Page 182 of Mile High Ruin

I stare. “Mila?”

She freezes when she sees me, and her face goes completely blank.

For a second, neither of us says anything.

Mila is wearing dark trousers and a sweater rather than the dress she had on at dinner, and a small backpack hangs over one shoulder. Her hair is tied back, and there’s something about the way she’s standing beside the car that makes the entire night become even stranger.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

Her eyes move to Daniel. Then back to me.

I turn to him. “You brought her?”

“I didn’t have a choice,” he says.

“Yes, you did. What’s going on here?” I say. I haven’t seen the two interact since the day he startled her.

Mila closes her eyes briefly. “We don’t have time.”

I look between them. “What the hell is going on?”

Mila opens the rear door. “Get in.”

“I’m not getting into that car until someone explains why you’re sneaking out of your brother’s compound during a gunfight.”

She looks at me. There’s guilt in her face. Real guilt. “Sloane, if we stay here long enough for Vadim’s people to regroup, Daniel will never make it out.”

I look at Daniel. Then back at her. “You two are together.”

Neither answers. They don’t need to.

Mila reaches for Daniel’s hand, and their fingers close around each other automatically. The gesture is so intimate and so natural that it tells me more than anything either of them could have said.

“Oh.”

Mila looks almost embarrassed. “Please get in.”

This time, I do.

Daniel takes the driver’s seat while Mila climbs into the front beside him. The engine starts, the headlights remain off for several seconds longer, and then we pull away from the compound along a road so dark that the trees seem to swallow everything beyond the narrow beam in front of us.

Nobody speaks for nearly ten minutes.

I sit in the back seat trying to make sense of what just happened. My mind keeps circling the same images without finding anywhere safe to stop. Camille—the sweet woman is dead, and the one who pulled the trigger is the man I…

I shake my head. I can’t let myself go there.

After what feels like forever, Daniel reaches into a bag and turns around. “Here.” He holds something out.

My passport.

I stare at it. “How did you get that?” I ask.

“I took it from your room,” he says.

“When?”

“Before dinner.”