I give one sharp rap as warning and then slowly and invisibly enter, pouring the scotch for the customer as Allie selects her music from the playlist in the corner. I give her a wink as I turn to leave, and she winks back. Considering that he just ordered a three-hundred-dollar bottle of scotch, it’s gonna rain in here.
As I head down the hallway, I see a large guy striding toward me. He’s wide, and the black of his jeans and T-shirt blend with the dimness of the hallway, although the moving laser lights bounce off him. He looks cold and calculating to a degree that seems to almost chill the very air around him. Our security guys are pretty badass themselves, but there’s something raw about this guy, a missing element to his soul.
He’s ugly as sin too, with a bald head that gleams lightly in the dim light and squinty eyes. His left ear’s all types of screwed up, what I think some people call cauliflowered, like an alley cat that’s had one too many scraps over the garbage cans.
I walk past him, hugging the wall and drawing myself in tight to seem as small and unimportant as possible, knowing that I’ll have to tell security to keep an eye on him. Even still, my back ripples in goosebumps as I slide by.
This guy zings my red flags as a definite potential problem. I’m almost to the corner when I hear a fast ra-tat-tat sound, but it’s barely audible over the loud bass-thumping music on the main floor. My brain takes a split second to register the sound as gunfire, but it’s not until I hear Allie scream that I turn and run toward her. It’s stupid. I shouldn’t be running toward gunfire, but all my brain is telling me is that my best friend may have just been shot, and I have to help her.
I see the guy in black running out the other end of the hallway as I stop in the doorway of Allie’s room. She’s crouched in the corner and covered in blood splatter but seems to be uninjured. She’s just frozen in shock, her eyes wide as she stares at what used to be a human being slumped on the couch.
My brain seems to shift, taking all of this in, not in panic, but in still-frame shots like my eyes have turned into a camera. I see the scotch-drinking suit guy, obviously dead since he’s got three bullet holes in his chest, slumped over on the couch, blood pooling brightly across his white shirt.
I see the other holes in the wall and can only assume that Allie’s alive because she was near the wall when the attack happened. Maybe she hadn’t fully gotten into her routine, or maybe she was getting ready to drop her bra. Whatever the case, there’s a bullet hole in the wall just about a foot from where she’s cowering, and it’s by luck or fate that she’s not wounded too.
“Allie—” I start before Dominick blasts through the door that leads to his office, charging down the hall like a raging bull.
“What happened?” he yells, his face taut. “Allie?”
Dominick pushes me out of the way, rushing in the room and gathering Allie in his arms, blood and all, as he checks her over. I somehow find my voice, pointing down the hall. “He went that way. Big guy, in all black, black and cold eyes. Had a screwed-up ear.”
As I speak, the security guys surround me, so fast and quiet I didn’t even realize. Nick turns, his voice hot with anger. “On it, Boss.”
He races down the hallway, following the direction I pointed. Shane grabs me, turning my face to his chest, where I burrow in without hesitation, needing something solid to hang on to because this is all too surreal. “I’ve got Meghan.”
Dominick never takes his eyes off Allie, but he talks over his shoulder to Logan, the last of the security guys. “Take care of that.”
Logan nods, moving closer to the suit, and Allie flinches. Dominick picks Allie up, heading toward his office, and Shane moves me quickly and steadily to the dressing room, dragging me to my locker and pulling out my backpack.
His voice is urgent but quiet in my ear. “What do you need outta your locker? Anything?”
He’s shoving my wallet, my phone, my makeup, and clothes into my backpack. “What? What do you mean?”
He glances back once but then returns his attention to my locker, giving it one last scan before closing the door. It’s nearly empty, except for maybe that chocolate chip muffin I brought in last week and had sort of forgotten until now.
He slides the backpack onto one shoulder before turning and looking into my eyes. “Meg, we have to go. You can’t have seen what you just saw. They won’t allow it. We gotta go. Now.”