Page 208 of Mile High Ruin

“Yes.”

The answer is immediate. That stops something inside me.

“Is she hurt?”

“No.”

“Is she being held somewhere?”

“No.”

“Then where is she?”

She shakes her head. “I can’t tell you that, but she’s safe.”

The word almost makes me laugh. “Safe with whom?”

“I’m not answering that.”

I study her. The old instinct rises quickly now, the one that tells me pressure works better than patience, that everyone has a point where they stop protecting information and begin protecting themselves. I know how to find that point.

With Sloane, I hate myself for even thinking about it.

“Were all three of you in on it?”

Her brows draw together. “What?”

“You. Daniel. Camille.”

She turns toward me so quickly that the movement nearly makes her lose balance. “Don’t.” The word is low.

I hold her gaze. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t talk about Camille.” The grief in her face is immediate enough that I know before she says anything else exactly where this is going. “You killed her.”

I say nothing.

“You stood there and shot her.”

“She had stabbed Iosef.”

Her eyes widen. She didn’t know about that, I dimly realize.

“She had a bloody knife in her hand and was running toward you after attacking one of my men.”

“You didn’t even hesitate.”

“No.”

That makes her flinch.

Finally she shakes her head. “I thought it was because you found out about Paris⁠—”

Paris—where Iosef said Petrov met her for the first time.

I bristle at the sound of it but don’t tell her anything. She keeps waiting for my reaction, but I don’t give that to her.

She looks away, blinking rapidly, and when she speaks again there’s something raw beneath the anger. “She said she was sorry, like she was trying to tell me something,” she says, frowning to herself.