“Isn’t your fiancé your literal lyra partner?” I ask her, proudof myself for remembering the term for the aerial hoop act. I wonder how Harper plans to enforce a don’t eat where you shit policy, when there are literal couples who perform together.
“Honey, I never said it made sense. I said she cares. Either that, or she suddenly became very protective of her assistants and theirassets,” she says, eyebrows waggling as she giggles at her own juvenile joke.
“You can do better than that, Fallon, come on now,” I tease her as she nudges me towards Harper’s office before bidding me a lovely evening.
Apparently, she thinks we both need the push.
The door to Harper’s office is slightly cracked open, and a rustling of paper inside tells me she’s exactly where I thought she would be.
I slip inside without knocking, not wanting to give her a chance to say she’s too busy or come up with a different lie that gets her out of being alone with me.
I take one step into the office when the figure behind the desk springs upwards. A very large, very masked, very not-Harper figure.
There are papers strewn across the office, covering the floor and desk, desk drawers thrown open, and her computer alight. Before I can even get a word out, he’s lunging at me, throwing his entire body weight into the hit, and the shock of it is more jarring than the actual collision.
I right myself just as he throws the door open the rest of the way and starts to barrel out, his foot sliding on a pile of papers that had flown out of his hands when he jumped me.
The paper’s assist gives me the moment I needed to right myself before tackling him around the waist. We fall together through the open door. He kicks and squirms, dislodging me a few times as we shift closer and closer to the bar area, rolling around on the floor of the club.
He's not a huge guy, but when he lands a solid kick to the side of my ribcage, I can already taste the pain of simply breathing as I land on my side with a loud thud. I clamber to my feet, chasing him behind the bar, when he suddenly stops to face me.
His eyes, wide and frantic, are all I can see of him. The rest of his features are hidden behind a black balaclava that’s seen better days. His whole outfit looks cobbled together—the mask fraying at the edges, his boots worn to the bottom of the sole. His beady eyes dart left and right, searching for some kind of weapon he can use. He turns to the mirrored shelving on his left and grabs a few of the bottles, throwing wildly in my general direction. One shatters across the top of the bar to my left, another breaking across the mirrored shelving to my right, barely giving me time to shield my face as shards of glass and alcohol rain down. I’ve barely moved my arms from their protective shell when I look up to find him, not running away as I expected, but moving towards me, a broken whiskey bottle brandished like a shiv in his grip.
He thrusts the bottle towards my stomach, but the movement is sloppy and inexperienced. I pivot away from the blow, knocking the bottle away from my midsection and throwing him off balance.
Quick to regain his footing, he starts wildly slashing the bottle at me in panicked strokes, with no direction or pattern. On one of the wild downward arcs, the bottle catches my biceps, a red bloom immediately seeping into my white alcohol-soaked shirt, the burn igniting my own rage.
The bottle falls from his hands and crashes to the floor, joining the shards that litter the makeshift battlefield. The moment of peace is short-lived as he barrels towards me, his shoulder ramming into my chest with enough force to throw me against the bar back. I can do nothing but slide down to the glass-strewn floor, instinctively reaching my hand up to graspthe angry red line crawling across my injured arm, attempting to shield it from even more damage as glasses rattle and fall from the impact.
The attacker takes my moment of shock to his advantage, turning on his feet and sprinting through the bar and out the door as shouting erupts from somewhere behind me.
Marcus and Fallon are around the bar seconds later, Marcus kneeling down where I’m slouched.
“Oh fuck, your arm,” Marcus curses, replacing my hand over the wound with his own. Applying pressure, and unfortunately, pain. I can hear Fallon in the background, telling someone the address of the club.
“Someone needs to find Harper. He was in her office, I didn’t see her, but I don’t know if he got to her somewhere outside her office, or maybe in her bathroom—” My body hums with adrenaline, panic playing out every possible terrible outcome in the wake of finding an intruder in Harper’s space. I didn’t see her in the office when I first walked in, but that doesn’t mean she’s safe. Who knows how long he was in there before I walked in.
What if she interrupted him before I did?
Panic seizes me as I look up at Marcus again, my eyes pleading for him to leave me and do as I ask. As I beg.
“Go. Find. Harper.”
“Colton, relax. She’s not here,” he speaks slowly, like talking to a skittish animal, that I might turn rabid on him any moment.
I vehemently shake my head back and forth. It doesn’t make sense. “No. No, she always works late on Thursdays.” Why won’t he just do what I’m asking?
I’ll just do it myself. He’s wasting too much time. I shift to stand, trying to tug my arm out of his grip.
Marcus holds his hands out, gesturing for me to ease back down. “Colton, I promise she isn’t here. She ducked out a littleover an hour ago…for a date,” he says the last part with a soft sympathy in his tone, as if he knows he’s rubbing salt in the wound.
Well, suddenly the wound to my arm seems like child’s play. The attacker should have taken notes from Harper: a cut to the arm hurts, but a dagger to the heart kills.
13
HARPER
“I’m sure sellingCirquewould be worth a…decent amount,” Sean says from across the table, continuing the list of requirements for when wesettle down.
