Page 180 of Mile High Ruin

I think of Sloane arguing with me beside the terrace doors.

When can I leave?

The answer has not changed.

That was what I told her. I was so certain I was keeping her safe. The thought makes bile rise in my throat.

I kept her here. I told her she was safer inside my walls.

Then men entered those walls.

If she dies because I refused to let her leave⁠—

No.

I shut the thought down so violently it almost makes me dizzy.

She is alive. She has to be. I won’t imagine anything else.

A security man comes running from the house. “Mr. Chernovar.”

I turn. His face is pale. Not from the gunfire, from something else.

“What?”

He stops a few feet away. Looks at Anton, then at me. “Sir…”

My patience disappears. “Speak.”

His throat works. “We have another problem.”

I take one step toward him. “What problem?”

He looks toward the house. “We can’t seem to locate your sister, Mila.”

“What do you mean you can’t find her?” I ask.

He looks almost afraid to answer.

“She’s missing too.”

29

SLOANE

The hand over my mouth tightens when I try to scream, and for one violent second I’m certain whoever has me is going to drag me back into the garden, back toward the gunfire and Camille’s body and Vadim standing beneath the lights with a weapon in his hand.

I drive my elbow backward as hard as I can. The man behind me grunts and catches my wrist before I can do it again.

“Sloane.”

I freeze. The voice is familiar.

He pulls me farther behind the hedge, away from the path, and only when the gunfire becomes more muffled does his hand finally leave my mouth.

I spin around. “Daniel?”

The pilot’s shirt is untucked beneath a dark jacket, there’s dirt across one side of his face, and his hair has fallen forward over his forehead as though he has been running. He keeps glancing past me toward the house, one hand still wrapped around my wrist while the other holds a small flashlight pointed toward the ground.