She never did.
More shouting. I tried to blink away the haze in my vision but couldn’t. Ronan was going to murder me when he came back. I took something I shouldn’t have, and he was going to murder me. No way he’d believe my story, not when he was convinced that I was working with someone else already.
What the hell was on those USB sticks?
More gunshots, more screams of pain. Someone was fighting inside the house. Shouting, chaos, yelling, more guns. I started rocking the chair side to side, thinking maybe I could get free—
Then tipped over sideways and smashed my shoulder on the floor.
“Oh, shit,” I gasped. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”
More gunshots, rapid and nearby. Bullet holes appeared in the door right about where I’d been sitting just a second ago. If I hadn’t flopped over, I might be dead, chest full of stray shots.
“Down the hall,” a voice yelled. “Another door. Check it.”
Then a man appeared holding a smoking pistol. I didn’t recognize him. Dark hair cut short, crooked nose, bad skin like he’d been dipped into boiling oil and fried. He stared at me and aimed the gun.
“Some girl,” he yelled.
Another person appeared, pushing him aside.
The man stood there and stared, then touched the barrel of the ugly man’s gun and lowered it.
“Hello, Irene,” Cam said.
His familiar green eyes sparkled in the dim lighting. A ghost from my past, back to haunt me. Maybe I was dead already, and this was what happened. He wore dark jeans and a dark shirt. It was splattered with blood. Not his, it was never his.
Handsome and big. Cam came toward me and crouched down.
“Hey, Cam,” I said through the blood in my mouth. “Been a while. Did I die?”
“Only once, a long time ago,” he said, touching my shoulder. “Back when you disappeared, I worried you were dead. What are you doing here?”
“Untie me and get me up and I’ll tell you.”
He laughed and looked back at the ugly guy. “Linc, go check the next room and clear it. Tell Omar and Franco to grab whatever they can find and check the back. If Ronan’s still here, I want him.”
“Right,” Linc said and left.
Cam moved around behind me and untied my wrists. I let out a moan as he released the ropes around my chest then the ropes at my ankles. I crawled away from the chair and spit once onto the floor. It was another glob of red, but I wasn’t missing any teeth. I probed with my tongue to be sure.
Cam stood above me, just like Ronan had.
But Cam wasn’t Ronan, not even close. He held a hand out and I took it.
“Seriously, Irene,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “What’s going on right now?”
His face hardened as he glanced back to the door. “Raid on a safe house. We weren’t expecting you.”
“I wasn’t expecting you, either,” I said. “How about you get me out alive and I tell you everything that happened?”
He put an arm around my shoulders. It was such a familiar gesture that I was tempted to lean against him.
Cam, my former best friend, the man I loved and hated, the ghost of my past storming back into my life.
“All right then,” he said. “I’ll take you home and we’ll talk.”
“No,” I said, “I’m going back—”
His arm squeezed tighter, and I remembered why I hadn’t seen him in a couple years, ever since I ran away from home.
Cam was not the man he used to be, not even close.
“Back to my place,” he said. “Then we talk.”
“Fine,” I whispered.
He dragged me out of there, arm tight around my shoulders.
We stepped over blood and a few bodies in the hallway. The rest of his crew gathered in the living room. There was Linc, the guy with the scarred face, and a skinny man with a hooked nose and a big smile named Franco, and a short bald man named Alvaro, and the deeply tanned Omar and his big gold chain.
“Found him?” Cam asked.
Linc shook his head. “He’s not here,” he said.
“Fucker got away,” Cam hissed.
“I saw Ronan,” I said. “Right before you came in. He was in that room with me.”
Cam stared at me, then nodded at Linc. “Fan out, check the neighborhood. He might still be close.”
“You got it,” Linc said, voice like gravel in a dryer.
The men left me alone with Cam and the several dead bodies, their blood pooling on the floor. He smiled down at me and tilted his head as if he were studying me for the first time.
“You look good,” he said. “Aside from the fact that someone beat the shit out of you.”
“Ronan,” I said.
“Sounds like him.” Cam laughed softly to himself. “Irene, I have to admit, you keep on surprising me.”