“What?Yeah, sorry.You probably should have picked a better actor for the role.I prefer being done.It hardly ever works out for me the other way around.”
The likely issue there is the cocktail of substances he has circulating his blood stream, but as it’s something I’m right now thankful for, I settle for silence, and wriggling my wrists as a hint that he might like to release his grip.
The moment he lets go, I zip up, and get to my feet.He’s a strangely sorry figure, still kneeling, and sporting his limp dick.“Show me the texts.”
It’s as he’s rising, and he’s fishing about in his pocket for his phone, that the door is booted in.The stubby little bolt is torn free of its housing, and the door wallops Adam on the back of the head, causing him to drop like a stone at my feet.
“Dylan.”Kira barrels into the lavatory hands raised ready to karate chop her way through legions of ne’er-do-wells, and Ronnie follows her holding one of those artisanal tankards aloft, presumably with the intention of clobbering someone.
“Are you—”
“You’re okay, thank God.”I wrap both arms around Kira and hug her tight.
“Um, yeah, fine.Are you fine?”She pushes on my chest, to get me to arm’s length, but I’m not ready to let go.Adam could have done any one of a thousand things to her; even now the possibilities are rushing through my head.The fact there are no marks on her, is a genuine relief to me.
“I thought he’d… He said he’d taken you out.I didn’t know what to think.”
Her brows bunch into V’s in the centre of her forehead.“He sicced Rosie on me.I had to pry her off like you would a limpet.What happened in here?”
“He bundled Dylan into here.”Ronnie digs the tip of one pointy-toed heel into Adam’s prone body.“I’m sorry we didn’t get here sooner, it took a while to find her.”
Her presumably meaning Kira.
“Did he assault you?Hurt you, or threaten you in any way?”
My silence clearly irritates my erstwhile bodyguard, as her foot drums impatiently against the floor.I don’t want to relive the past few minutes providing a blow by blow account, funny that?
“I think it was him, the notes and such like.He seemed to think we’d been communicating and that I’d asked him to do all this.We haven’t been.Up until tonight, I haven’t seen him since the gala dinner.”
“I saw him just a few minutes before your car blew up.He was with that woman, the one whose daughter had a go at you before your speech at the dinner.I didn’t think much of it at the time, but if you reckon he’s behind everything, that puts a totally different spin on things.”
Kira produces a pair of cuffs from some sort of holster on her thigh and fastens Adam’s hands behind his back.She checks his pulse, and gives his broad chest a prod, whereupon he groans, and it’s concluded that he’s all right.A couple of other All Star’s security personnel arrive along with Howard Falchard, and they unceremoniously cart Adam off, half carrying, half dragging him between them.
It’s a while later when Kira comes upon me outside in the yard at the rear of the club, where I’m sat sitting beneath the staff smoking shelter.There’s a lingering tang of nicotine in the air that even the weather can’t erode.Rain drizzles over the cobblestones and pools over the blocked drain.Her image shimmers in the water.
Kira’s still wearing her party dress, the side of which is split to the thigh, and opens to reveal her leg as she squats down before me.I avoid meeting her eyes, far too aware of what her presence is doing to the speed of my heartbeat.
“You’ve not said a whole lot.I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.They’re going to need a proper statement from you, Dylan.”
I should be grateful she’s here to talk business, yet I crave the warmth of her embrace.Is it so wrong to want somebody to hold me?
“I’m not going to the station tonight.”The last visit was far from pleasant and the memory of it far too recent.I’ve no desire to spend hours staring at a Formica tabletop while responding to variants on the same four questions.
“They need evidence to put him away.All they can do at the minute is hold him on suspicion.”
“Tomorrow,” I plead.Things always look better in the daylight.Right now, I simply want to sit still.If I do so for long enough, maybe the thoughts inside my head will stop churning and settle into some sort of quiet.Adam holding me down has stirred up a quagmire of memories I don’t want to deal with.
“It looked ugly when I arrived, and from what Ronnie said—”
I chew at the inside of my cheek, fearful of what she might have learned from Ronnie.Slowly, I raise my gaze, and a charge shoots between us that we both fight to hide, but it can’t be hidden.It’s there plain as the drizzle rolling over her brow.
“What did Ronnie say?”I ask.
For sure, more than Kira’s going to admit to being told.
“That you’d been dragged off against your will, and you were in danger.Is that not what happened, Dylan?”
I scratch at my scalp.“Nothing else?Ron didn’t say anything else?”
