Five minutes felt both impossibly short and dangerously long.
Kayne’s jaw flexed.“If you run into trouble, you call for me.”
“I will,” she promised.“But I need to do this.”
For a long moment, no one moved.The tunnel waited, dark and patient.
Then Kayne nodded once, but she was afraid it had cost him something vital.“Five minutes.”
She didn’t wait for him to change his mind.The tunnel swallowed her the second she stepped inside.
It was narrower than she’d expected, concrete walls damp and uneven, the air cooler and carrying a faint metallic tang.Her footsteps echoed too loudly, every sound magnified, her breath suddenly something she had to manage instead of take for granted.
She forced herself not to rush.Panic made noise, and noise got people killed.
She pushed forward.Hold on, Danica,she thought.I’m coming.
The passage sloped upward slightly, then leveled out.A faint light glowed ahead, leaking through a crack in the wall.She slowed, heart hammering.
A figure stood just beyond the opening.
“Evan?”she whispered.
Evan Calder turned toward her, staring at her beneath the dim light.For a split second, her mind scrambled to reconcile the sight of him here.
“You?”she breathed.“Why are you doing this?”
Disappointment came crashing in so hard it stole her breath.She had trusted him, had spent hours with him and his team building her website, trading ideas, and laughing at bad jokes.He always seemed kind, even when she spurned his advances.
She focused on him again.His eyes were wide.Not guilty.
Terrified.
“Run,” he mouthed, shaking his head frantically.His hands lifted, palms out, a silent warning.A plea.
Confusion flickered, and then the crack of a gunshot shattered the tunnel.
Evan jerked violently, the impact knocking the air from him as he collapsed forward.He hit the ground hard, the metallic smell suddenly sharp and unmistakable.
Chloe screamed.
Behind him, as Evan’s body fell away, another figure stepped into view.
Aiden Kerr.
He didn’t look timid now or afraid.His face was calm, almost reverent, the gun steady in his hand, smoke curling lazily from the barrel.
Chloe couldn’t process what she was seeing.The sweet, shy man Sandy had taken under her wing had shot Evan in cold blood.
“Aiden,” she said, her voice breaking around his name.“What’s going on?”
#
If Chloe thought Kaynewould simply let her walk into trouble alone, she thought wrong.
He stayed a few steps back in the tunnel, close enough to cover Chloe, but far enough not to crowd her or alert her to his presence.Close enough to intervene.Far enough not to be seen.A balance he loathed.
Every instinct he had was screaming.
