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She couldn't even answer him. The gunfire stopped as abruptly as it had started, and silence settled over the lobby, broken only by the shrill wail of a distant car alarm.
The stranger listened for several long seconds before lowering his weapon. "They're gone,” he breathed.
Lily slowly opened her eyes. The lobby looked like a war zone. Glass covered the floor, and bullet holes scarred the walls. Outside, two black SUVs sped away into the night.
"Wh—what is happening?" she stuttered.
The stranger looked down at her for the first time since shielding her with his body. "You were never supposed to be here tonight."
"I work here,” she insisted.
"Not anymore,” he said.
Confusion flooded her face. "What? You can’t fire me,” she said.
He holstered his weapon with practiced ease. "The men outside weren't after me." Ice spread through her veins because she was sure that things were about to get a whole lot worse than she imagined they were. "They were after anyone who witnessed what happened upstairs."
Her mouth went dry. "They know about me?"
"They will,” he said.
She shook her head. "I'll go to the police."
"The authorities are already compromised,” he said.
"How do you know that?" she asked.
"Because if they weren't—" His jaw tightened. "Richard Collins would've been arrested years ago."
Lily stared at him, letting his words sink in. Who was this man? Richard had been difficult—demanding and even cruel, sometimes. But did he deserve to be murdered by a man who seemed to know secrets no one else did?
Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance. They were closer now. The stranger glanced toward the street. "You have thirty seconds to decide your next move."
"Decide my next move?" she asked. “What does that even mean?”
"You can stay here and hope the people coming through those doors are actually police officers.” He stepped toward the shattered entrance. "Or—" He looked back at her, his expression unreadable. "You can come with me, and I’ll keep you alive."
Lily's pulse thundered in her ears. Every instinct she'd ever had screamed not to trust him. He was a killer. She'd watched him shoot a man without hesitation. She’d seen the terror in Richard's eyes and the bullets that had come through the windows that were meant for her. She wasn’t sure if she could trust the man standing in front of her, but the certainty in his voice made her doubt what her next move should be.
The sirens grew louder, and she looked toward the street and then back at the stranger. For the first time in her life, every option in front of her felt dangerous, but if he was right, she needed to decide. She took his offered hand, and he nodded at her.
“Good choice,” he said. Lily doubted that anything about her decision was good, but she was sure that she’d find out soon enough. She had no idea if stepping toward him would change the rest of her life, but she was pretty sure that it had.
Chapter Two
Soren
Soren Kane hated loose ends because loose ends got people killed. They unraveled years of planning with one careless mistake, one witness in the wrong place, one employee working late because her boss demanded another report before she could go home.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. The woman sat rigid in the backseat of the armored SUV, her hands twisted tightly in her lap. She hadn't spoken since climbing into the vehicle five minutes ago. Her wide green eyes darted between the passing streets and every shadow outside the tinted windows. She was waiting for him to kill her, and he couldn't blame her for that. She'd watched him put a bullet through Richard Collins' skull. Most people would've run screaming from him. Hell, she'd tried.
Soren shifted his attention back to the road ahead. "How many cars are tailing us?"
"Three behind us," his second in command, Luca, answered from the passenger seat without looking up from the tablet balanced on his knee. "One peeled off two blocks ago. Two are still tailing us."
Soren's jaw tightened. “Do you think that they are friendly?"
"Nope,” Luca breathed. "They're getting bolder."
