I weaved through the crowded pub, walking along the edges of the actual bar area, searching for a sign pointing to the restrooms. Liz and I had ordered chicken wings to soak up the alcohol, so while I was buzzed, I wasn’t drunk. My skin, however, was hot from the cocktails, and hot skin made me think of Theo.
I grinned wickedly at my plans of jumping him as soon as I returned to the flat.
Seeing the sign for the restrooms, I strolled past the counter and down a corridor. It branched off to the right toward the kitchen and to the left down another dimly lit hallway. I noted three doors, two on the left and one at the end of the hall.
The second door on the left was the ladies’ restroom and there was a big fat OUT OF ORDER sign on it. “Bloody hell.” Guess it would just have to wait.
I spun away and almost ran smack-bang into a male chest.
“Sorry,” the man muttered, his face half shadow in the low light. He wore a black shirt, black tie, and black trousers like the other waitstaff and bartenders. “Ladies’ restroom is out of order,” he explained unnecessarily but gestured behind me. “You can use the staff one if you like.”
“Oh, thank goodness, thanks.” I walked toward the door at the end of the hall. “It’s this one?”
There was no answer, so I assumed he’d gone back to work. I pushed open the door, realizing a second too late that I’d just opened an exit and not a restroom door.
I might not have been drunk, but the alcohol had definitely slowed my cognition because I stumbled out into the dark, narrow alley behind the bar before I could stop myself. Rolling my eyes, I moved to turn to go back and find the door he’d meant, when what felt like steel bands wrapped around me and something covered my mouth.
I jerked in fright as a chemical smell filtered up my nose and I heard the male grunt behind me as a hard body shuffled me farther into the alley.
Knowing I only had seconds before I passed out from what I suspected was chloroform, I reacted instinctively. And dropped like a sack of potatoes.
My assailant didn’t expect it, and I had time to turn and punch him hard between the legs with a shriek of rage. Just like Jared had taught me after he’d heard about the attack on Sloane at Ardnoch.
Muttered expletives fell from the guy’s mouth as he clutched his crotch and I scrambled back. Flashbacks from that night inInverness all those years ago looming, but I knew I couldn’t panic. Panic would get me nowhere.
Then renewed horror filled me when light from a security lamp above caught his face.
I knew that face.
All of Britain knew that face. Handsome, but with empty eyes.
It was Quinn Gray.
A sense of surreal terror threatened to overcome me, but the survivor in me took control. I shoved up onto my feet, scrambling and slipping on food waste that had spilled out from the bar’s rubbish bins. Beyond the tight alleyway was the street. I could see cars passing, people walking past.
I just had to get to them.
It felt like I was running in slow motion.
A tight pain scored across my scalp and down my spine as something caught in my hair and pulled me back with such force, I lost my footing.
I screamed as Quinn dragged me back down the alley, but music throbbed from inside the buildings on either side of us and the traffic beyond drowned me out. I clawed at his hands, dragging my nails down his arms, and he growled like an animal. Suddenly, he threw me against the damp, brick wall, and my cheek scraped against it, leaving a stinging pain in its wake.
I spun, jabbing out an elbow blindly but catching him in the chest. Rage suffused his expression, and I could barely hear over the blood rushing in my ears as he came at me.
Before he could grab my arms, I raked my nails down his face and he stumbled back, cursing. “You fucking bitch,” he hissed, his gaze searing as he whipped a penknife out of his back pocket and brandished it. “You’re nothing. Nothing to him. A nobody. I’ll teach you that you’re nothing.”
Nothing.
Nothing.
A word my mum had used to describe me.
How fucking dare he? This sick, twisted fuck of a stranger.
Fury unlike anything I’d ever felt surged through me, like a live flame burning through my blood, propelling my body forward. I charged him like a wild thing, grasping the wrist of his knife hand as I shoved with every ounce of adrenaline coursing within. It took him so by surprise, Quinn moved with the force until I slammed him into the opposite brick wall.
His head connected with a sickening thud and the knife clattered to the ground.
