And it’s probably why my heart is pounding now. Some combination of heading inside to meet Wesley’s team of trained assassins andlovely girls,and thefact that this place is like a cathedral of excess. As if the fingerprint access gate or eight-car garage weren’t enough, the walk across a flagstone patio towards carved, polished hardwood front doors really drives it home. They look like they should be answered by a butler.
“Wait, do you have a butler?” I gape, adjusting my hold on Some Bills’s carrier.
“What? No,” he chuckles as he offers his thumb for another fingerprint reader.
No wonder he called it a fortress. This place issecure. Even I can feel some of that $10 million tension leeching out.
I follow him into a fuckin’ foyer with marble and brass andtwosets of stairs. I swear, everything about grandeur is designed to make you feel small. The sound of the wheels of my suitcase is like nails on a chalkboard, the grinding and squeaking reminding me I got it for $5 at Goodwill. My head falls back as I take in the sparkling chandelier, smiling in spite of myself at the dancing rainbows the crystals cast on the wall.
Shit, I’vedefinitelybeen in the wrong business…
“One second, I’m going to pop into the loo.”
“Take your time. I’ll stay right here,” I mumble. My voice comes out dampened through my stretched throat as I crane my neck to try to see the landing at the top of the stairs. Is something… moving up there?
One of the narrow doors behind me shuts, and I glance around just in time to miss which one it was, since there are two. That probably means one is a closet. I wonder if that’s created any drunken mistakes—if anyone has ever accidentally peed on a coat.
Some Bills hisses, the noise echoing off marble and metal and shocking me. I lift the cage in my arms, spinning it around to the opening to see what’s got him worked up. “What—”
Something comes bounding down the stairs, and I don’t have time to do anything but suck in a breath to scream as an enormous blur of brown launches itself at me. Protecting my child first, I half-turn to shield the cage, and land hard on my knee and then hip. The carrier falls from my arms and skitters across the marble as I finish the rest of my descent with about 150 lbs of something following me down.
Luckily my arms are free to protect my head from the fall, but I land hard on my elbow, skidding a few inches. Stretched out on my stomach, it takes me a second to get my bearings before I realize that the smell and hot feeling on my neck is dog breath.
Over my shoulder, a Great Dane smiles a dopey dog grin down at me. It leans down and promptly begins licking as much of my face as it can reach. I turn my head with a little squeal of disgust and try to shrug it away, but its enormous paws are digging into my back and I can barely move.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I wheeze when it stops. “Now get off me.”
There’s a sharp whistle that makes the dog look up. Seeing something more interesting than me, it dismounts and trots over to whoever made the noise.
“Who are you? How did you get in?” a deep voice thunders.
His accent is so thick, it takes me a few seconds to register what he said. This must be Dimitri—normally I don’t like to stereotype, but in this case I think I’m safe assigning that identity to the man with the Russian accent so thick you could chip a tooth on it.
“Door was open,” I joke, painfully rolling over and rising into a sitting position. When I look up, my stomach drops and fear spikes at the sight of the big, mean-looking giant of a man standing at the bottom of the stairs.
Nowthat’san assassin. He’s probably the tallest person I’ve ever seen, built like a refrigerator and, judging by his scowl and icy stare, just as frigid. As if his size and bulk alone weren’t enough, he’s got a gnarly old scar that made a mess out of an otherwise damn handsome face.
The noise he makes is full of disbelief and scorn. “That is not possible,” he replies, totally straight-faced.
Wait… is he for real? Yeah, obviously the door wasn’t open. Wesley gave his fingerprints to two separate scanners and needed an eight-bit code to get into Fort Extravagance. “I was just kidding,” I mutter.
I’m almost afraid to take his hand when he offers it, looming over me and bending at the waist to get his arm down low enough. He helps me up, nearly lifting me clear into the air when he miscalculates my size. But as he settles a giant paw on my shoulder, I realize he’s not being helpful. He’s keeping me from getting away.
And maybe it’s because he’s so fucking enormous that I’m basically eye-level with it, but I have to resist the urge to put my hands up like I’m surrendering when I see the outline of theweaponin his dark sweatpants.
“Jesus, is that a gun in your pants or are you happy to see me?”
He scowls harder—how?—and digs into his pocket. “It is a banana,” he replies simply, showing the fruit. He shakes my shoulder lightly. “Now tell me who you are.”
I almost laugh at the dry delivery of what is objectively the funniest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say, but the tightening of his fingers makes my bones creak, and I wince instead. “You are one scary motherfucker, you know that?”
“Yes,” he booms.
Wow, he can really project. Or maybe it’s all the marble that his voice can bounce off. “Relax, I’m with Wesley. I’m tech support. Here to help you catch all those bad guys—”
And that’s when Wesley opens the bathroom door. “Madison? Dimitri, what’s going on?”
“Oh, she is Madison,” Dimitri says, voice full of recognition. He releases me with an apologetic look. I mean, I think it is. I literally can’t see his face because he’s too tall. I can see up his nose, though.
