14
IVAN
For a woman who thinks I’m here to hurt her, Cora is being awfully mouthy.
At this point in most of my business dealings, people are pleading. There are bowed heads, clasped hands, and bent knees involved. Tears aplenty. Maybe some unintentional pants-wetting on a particularly pathetic day.
But Cora lifts her chin and plants all one hundred and thirty pounds of herself firmly in front of me.
“It’s up to me whether you hurt me or not? Okay, great. Then count me as a loud and proud member of Team ‘Don’t Hurt Cora.’”
I’m about to tell her I’d rather be on Team ‘Make Cora Scream Again.’
Then I see a light.
A red sniper’s dot in the center of her chest.
I act before I even realize what I’m doing. I dip my shoulder, charge forward, and wrap an arm around her waist. My other hand cradles instinctively around the back of her head.
She starts to scream, but the air whooshes out of her as we hit the ground. I take the worst of the fall. My knuckles bite into the hard tile floor and split open.
“What in the hell are you doing?” she shrieks. “Get off of me! Let me up—”
“Don’t fucking move!”
I band my arm across her chest to hold her down…
Just as the room implodes.
Large windowpanes advertising dulce de leche crepes, southwest egg scrambles, and enchiladas as big as your head shatter in their frames and then explode inward. Glass shards and dust rain over us. I throw myself over Cora, shielding her from the eruption even as my back is pelted with glass shrapnel and pain skitters across my skin.
For a few moments, it’s mayhem.
Then it stops. The world goes eerily quiet.
Cora is tucked into my chest. She was afraid of me a second ago, but now, her face is buried in my shirt, her hands fisting the material like she’s floating out to sea and I’m her life preserver.
“I think it’s over.”
My voice seems to shake her from her stupor. She peeks her head out from under my arm and stares wide-eyed at the glass-covered floor. “Was that a bomb?”
“Sniper.”
She chokes on the word. “A sniper. A sniper was going to… Holy shit. You saved my life.”
“Don’t get too far into your ‘thank you’ speech. The shooter is still alive.”
That realization sends her curling against me once again.
I rise up on my aching knee and offer her my hand. She takes it, slipping her fingers into mine, and we crawl around the bank of booths in the middle of the room so we are further from the windows.
She leans against the seat next to me. She isn’t weeping and crying the way she should be. The way most women would.
Without the adrenaline and the feel of her body against me as a distraction, anger rises up in my chest. “What the fuck are you involved in?”
She turns to me. “You think this was because of me?”
“No one targeting me would look in a shithole like this. I’m starting to think you could be lying to me about a whole lot more than your name.”
I have plenty of enemies, but none of them so desperate and sloppy that they’d shoot up a restaurant full of innocent civilians in the middle of the day. There’s a missing piece of the puzzle here.
“I lied about my name, but I’m not lying about this. No one is after me.”
She’s lying or she’s wrong. I don’t have time to figure out which one. Not until I solve the problem facing us now.
“Are you okay?” I finally ask.
She turns to me, eyes narrowed. “What?”
I repeat the question slowly, as if she might need time to understand each individual word. “Are. You. Okay?”
“I heard you, but… Yes.” She runs a hand over the back of her head like she’s checking to make sure. “Yeah, I’m okay. Are you?”
“I’m perfect.”
“Don’t we all know it,” she mutters.
I ignore her and flip onto my knees just as the back door opens. My hand moves to the gun on my hip, but then I hear Yasha.
“Ivan?”
Good. He’s alive.
“Over here. Do you have eyes on anyone?”
“Working on it,” he says. “Whoever it was, they didn’t go after anyone standing outside. They were aiming for the windows. Stay put; we’re clearing the perimeter.” Then he disappears back outside again.
“We were the targets?” Cora is still resting against the side of the booth. Her knees are tucked against her chest, her arms wrapped around her legs. She’s looking to me with wide, green eyes.
If she was anyone else, I’d kill her. There’s something she isn’t telling me and she’s putting me at risk.
But she isn’t anyone else. She’s…
Well, I have no fucking idea who she is. Not really.
I rest my elbow on my knee and look into her eyes, leveling with her. “Now is the time to bare it all, Cora.”
Her cheeks flush. “We already played that game.”
I roll my eyes. “If you have enemies, tell me now. Your life could depend on it.”
“I don’t have any enemies,” she retorts. “Unless you count yourself.”
Good point.
I haven’t decided what I am to her yet.