“I will, I promise.”
I hung up shortly after. Hailey hadn’t told me anything I didn’t already know, but that was probably for the best. The only things she could have told me would likely be things making the situation worse than it really was.
One thing that felt a certainty to me—when, yes, when I next saw Sonny, I’d have to do so somewhere private. I didn’t want to put him at risk any further. Private hangouts were going to be the way to go from here.
Which, given how great last night’s private hangout was, wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
I got out of the car, headed into the office, and made my way to the elevator to my floor. I groaned when, just as the doors were about to close, Carl pushed his hand into the door and stepped inside.
“Hey, hey, pretty lady!” he said, sipping on a freshly brewed cup of coffee. “You look like you had a wild night, eh? Pretty lady like yourself using what you’ve got to get the clients?”
“There were no clients last night, Carl,” I said, rolling my eyes, hoping that the elevator would magically double or triple its speed to the top.
I almost let slip, “I was just out with some friends,” but with Carl, the less you said to him, the less he had to work with.
“There are always clients to be had, Leigh,” he said. “And with assets like you got, you could easily pick up a couple a night.”
“Can we not?”
It was the most confrontational I’d been with him since I’d started. Maybe Sonny had given me confidence. More likely, I was just so over his shit.
“Not what? Make money?”
“Talk about my assets, whatever the hell that means,” I said, even though I knew full well what he meant. “I’m here to do a job, and I sell people on the product. That should be enough.”
“A good saleswoman uses every…thing…”
Carl’s voice trailed off at my glare. I hope I scared him enough to make him think a lawsuit might follow. Anything to get him off my fucking back would be great.
The elevator doors opened. I got to my desk. I pulled my chair back.
BAM!
Gunshots fired outside. Too fucking close by.
I hit the deck as people screamed around me. Was it fucking connected to those who had stalked me? Were those the ones that were shooting up the place? Hailey had fucking said…
Oh God. Was I going to die? Was I going to fucking die because I’d gone home with Sonny? Please, I couldn’t let that be the fucking case.
Alarms sounded in the building. We remained under our desks as gunfire continued outside. We’d learned live active shooting drills before, and we knew to remain in place until police advised the situation was under control. That would work as long as the gunfire remained downstairs. But if it came up here…
“Shit! We’re going to die!” Carl yelled.
I bit my lip and kept my cool as best as I could. It wouldn’t do any good to panic.But if this happened because of me…
Because of my fucking indecision…
The sound of sirens came just moments later. We held our breath. The gunfire wasn’t steady, but there wasn’t a gap of longer than a few seconds before it came back. I had no idea what the hell was going on down below. I didn’t want to know.
I didn’t want to be responsible.
The sirens got closer and closer until it sounded like they were right on top of us. We all remained under our desks. I could hear different coworkers calling their loved ones, warning of the situation going on. Some sounded certain they were going to die. Others were talking about how they were going to fuck up the attackers if they came too close.
Me? I couldn’t shake the certainty that it was the trucker and the two bikers. Our office wasn’t in the ghetto; if anything, it was the opposite. They had to have trailed someone—like me—to make this happen.
My pulse pounded in my head. I closed my eyes and put my head between my knees. I was supposed to have done that earlier, but what people did in a drill and what they did when real gun shots were going off were two very fucking different things.
And then…
