Page 57 of Dangerous Silence
“Where’s Muro?” Derek asked. The men’s eyes widened.
“Who are you?”
I lifted my gun.
We took them out, then hopped out of the truck. Several more men exited from the lobby. I nodded to Wil. “You sure your BPD connection didn’t notify Muro?”
“Don’t know,” he said, blasting a guard in the face. “But I’ll kill him if he did.”
Bullets flew and Zaid’s men joined us. Ron made his way to the lobby while the rest of us stayed there, shooting down Muro’s men. Billy gave a warrior’s cry, but then a bullet hit her chest and she collapsed. Wil looked at her, then went back to fighting. He must have been thinking about Ellie. That at least it wasn’t her.
Or Demi.
We all kept going, bullets zoomed around us. I went around the side of the building, driven by instinct. I gestured for Wil and Derek to follow me. In the back, there was a courtyard with a single man and a woman, the man holding a knife to the woman’s throat.
A wide scar was on her cheek as if someone had scraped a layer of her skin off with their fingernail. The sides of her face were too tight to be natural. And black hair gleamed in the shadow of the building, her jade eyes pleading. The man holding her cracked his neck, his hair tied into a low ponytail, a lightning bolt tattoo to the side of his eye.
Miles Muro.
“I see you got started without me,” he said with a smile. “Tsk, tsk. But thanks for the fair warning from the police, there, Little Adler,” Muro winked, turning to Wil. “I always do like notice before being told my attendance is expected at a party.”
“Fuck you, Muro,” Wil said, lifting his gun, but Derek stopped him.
Muro looked at me. “You must be the missing Adler. And to think, all of this time, I thought you never left your torture cave.” I readied my gun, aimed at his head, but Derek knocked the back of his hand into me too. The things I would do to him in my workroom.
“Don’t shoot,” Derek said, his eyes focused on the older woman.
“Thanks for always looking out for me, Derek,” Muro said. “I always know I can count on you.”
“It’s over, Muro,” Derek said, his voice loud. “Let her go.”
Wil glanced at Derek, then back to Muro.
“Let her die,” I muttered.
“Let her go, Muro,” Derek said again, ignoring me.
Muro pressed the knife into the woman’s neck, a sliver of blood collecting at the point. She gasped, holding back tears.
“This knife is the last of her worries,” Muro said. “My wife here has seen much worse. Haven’t you, Margot?”
She closed her eyes, her bottom lip trembling. “Yes, Master.”
“Boss,” Ron said on the earpiece. “We’ve got a problem.”
“Go,” I said. Muro, Derek, and Wil kept talking, everyone’s barrels still trained on Muro. I turned to the sides, making sure that none of Muro’s men were coming up behind us.
“There’s a door here,” Ron said. “It’s not listed on the blueprints. And it’s locked.”
I didn’t have time to worry about a door. For all we knew, it was a last-minute closet.
“Set the explosives,” I ordered. “Then get out of there.”
“Sir, I—”
“Now, Ron!”
“Yes, sir.”
