He checked the balcony. Empty. The dressing room. The bathroom. Nothing.
His pulse climbed. The lodge was a labyrinth to anyone unfamiliar with it. Corridors branched, and doors opened to wings that dead-ended without warning. She might have gotten lost.
Jack left the suite and took the route she would have taken from the staircase. He wound through the long gallery with its arched windows and hunting paintings, his instinct spiking to a sense of urgency as he saw that many of the lanterns had been turned down.
His pace quickened to something just short of a run. The corridor stretched before him, leaving pools of shadow between the remaining light. His footsteps hammered the floor in a hard, metered rhythm that stumbled at a scream.
“Daisy!” Jack ran.
He tore around the corner, his dress shoes skidding on the polished floor. Another scream, closer now, strangled into something wet and desperate that clawed beneath his skin and wrapped around his spine.
The gallery opened before him, the first fingers of dawn slicing through the arched windows in pale blades. And there, on the floor, was Daisy on her back and a dead man holding her down.
A sharp, piercing ringing detonated inside Jack’s skull. Every sound in the corridor collapsed into that single, unbearable frequency. His vision narrowed to a burning point as he reached behind him?—
—The ringing was still there. Piercing. Shrill. Deafening.
It filled his skull, vibrating through his teeth and jaw, melding with her growing scream.
He was on his knees.
He didn’t know how he got there.
His lungs heaved in ragged, animal bursts. His shirt was soaked. Not sweat. Warmer. Thick.
The gun was on the floor.
His forearms locked as someone held him back.
But it was too late. Tannhäuser lay dead on the floor.
“Close off the floor!”
The ringing in his ears faded until all he could hear was her screams.
Blood bloomed dark and wet across Tannhäuser’s chest. His face destroyed.
Collapsed. Pulverized to raw meat.
He didn’t remember pulling the trigger.
Hunter locked Jack’s slick arms behind his back in an unbreakable iron hold.
“Relax, comrade.” Hunter’s breath was steady against the back of Jack’s skull. “Nothing you can do now.”
Jack jerked and thrashed, but he couldn’t break free.
Screaming. She was screaming.
“Let go!”
“Nyet.” He forcefully jerked Jack back as he tried to go to her. “Be still.”
Her screams fractured, dissolving into jagged sobs that splintered into hyperventilation. The sound gutted him, driving him to his knees, but Hunter still wouldn’t let go.
She cowered in the corner. Cole angled his body as a barrier between her and the carnage on the floor. Feet planted wide as he shouted into a radio.
Her destroyed dress hung from one shoulder, bare chest streaked with blood.
