no one else left behind and no one to finger, dressed – or not dressed – the way she was, the cops wouldn’t be kind to her. Hell, they might harm her physically.
He might be a monster, but he wasn’t going to knowingly leave a woman to face that kind of shit alone.
“Come on,” he said to her. “We need to get gone.”
Tess’ face pushed up off her knees, tear-streaked, mascara smeared around her lower lids. “He would have—I could have—”
“I know,” Milo said. He heard the sharpness in his tone and pushed himself to be less of a flaming asshole. He softened his tone and tried again. “I know. I really do. But I’ll bet dollars to donuts that the cops are on the way here right now, and if we’re still here when they show up, you and I are going to have some serious questions to answer that neither of us wants to deal with. Am I right?”
Some sense seemed to come back into her exhausted and careworn face. She nodded jerkily, and with a little more prompting, he got her on her feet and moving. He wanted to put her in clothes, but he didn’t dare take the time. He did take a moment, once they got as far as the closet, to tighten the robe of her belt. At least she wouldn’t flash anyone on the way out of the building.
There was another hidden exit from the suite. From the way her eyes went wide when he led her to the door in the back of the pantry, he thought that even Tess hadn’t figured this one out. The pantry door took them into a narrow hallway which led to a service elevator. Barefoot and naked under her robe, she kept up with him, moving quickly and not forcing him to wait for her. That was something. He wasn’t sure his exhausted mind could handle a botched job and a hysterical woman at the same time.
It wasn’t until they were in the elevator, the door safely closing behind them, that she seemed to blink all the way back into her body.
“You got shot,” she said.
He nodded. There was a clammy warmth spreading down his arm; he didn’t want to look at it, notice how bad the damage was, until he was ready to really see. He wasn’t one to panic at blood, but why invite trouble he didn’t need.
“I did,” he said.
She took a moment and then clarified. “You got shot protecting me.”
That seemed a bit more dramatic than what had happened, but he wasn’t about to argue with a grateful woman. And, yeah, he had jumped in front of her. So, her point was probably accurate.
“I guess. But don’t go all soft about it. I didn’t want another body to clean up.”
“You didn’t clean up any of the bodies,” she pointed out.
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “No, I didn’t. And we’ve both left DNA all over that room. Yours, not much of an issue, everyone knows you’re here. Mine? Problematic. So, let’s get the hell out of here, and see what we can do about cleaning up this mess.”
“I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that there’s a ‘we’ here,” Tess said.
He had to admit that the spunkiness she was throwing off got his dick hard all over again. She was pretty, and she was sexy – they weren’t the same thing at all – but he was also in a hell of a lot of pain and was pretty done with the conversation.
He took her by the upper arm and yanked her out of the elevator once it came to a stop. He didn’t say another word as he hauled her along the hallway and shoved her into the car he had parked at the end of the alley. When he pushed her into the car, she clocked her head on the doorframe. He didn’t think she’d hit it that hard, but she sagged into the seat, her eyes drifting pretty hard. Part of him was grateful; he needed a goddamn rest from how much he hurt.
The rest of him was wondering what the hell he was going to do with her.