Page 187 of Mile High Ruin

I lean back in the chair. “So you manipulated me.”

Her face tightens. “I needed everyone distracted.”

The café suddenly feels much quieter.

I look at Daniel. He doesn’t meet my eyes.

Then I look back at Mila. “Distracted from what?”

She hesitates just long enough to answer the question before she speaks.

I stare at her. “The gunmen were yours?”

“Technically.”

I almost laugh because the word is so absurd. “Technically?”

“They were hired to create enough trouble around the perimeter for security to concentrate outside. They weren’t supposed to get into the house, and they weren’t supposed to hurt anyone.”

“They were firing guns.”

“Most of it was supposed to be controlled.”

“Controlled?” My voice rises enough that the truck driver near the window glances over, and I lower it again. “Camille is dead.”

Mila’s face loses color. “What?”

I look between them. Neither one appears to have known.

“Vadim shot her.”

Daniel goes very still.

Mila stares at me. “Why?”

“I don’t know.”

That’s not entirely true.

Camille had blood on the knife. She was frantic. She said she was sorry.

I wrap both hands around my coffee even though it has gone cold. “He killed her right in front of me.”

Mila looks down.

I see Vadim’s face again, emptied of everything except that terrible certainty. If he believed I’d been helping Petrov, what would he have done? Would he have listened when I tried to explain? Would he have believed that I met Viktor once and didn’t know who he was?

The thought makes my stomach tighten.

Maybe he would have killed me too.

I should be terrified enough that thinking about him becomes impossible. Instead, I wonder whether he has slept. Whether he knows Mila is gone. Whether he thinks I left because I wanted to. Whether he’s furious with me. Whether he’s afraid for me.

I miss him so suddenly that it feels almost humiliating.

I look away from the couple across from me.

Mila checks the time on Daniel’s phone. “We have to go.”