Page 2 of Songbird
The extended silence is louder than any kind of alarm bell.
“Go to the bedroom,” I tell Rosalie. “Lock the door. Then go into the en suite bathroom and lock that door too. Don’t come out until I come back for you or someone else from your security team tells you it’s safe. Ask for the code word.”
Rosalie gets to her feet woodenly and pins me with terrified eyes. If adrenaline wasn’t flooding my veins, and if my head hadn’t already dipped to that place it goes to block out distractions and emotions, her fear might have broken me.
“Miss Thorne,” I say firmly. “What is the code word? Do you remember?”
She nods, too scared to speak, staring at my chest. And I’m an idiot, because of all the ways I might snap her out of her stupor, Ilift a hand with the intention of cupping her cheek and tilting her face up to mine. I remember my place at the last moment and instead wave it slowly in front of her blank gaze.
“I need to hear you say it,” I tell her.
The motion of my hand brings her around, and her eyes seek mine. Whatever she finds there puts a little steel into her back. “Songbird,” she whispers.
“Good.” The impatient rap of knuckles on the door sounds again, and I reluctantly remove my hand to point at Rosalie’s bedroom. “Go.Now.”
I follow her, wait for the click of the turning lock, then race to the front door. More thumping greets me, and I check the peephole to see who’s there, but it’s covered by a hand on the outside.
Fuck.
I pull my gun from its holster, holding it low as I call out, “Who is it?”
“Room service!” calls an unfamiliar voice.
It’s male and edgy and wrong. Room service shouldn’t have made it past Brewer at the elevator, let alone Linley at the suite door.
“Leave it outside,” I shout. “And back away.”
Silence, and then…
The light on the electronic lock beeps and flashes green, the door swings open, and a wiry man barely more than half my size throws himself through it, screaming and slashing at the air with a bloodied kitchen knife.
He doesn’t get any farther.
It takes me a split second to note he’s wearing a hotel staff uniform, and I take a shallow slice to the forearm at the same time I spot Linley collapsed on the carpet outside and the hallway otherwise empty. Thank Christ this guy is alone—but where the fuck is Brewer?
Head clear and heart pounding, I use the butt of my gun to stun the intruder, grunting as I twist him into a fucking pretzel and disarming him before slamming him to the ground and planting a violent knee between his shoulder blades.
“You psychotic motherfucker,” I growl as he fights the way I twist his arm almost out of its socket. His hair is lank and dull, and he stinks like stale sweat and bourbon. I hold my breath as I press my body weight into him.
I lean in close enough to whisper beside his ear. “Keep fighting and I’ll end you now. You won’t be the first man I’ve killed.”
He sinks into stillness for a minute, then jerks into life when a gentle gasp alerts us to the fact that we’re not alone.
I look up to see Rosalie hovering barely twenty paces away, one hand over her mouth and the color draining from her too-pale cheeks. In her other hand, she grips a brass candelabra tight enough that her knuckles are white. The candelabra is shaking. She’s shaking.
“I was scared,” Rosalie whispers. “I heard shouting. What if he hurt you? What if…”
She trails off as the guy beneath me snarls, spittle flying, and writhes to get free.
“I’m okay,” I reassure her. “You’re okay,” I add to reassure myself. “We’re both going to be okay.”
Shared fear and relief pass between us before Brewer bursts down the hotel corridor, gun held low as he registers the situation with one sweeping glance.
“Was he alone?” my partner demands.
Rosalie’s attacker giggles, a chilling sound that makes my stomach turn. “Yes, I’m alone,” he says. “I’m not sharing my beautiful angel with anyone. Those pretty lips belong to me.”
Rosalie wretches, and I throw my knee into the guy’s back. “Shut—the fuck—up,” I bark before turning to Brewer. “It looks that way,” I say between clenched teeth, “but I haven’t had achance to search the floor outside the suite. Where the hell were you?”
