Deadly Testimony (Safeguard #2)(55)

Kyle shifted his weight, turning toward her as he leaned on one elbow on the counter. “I see.”

Boom.





Chapter Eighteen

The world exploded.

Well, not the world, but something.

Kyle ducked instinctively, but it was Lizzy who grabbed him by a handful of his shirt and yanked him down under the partial shelter of the bar. People screamed. Bars of chocolate fell off the shelves and bottles of wine fell from the rack along the one wall, crashing on the floor in shattered glass. Pieces of plaster came down from the ceiling.

She yanked a wig down over his head. “Get that straight.”

With shaking hands, he did his best to tuck his hair under the skullcap of the wig, changing his hair from black to brown.

Lizzy’s gaze passed over him and then she was reaching into her bag. A moment later, she jammed a cap down over his head.

After another few seconds, Lizzy’s voice cut through the din. “Now. With everyone else. If we’re going out, it has to be with the group.”

He scrambled to stay with her as she pulled him into the panicking group of tourists. They poured out of the store to see equal chaos on the street. Sirens filled the air, getting louder.

“It wasn’t this store and it wasn’t a large enough charge to bring the building down,” Lizzy was saying urgently. “Stand and stare like everyone else. Keep your head down though. Don’t look all the way up. We’ll wait until the emergency vehicles get here.”

He swallowed, staring at the apartment building on the corner. It was all too familiar. In fact, he’d barely been gone from it for more than a couple of days. Several floors up, there was a hole in the side of the building billowing smoke.

His stomach twisted with sudden nausea. “That’s...”

“Yes.” Lizzy’s whisper was grim. “It is. They still think we’re in the city. They’re trying to freak us out. Letting us know they found the actual apartment we were in.”

“Did they just search it?” He had an insane moment to wonder if they’d found the excellent sandwich-making supplies in the refrigerator.

“Maybe. They could be watching to see if anyone leaves the building now, or one of the other apartment buildings nearby.” Two or three people had their smartphones out, taking pictures or video of the destruction. Lizzy was doing the same. “Or maybe they’re watching the hotel registers to see if anyone checks into a hotel somewhere downtown immediately after this. Someone who didn’t have a previous reservation.”

More and more people were gathering. He wanted to look around wildly, see who might be watching. Who might find him.

Lizzy’s hand clamped on his arm like a vise. “Keep watching what everyone else is watching. It’s another tactic. They don’t know if we’re here. It’s an act of desperation. They’re trying to startle us into running. Otherwise, we’d already be dead.”

Desperation.

There was a tickle at the back of his throat. Maybe it was the dust from the explosion. He wanted to cough. He wanted to laugh hysterically. “I’d be dead.”

“We. We would be.” Lizzy put her phone away. “They have to know you couldn’t hide for this long by yourself. They’d drop who was with you too. But this tells us a couple of interesting things.”

Concise was one thing. A dislike for stating the obvious was completely understandable. Her propensity for being vague and understating the situation was giving him anxiety issues.

“You must be kidding.” He would’ve started walking up or down the street—for God’s sake—in any direction, but she held him in place. They continued to stand among more and more people as they gathered to gawk now that the initial panic had subsided.

“Breathe,” she advised.

Fine. In through his nose, out through his mouth, with his hand half covering the lower part of his face to fend off the worst of the dust still hanging in the air. Like everyone else.

“This is crazy.” He looked at her, stared at her. She was vibrant to him. Alive in this situation. This was her element, handling a situation he’d previously only ever imagined via television or movies. Through every moment they’d been together from the night he’d met her, she’d taken in everything without a hint of uncertainty. This was her work.

“This is wrong.” Her jaw was set. “It’s a danger to bystanders. It’s a jackass move.”

“You wouldn’t do something like this. Nobody sane would.” He was incredibly relieved when she didn’t correct him. Sometimes you said something so the person could prove to you that your assumption was correct.

“Sane people have done awful things. Insanity isn’t a thing somebody either is or isn’t.” Her response came out flat. She turned, catching the crowds in the video on her phone before returning to the smoke pouring from the gap in the side of the building. “I haven’t done this, here. No. But don’t go thinking of me as a good person either. Don’t.”

He’d wanted to know more about her. Now it was coming too fast to absorb, comprehend. It was more than intimidating, coming to grips with so many revelations. He’d known she could kill. He hadn’t considered just how much her career choice required actively doing it. But as she hadn’t withdrawn from him, the least he could do was absorb what she’d shared. Process the truth of it. He wouldn’t react without thinking. So he backtracked to steadier ground. “You’re sure we shouldn’t be at least making our way to the edge of the crowd?”