Maria paused but nodded, still clearly enjoying herself like they were at some kind of party or weird double date.
“Of course! Get it all off your chest now.”
This time, Eve mirrored her smile. Her voice rang clear throughout the old warehouse.
“The tractor-supply business who owned this place? They might have gone out of business, but you want to know what theydidn’tdo?” Eve’s leg muscles tensed in anticipation. Her heartbeat started to gallop.
Maria was completely unaware of the change about to rock her world.
She simply raised an eyebrow in question.
Eve was happy to give her the answer.
“After all of these years, they never repaired that window.”
Jon understood first. He whirled around, gun raised, but it was too late.
Eve ran for cover behind the collection of dust-covered crates closest to her just as two shots rang out.
Maria yelled.
Jon made a noise.
Then silence.
Eve scrambled to her feet again, already yelling Darius’s name.
MARIA HAD BEEN RIGHT. Living in a small town sure felt like watching a soap opera sometimes.
Darius, handcuffed to a random metal pipe in an old, abandoned warehouse, kept in check by the source of his childhood trauma, while the love of his life was in danger?
Well, it all felt very dramatic.
And maybe if the main villain had been even a little bit less dramatic and her lackey less emotional, Maria would have noticed that Eve wasn’t just talking to talk. She wasn’t trying to twist the metaphorical knife into the old wound of Jon Decanter just to remind him of the scarring defeat he had suffered by the hand of the little protective girl down the street.
Not that Darius had understood that himself at first, though. It wasn’t until he realized Eve was purposefully not looking at him that he started paying attention to what was happening outside their past’s retelling.
Someone had climbed through the window that Eve had broken during her rescue when they were kids. And it wasn’t until he felt that person fiddling with the lock on his handcuff that he understood that Eve hadn’t just run in as a sacrifice to try and save him.
Instead of making herself bait like she had done the day before in the meeting room in front of Scott and Toby, Evelyn Myers had made herself different once she had walked into that warehouse.
She had made herself a distraction.
And by God, it had worked.
Darius had run through Jon like a sledgehammer through a thin piece of paper.
Jon managed two shots, but they were just the last cries of a dying man.
Darius heard the crack of Jon’s head hitting the cement floor before he felt it.
He knew Jon was gone as he secured the gun and turned it on Maria. Still, his body couldn’t help but stay alert while standing.
“Move and I shoot,” Darius yelled at the woman. The warning came out at the same time Eve yelled for him.
She didn’t wait for him to answer her.
Not that Darius expected that she would wait.
