Page 173 of Mile High Ruin

“Camille?”

Her eyes move once. I don’t know if she hears me.

“Camille.”

My voice breaks this time.

She collapses fully onto the path, and I scream.

The sound tears out of me so hard it hurts my throat, but even that feels distant compared to the sight of blood across my hands, across my dress, across the skin near my mouth where it sprayed when the bullet hit her.

Then I look up.

Vadim is standing only a few feet away.

For a moment, everything around him seems to disappear. The house behind him. The music still drifting faintly through the terrace doors. The movement of security somewhere near the steps.

All I see is him. A gun in his hand. His arm still raised.

His expression is completely cold. Cold in the terrifying, absolute way I have only seen when violence has already happened and he has decided there is nothing left to discuss.

My gaze drops to the weapon.

Then to Camille.

Then back to him.

His eyes meet mine, and something inside me stops.

“Vadim…”

Another gunshot erupts from somewhere beyond the hedge. His head turns toward the sound.

The next burst comes almost immediately, several shots close together and the violent crack of rounds hitting stone and metal. A security light near the wall shatters, spraying sparks as someone yells from the direction of the house.

Vadim moves toward me. “Sloane, down.”

I hear him, but my body doesn’t respond. I’m still staring at Camille.

At the blood.

At the gun in his hand.

At the impossible certainty that he fired it.

Someone grabs me by the upper arm and yanks me sideways just as another shot cracks through the dark, and the sudden force knocks me off-balance. My foot catches against the edge of the path, my shoulder slams into somebody’s chest, and then I hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.

Pain flashes through my side, and for several seconds I can’t breathe properly.

Shoes pound past me. Men are shouting in Russian and English, voices overlapping so quickly that I can’t separate commands from panic, and somewhere close enough to make me flinch, a weapon fires again. I curl instinctively toward the ground.

Someone falls nearby. I hear the impact before I see anything.

My hands are slick with Camille’s blood.

That’s what finally makes me move.

I push myself up onto one knee, then my feet, barely aware of the pain in my shoulder because my mind has narrowed to one simple, overwhelming need.