Page 134 of These White Lies
The silence after burns me alive. She’s quiet for so long I almost think I’ve pushed too far.
Then her voice, hoarse but steady, snarks back, “You just want a chance to grab mine.”
My lungs expand. The panic in her voice is gone. Mission accomplished.
“No reason both can’t be true.”
Sera groans. Finn mutters a warning. I barely hear either of them. My heart is still pounding, but Elizabeth’s okay. That’s all I care about. I shove down the ache in my chest. She’ll never know how much it killed me to hear her like that.
I’m still smiling faintly from the bathroom exchange with the strange woman when a thought needles at me. Why didn’t Ray stop her from going into the bathroom with Elizabeth?
Suddenly my earpiece pops. A sharp burst, followed by a high-pitched static buzz that rattles in my ear before it clears. For a split second I think it’s interference. But it happens again, louder. A crack of noise that makes me wince and tilt my head, trying to adjust the bud.
Across the ballroom, two of the security guys stiffen. One touches his ear, frowning, then leans close to the other. Their posture adjusts, tight and alert, before one dips a hand inside his jacket and pulls out a phone.
The hair on my neck spikes. “Finn, you got this?”
The comm pops again. This time it’s worse. A piercing squeal tears through my ear, sharp enough to split my skull. I rip the bud out, teeth clenched, scanning as half the other security details in the room do the same.
Fuck.
Short-range jammer.
We’ve lost comms.
And Elizabeth is in the bathroom.
I’m moving before my brain has caught up.
The tray crashes onto the nearest table, glasses toppling, liquid splashing over linen. My cover’s gone, but I don’t care. My pulse hammers in my ears, drowning out the string music. The crowd blurs as I cut through it fast, with only one thought pounding—get to her.
Movement flashes in my periphery. Rhodes and Vincent sprint in, the guns hidden under their jackets, now in their hands as they fall into place at my sides.
We reach the restroom door. Ray isn’t there.
No. No. No.
My chest seizes. My hand finds the Glock at the small of my back. Rhodes and Vincent skid into position, weapons up. Vincent covers me as I kick the door open. Rhodes turns, guarding the hallway.
“Ray?”
The bathroom is silent.
I sweep it in two strides, every nerve on edge. First stall, empty. Second, empty. Third?—
Ray.
He’s slumped sideways in the last stall, one arm twisted against the tank. His head lolls. My stomach drops. Dropping to a knee, I press two fingers against his throat. He has a pulse.
Relief surges, but it doesn’t last. A welt marks his neck, just under the jawline. Injection.
I holster my weapon and hear Rhodes talking rapidly into his phone.
“—he’s down, we found Ray?—”
My eyes fall to the red heels haphazardly lying in the corner and her purse containing her phone several feet away on the floor, and my heart seizes.
Finn’s voice blasts out through the cell speaker. “I’ve lost every feed. Earpieces are fried. Her signal’s dead. They wiped us.”
