The side door is ten feet away and might as well be ten miles with the floor breaking apart behind us.
I angle us hard left around a roulette table, shove through the narrow gap between a server station and a pillar, and finally get a clean line to it.
I hit the push bar with my arm and drag Caterina through with me into the service corridor beyond.
The door slams shut behind us, cutting off most of the noise in one brutal sweep. Not silence. Never silence in a place like this, but quieter.
I shove Caterina back against the wall beside the door and turn, gun up.
Chapter Twelve
Caterina
My heart is in my throat.
Actually in my throat.
One second, there was a fight at a blackjack table. A stupid casino-floor mess, the kind of thing security should have been able to handle without half the room even noticing.
The next, Adrian was at my side, barking at me to move, dragging me across the floor like the building was on fire, hisbody shoved between mine and the chaos, his hand clamped around my arm hard enough that I can already feel the bruise forming.
And the gun.
God.
His gun was out.
On the casino floor.
Around customers.
Around dealers and cocktail servers and God knows who else.
Someone could have gotten hurt.
The thought slams through me so hard I almost feel sick.
I stare at his back, broad shoulders tense beneath his jacket as he locks the door behind us, the other still holding the weapon low and ready, and my mind cannot settle on one version of reality long enough to make sense of any of it.
Was someone actually following us?
Did Adrian see something?
Or—
A worse thought hits me so fast it makes my stomach drop.
Oh God.
Maybe Adrian is crazy.
He’s retired military, right? Maybe he has PTSD or something.
This could be nothing, and he just pulled out a gun and dragged me across the room because of a fight.
The thought is so absurd I almost reject it the instant it forms, but I haven’t seen what he saw. I saw a fight. A fight on a casino floor, which is hardly unheard of. Then I saw him turn into something else entirely. Fast. hard. decisive. Armed.
I didn’t see any weapon. I didn’t see anyone come after us. I didn’t see anything except the two men fighting and then Adrian ripping me off the floor like I was about to be shot.
