Page 59 of Risk It All
It was her. Layla Baron was actually there.
Now that she’d found the woman, Cara wasn’t sure exactly what to do. Pulling out her phone, she sent a group text to her sisters and then started the audio recording app before dropping her phone back into her jacket pocket. Taking a deep breath, she walked toward Layla.
You wanted to have an active role. You chose to come here. This is what you wanted.
When Layla spotted her approaching and narrowed her eyes, Cara had a hard time remembering why she wanted to talk to the intimidating woman. All of her questions scattered as she got closer and stopped a few feet away.
“Can I help you?” Even though she was standing in the middle of a scary dive bar, Layla’s tone was all frost and wealth.
“I hope so.” Cara forced out a tentative smile. “I wanted to talk to you about Henry Kavenski.”
There was the slightest widening of Layla’s eyes before she returned to her fake smile. “Of course, but it’s too loud in here. Let’s go outside.”
“I’d rather stay in here.” Even though the clientele was a bit sketchy, there was still safety in numbers and Cara didn’t want to lose that. Besides, Norah wouldn’t know where she’d gone, and she wasn’t about to ditch her timid sister at Dutch’s, of all places. “This won’t take long.”
Layla’s gaze shifted to a spot behind Cara for just a second before she gave another of her artificial smiles. “Of course. Let’s move over by the door, though, where it’s quieter.”
Cara gestured for Layla to go first, feeling more secure following the woman than having her at her back. They’d only gone a few steps when a loud crash behind her made Cara whirl around. The man in a trucker hat that Layla had been talking to earlier had another guy pinned against the bar. One or both of the two must’ve had friends with them, because there was a muted roar as ten more people jumped into the fight. Suddenly, it was chaos.
“This way.” Fingers closed around her upper arm and a blunt cylinder pressed into Cara’s side, right above her hip, as Layla’s cool voice spoke directly into her ear. “Come along now, unless you want your internal organs to be the new wallpaper in this dump.”
Cara froze, unable to do anything but stare at the black gun muzzle pressed against her. Layla gave her a sharp nudge from behind to get her moving. Cara’s feet stumbled into motion, moving toward the door as she resisted the urge to look around for Norah. She didn’t want her sister anywhere near Layla or her gun.
The bouncer shoved past them, heading for the fight, and they moved out the door unseen. It was eerily quiet outside without the shouting and pounding fists and blasting music. With the gun and a tight grip on her arm, Layla hauled Cara toward the side of the building.
She felt numb, and she wondered if she’d been terrified so often over the past few days that she’d started to become immune to fear. Then Layla jammed the gun into her side, and Cara realized that she could indeed feel afraid. After all the close calls she’d just been through, she couldn’t believe that she was going to die in such a stupid way. She’d walked right up to a woman she’d suspected of being a murderer. It was her own stupid fault she was in this pickle.
“You’re quite persistent, aren’t you?” Layla said in such a posh, chilly tone that Cara almost laughed at the strangeness of it all.
“I was trying to mind my own business,” Cara said, her voice quavering despite her best effort to imitate Layla’s cool confidence. Then again, the other woman was the one with the gun, and it was easy to be self-assured when she held all the lethal cards. “Did you have me kidnapped?”
“Of course not.” Layla hauled her closer to the back of the bar, and Cara tried to put on the brakes. Nothing good could come of anything in a grubby alley behind Dutch’s. “That was all that moron Abbott’s idea.”
Although she knew it wasn’t a good sign that Layla was telling her things, Cara still wanted to know. “So he could get information out of Henry? Information about you?” She took Layla’s silence as an affirmative answer. “Like that you killed your friends?”
“They weren’t my friends.” Layla almost hissed the words, and she jammed the gun so tightly against Cara’s side that she had to grit her teeth to keep from crying out. “They were my accountants—at least until they tried to blackmail me. Idiots.”
“Why would they blackmail you?” Cara’s teeth had started to chatter, and she clamped them so tightly together that it hurt her jaw.
“They were greedy and nearsighted, and Abbott pushed them into it.” Layla sounded so casually normal that the press of the gun felt surreal. They rounded the corner, fully in the alley now despite Cara’s attempt at delaying them. “He’s had an issue with me ever since he was expelled for that silly thing in high school and I was cleared. It’s not my fault that he was weak enough to fold during his police interview.”
Swallowing her protest that a boy dying was not a silly thing, Cara asked, “Did you try to run me over with a car?” If she was about to be killed in a gross alley that smelled of pee and garbage, she at least wanted her curiosity satisfied.
“No.Ididn’t, and he was supposed to be aiming at Kavenski.”
Before Cara could respond, Layla slammed her face-first against the rough surface of the wall and shifted the gun so that the muzzle now rested against her temple.
“Everyone’s going to hear that go off if you shoot me.” There was nothing Cara could do to control the shake in her voice. This was it. If she was going to save herself, she had to do somethingnow.
“That’s what suppressors are for, you stupid girl.”
Cara felt it, the intention, the tensing of Layla’s muscles that screamed that she was really about to go through with this, that she was going to shoot Cara in the head and leave her there in the alley behind Dutch’s like so much garbage.
No.Cara’s thoughts grew calm, and her shaking stopped.That’s not going to happen.
She dropped her head forward, just slightly, as if she were giving up. Then she slammed it backward, her skull connecting with something on Layla’s face that crunched under the force. The pressure against her temple dropped away, and Cara twisted in the woman’s hold, fiercely determined not to die.
“Youbitch!” Layla gasped, her voice sounding nasal and choked.
