“I’m not upset about him being dead! I’m upset that you killed him behind my back!”
“No! I did not!” Fox took a step toward me. “We’ve learned from all that, remember? I would never do that to you. We’re a team. We do it together or not at all. This was not planned.”
“You’re saying he was waiting for you out here, ready to kill you, and it was self-defense?”
Fox nodded vigorously. “Yes.”
“So, where’s the gun?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Fox
It was a fair question.
Was now the moment to admit that I was starting to have doubts that there even was a gun? No—that would definitely make things worse.
“I…I haven’t been able to find it. But, you know, it’s dark!”
Haze was staring at me with her arms folded.
Why did I feel like she didn’t believe me? I tried to ignore my mounting anxiety. I needed her to know that I would never go behind her back, that I wouldn’t ever risk losing her, not now, not ever. Judging from her outburst earlier tonight, she had clearly been stewing over me being dead weight—and that was before I ran over her ex-boyfriend.
“I swear, there was definitely a gun!”
“You’re trying to tell me that it’s just a coincidence that right after I reference your recent inability to kill, you go out and kill my ex?”
“It was self-defense!”
Haze stared at me. “You didn’t see that it was him? Before your foot hit the accelerator?”
“No!” He’d been wearing a cap—hadn’t he? But then, where was the cap? The same place as the gun? I walked away from Haze. I didn’t want her to see my face.
I couldn’t admit to her that it had all happened so fast, I didn’treally make a conscious decision. There was no cool, calm, controlled decision-making. I’d panicked. Like an amateur. Like I hadn’t ever faced down a threat before. What was wrong with me? I’d trained for moments like this! And then I’d just ducked and slammed my foot down. No control. Sloppy. Desperate. God, I was a total mess.
Haze was looking down at Danny. “We’ve got enough going on as it is, and now we’ve got to go dump his body and get Jenny on the case to make sure we’re covered.” She looked around. “Why the hell would Danny be out here, anyway?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Haze frowned. “None of this is obvious.”
“Danny must’ve been working for The Chameleon. His company is organizing the Balgray party. The Chameleon has been linked to the party. The dodgy name from the guest list was renting an Airbnb at the end of this dead end.”
“You think The Chameleon had Danny working for him? As what? Danny was a party planner! He’s not in the criminal world.”
“How do you know? What else would he be doing out here? You hadn’t seen Danny in years and he appears back in your life the same time The Chameleon comes to the UK? Of course it’s linked!”
“You could’ve waited to find out before you killed him.”
“Forgive me for being too busy trying to stay alive to think to ask him nicely how the hell he was involved. He was aiming a gun at my head!”
“A gun you haven’t found.”
“It happened like I said, Haze. You have to believe me.”
Haze ran a hand through her hair. “Jenny sent you out here because of a lead on The Chameleon, and you happened to come across Danny, who happened to be trying to kill you?”
“Yes!”
