Grave Phantoms (Roaring Twenties #3)(19)

“No.”

Her eyes narrowed with cool incredulity.

“All right, yes.” Was she mad? He felt a little ashamed, and hoped she wasn’t mad, considering their history. Sylvia was hard to read. Sometimes he felt she was full of light, uncaring about what anyone thought, and other times, he worried that she cared too much and went to great lengths to hide it.

But she only laughed at him right now, and relief washed through him.

“Fine,” she said. “But you really owe me, and I get to name the price.”

They ribbed each other good-naturedly for a while, Sylvia naming off favors that became more and more exorbitant, until she elbowed his arm. “Hold on a minute. Now who is that she’s talking to?”

Bo looked. A man sat at Astrid’s table. Well dressed, older. No friend of hers that Bo knew—and Bo knew them all. In fact, he’d go so far as to call the mystery man at Astrid’s table . . . dangerous looking. An animal toying with its prey. That’s likely your jealous heart talking, he told himself. But he realized a moment later that his instincts about the man were not based on anything the man himself was doing. Bo was only reading Astrid; she had gone completely rigid in her seat.

Without thinking, Bo pushed away from the table. But before he could stand, Astrid was on her feet and saying something to the man as she dashed away and disappeared behind a column.

“What was that all about?” Sylvia said in a low voice.

Bo wasn’t sure, but he didn’t like it. And he liked it even less when the mystery man followed Astrid into the shadows.

“Stay here,” Bo instructed Sylvia, and strode off after the man.

SEVEN

The restroom was empty but for a single woman fixing her hair in a mirror. No attendant. Maybe she was on a break. Astrid breezed past the mirrors, headed to the last of three marble-walled toilet stalls, and closed the door with a sigh of relief.

Tonight was not going well. She sat on the edge of the toilet seat and cursed her friends for not showing up and leaving her here to deal with drunken strangers on her own. Cursed herself, too, for telling Jonte she’d find her own ride home. At least she had money for a taxi. If she could just sit it out here long enough for that shady man to leave, she could make a beeline for the lobby and get her coat.

It will be fine, she told herself as she blew out a long breath. He was just a drunken lout. A nosy reporter trying to get a scoop. So why couldn’t she get the image of his garish ring out her head? She was being paranoid, surely, but the ring reminded her of the turquoise idol . . .

What if he wasn’t a reporter after all?

A faucet squeaked off. Heels clicked across the floor, and for a moment the noise of the club filled the tiled restroom. Then the door blocked it out again.

Astrid let out a long breath and heard something else inside the restroom . . . Light footfalls. Not the click of women’s shoes. Surely Max wouldn’t come in here? Whoever it was, they approached the stalls and stopped. Blood swished in Astrid’s temples as she silently waited for the sound of a stall door opening.

It never came. Only a brief shuffling.

Someone was checking beneath the stall door.

A moment later, hinges squealed. The door banged . . . and then the person stepped to the middle stall.

Oh-God, oh-God, oh-God. Astrid lifted her legs and held them up in the air as the same noises repeated only a few feet away, shuffling, hinges squealing, door banging. Why didn’t they put locks on these doors? Why—

The person stopped in front of her stall.

Feet shuffled. A shadow fell across the floor beneath the door. Astrid’s heart drummed against her rib cage. The hinges began rotating.

She didn’t think. Her legs shot forward and she pressed the soles of her T-bar shoes flat against the stall door, pushing it closed with a bang.

Outside the door, a murmur of surprise echoed off the marble. Masculine.

Holy living God, it was Max!

Without warning, the door exploded inward. Astrid yelped as her legs folded back like an accordion, and she slid sideways on the toilet seat. She braced her hands on the stall walls and stared up at the dark figure of Max.

“Found you,” he said with a dangerous smile.

Survival instincts kicked in. A dozen scenarios raced through her mind at once. The simplest hung on a chain around her wrist: a silver mesh handbag. It was heavier than she preferred, but she’d worn it tonight because it matched the band on the wristwatch Bo had given her. A small bit of fortune. She tightened the chain, and when Max reached inside the stall to pull her out, she swung the handbag and struck him in the face.

He cried out and stumbled backward a step, more surprised than hurt. One hand caught the casing around the stall while the other touched his cheek briefly and dabbed blood.

“Little bitch,” he muttered through gritted teeth.

Inside her head, she heard Bo’s voice instructing her how to protect herself if she were ever in a situation like this. Kick a man straight in the balls, he’d said. A childish thing to do, she’d thought at the time, but she didn’t much care at the moment. She started to raise a leg and do just that. But Max suddenly stilled.

“You’re going to want to move away from her, slowly, before I blow a hole in your spine,” a familiar voice said behind Max.

Max grunted and raised both his hands as he stepped out of the stall. Bo stood behind him in a long navy coat. The muzzle of Bo’s gun was pressed into the man’s back.