Page 73 of Mile High Ruin

“I noticed.”

“That was idiotic.”

“I have had a difficult day.”

For one absurd moment, he looks like he might laugh, but then his face tightens as he shifts.

I remember the blood. “Oh my God.”

“I told you it is superficial.”

“You have no idea.”

“I have been shot before.”

“That is not comforting.”

Anton reaches us first. His suit jacket is gone and there’s blood on one sleeve, though I can’t tell whether it belongs to him.

He takes one look at Vadim’s side. “How bad?”

“It just grazed me, I think. It shouldn’t be lodged inside,” Vadim says.

They’re talking so normally it’s like they’re discussing the fricking weather.

Anton crouches and pulls the fabric away from the wound. Vadim doesn’t flinch, but his jaw locks.

Marek arrives seconds later, breathing hard, his gun still in his hand. “You’re bleeding.”

“So everyone keeps telling me.”

“Because you are.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

Marek looks at me. “Was he this irritating before he got shot?”

“Yes.”

“Good. No brain damage, then.”

I nearly laugh.

Almost.

Then Iosef appears. He has lost the leather portfolio somewhere, his glasses are slightly crooked, and for the first time since I met him, he looks genuinely rattled. His face is pale.

Anton rises. “You could have gotten us killed.”

Iosef stares at him. “What?”

“You stood there.”

“I didn’t know where they were shooting from.”

“You didn’t even draw your weapon.”

Iosef’s expression changes from shaken to offended. “I don’t have a weapon.”