* * *
I was speechless after she told me, after the self-justifications ran out and she subsided into a frightened watchfulness. “Don’t hate me,” she said in a scared, little-girl voice. “I did it foryou.”
“For me?” I scoffed. “Well, let me tell you what I’m going to do foryou, Annie…”
Just after I’d finished telling her, another shotgun blast went off, loud and close enough to make both of us slap hands over our ears. Directly outside the art room, in my living area, several more shots went off—quieter, quicker.
It was Jack, shooting back.
But he was up against some guy with ashotgun. Another blast sounded and I thought about Harper Connelly.
I thought about how much I loved Jack—how much I couldn’t lose him—
I scrambled away from Annie, making for the door.
She grabbed me back. “Youheardwhat he said,” she snarled. “Either stay here or run away, not gohelp.”
“You run if you want to,” I told her, wrenching my arm away from her grasp. “I’m going to help JJ.”
But then the art room door exploded open, and a blur of dark shapes came stumbling into the room. I dived to the side, blinking into the gloom. I could see was two dark figures throwing punches at each other.
I’d been in more than one choreographed fight during my time onCamelot Court. I’d even hung out in sound mixing now and then, where they added in the effects for the hits and kicks. But the meaty booms and bangs added in post-production were nothing like the noise of arealfight, the sound of two people desperately trying to kill each other.
Under the clatter of art supplies flying everywhere as they stumbled around, I heard fists striking flesh and bone, fists landing in soft tissue with muffled thuds, curses, gasps, grunts, and I couldn’t make out which of the two had the upper hand.
More importantly, in the darkness, I couldn’t keep track of which one was Jack.
“Hey!” I shouted, and one of them paused.
“Miller,run!” he screamed, just as the other dark blob grappled him around in a sweeping throw to the floor. Jack landed heavily, crashing into one of my easels as he slid across the floor.
I’d only succeeded in distracting Jack by trying to help. Despair and panic drove me on: I pulled out the letter opener and sprang at the other man, trying to stab at his face, get the pointy end in his eyes, just fuckingannoyhim for a second, to give Jack a chance to get up and keep fighting—
But my opponent threw me off easily, banging me into the wall. My head slammed hard against the plaster. One steely hand wrapped around my throat, and I could smell hot, fetid breath for a few seconds.
And then I couldn’t breathe at all.
I scratched frantically at the iron grip that had closed up my throat—I couldn’t reach his face, his arm was at full extension, and I’d dropped the letter opener—when the whole room lit up. Literally. The electricity had come back on, and all the light fixtures illuminated at once, seeming even brighter after the deep darkness of moments before.
The man with his hand on my neck was grinning at me. I’d never seen him before, but he seemed to know who I was. “You want to watch me crack your boy’s neck, Johnny?” he chuckled, glancing over his shoulder to where Jack was face-down on the floor, struggling to rise up.
The past collided with the present. Jack had pushed me up against this very wall, had put a gentle hand on my throat, had kissed me senseless here, had made me come for him, painting the wall with my pleasure.
La petite mort. I was going to die here again.
For real, this time.
CHAPTER53
JACK
Dizzy preferredto kill up close and personal, not because it was the polite thing to do, but because he enjoyed watching his victims squirm. Once upon a time, he’d thought that pleasure in the work would make him a good hitman.
He was wrong, of course. When you enjoy your work too much, you tend to get caught up in the process, not the outcome.
Like right then, when he was so close to killing Miller that his hard-on for violence was clouding his thoughts. Dizzy and I had disarmed each other in the living room, which gave him an advantage because of his massive size and strength—
But Dizzy had forgotten who I was.
