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His words trailed off. He stared at his feet a few seconds, listening to the ticking of a wall clock up at the top of the stairs ahead. The AC kicked on and cool air hummed from the vents. Rollie blinked and shook off the cloud of indecision. Whatever they were going to do, they had to get the hell out of here.
“Let’s roll,” he said.
Thor followed him down the stairs. “We’re going to back him up?”
“He’s VP of SAMCRO. Of course we’re going to back him up,” Rollie said. “But I feel like we’re being played, so afterward I intend to get answers, even if I have to stomp the shit out of Jax Teller to get them.”
* * *
Trinity sat on the swing set behind the Wonderland in a dirty T-shirt and a pair of black jeans. Her combat boots were comfortable enough, but too hot. She’d put them on because of the terrain and the broken glass out near the swing set, but now she wished she had something lighter.
She pushed back until she could barely touch the ground and then released, swinging forward and pumping her legs. The rusty swing squealed with each pendulous motion, but she relished the breeze on her face. The sun had come on strong this morning, and she could already tell the day would be scorching. Heat radiated up off the cracked concrete around the swing set.
Before they’d all left this morning, she’d been pissed off about being left alone. Oleg had thought she was afraid—which made no sense, given that they were the ones who had tracked down Lagoshin and were going to war. She’d had to explain to him, and not for the first time, that she just didn’t like being left behind.
You’re not a soldier, he’d reminded her.
I didn’t prove myself at Temple’s ranch? she’d demanded.
Then she had seen the pain in his face. He’d told her that he had never wanted to put her in a position where she had to take a life. I didn’t think that was the way you wanted to live, he’d said, and then he’d asked her, politely, to stay behind.
Oleg didn’t just want her to stay out of the line of fire. He didn’t want her to have to kill anyone else.
She’d stayed behind.
Now that they were gone, though, she didn’t mind being alone. All the anxiety and drama, the entirely rational fear that rippled beneath the skin of every one of Oleg’s brothers—not to mention Oleg himself—had created a tension in her unlike anything she’d felt before. Jax’s arrival had only added to the tension, happy as she’d been to see him.
Alone, she thought. Alone feels good.
They’ll be all right. And then it will be over. No more Wonderland Hotel. Maybe no more Las Vegas. She hoped to spend time in California, see the American west coast. She spent half a dozen lovely minutes on the swing, but she could feel the way the sun had begun to bake her pale Irish skin.
Her stomach rumbled.
After breakfast, she’d decide what to do with the next few hours of her life. Trinity stood up from the swing and then froze.
Car engines rumbled out in front of the hotel. She could hear them. Car engines alone were not a surprise—during the day the road got its meager share of traffic—but these weren’t passing by. They were in the parking lot.
One by one, the engines went silent. If she’d stayed on the swing with its squealing hinges for another few seconds, she’d have missed the sound entirely.
Car doors slammed.
For half a second, she let herself think that the guys had all come back, but she knew it was much too soon. It couldn’t be them.
Alone, she thought again. There were plenty of guns inside the hotel, but she was in back, fooling around on the damn swing set. If she had the keys to the one remaining car, the old BMW only forty feet from her right now, she might have been able to get the jump on them, outrace them until she got somewhere they didn’t dare attack her. Somewhere she’d be safe for the time being. But she didn’t have the keys.
Trinity bolted for the back door of the hotel, counting her steps, telling herself that the men out front would approach slowly and cautiously and so she had time. Seconds, at least. A handful of seconds. Her heart slammed against the inside of her chest, and her thoughts went through the layout of the hotel, trying to figure out a place she could hide. They’d never pla
Only when she’d reached the door and ducked quietly inside, her senses attuned to the approach of the killers out front, did she realize that she’d gone the wrong direction. She could have run into the scrubland, found a place to hide herself while they searched the hotel and found nothing. If she’d had to, she could have hidden until Oleg and Kirill and Jax and the others came back—they’d have to come back eventually—but she was committed now.
A gun. A place to hide.
If only she could have heard her own thoughts over the thundering of her heart.
17
Trinity slipped through the door at the back of the lobby and dropped into a crouch, her pulse throbbing at her temples. To her right, half the lobby remained curtained off from the outside world by heavy drapes, but if she wanted to get deeper into the hotel, she had to go left—and that meant ru
She kept low and went left, hustled to the front desk and then dove over it, sliding on her belly. She reached down to break her fall but still thumped onto the old carpet, twisting her head so she landed on her shoulder. Her legs came down on top of her, and she spun around, back against the counter, waiting for gunshots and shattering glass.
Nothing.
“Okay, okay,” she said, just to hear the whisper of her own voice.
She darted along behind the counter, trying to picture that vast front window and how far across the lobby the counter would take her—how much distance she would have to cover in the open, where they might see her. Fifteen feet, maybe, until she disappeared into the corridor. Unless they were already inside by then. She had no time to lose… and yet she hesitated.
Growing up, she’d heard ugly stories about assassinations and bombings and brutal beatings that had filtered into her nightmares and daydreams. The nearness of such crimes had a greater potency than lullabies and bedtime stories. Trinity had understood quite young that she would have to take care of herself. She was able, and more than willing.
But in that moment behind the counter, what haunted her was that for all the crimes and punishments that the RIRA had doled out—or that she’d heard about—the whispers about the Bratva were worse. If Lagoshin and Krupin got their hands on her, she would be used to send a message to Kirill and Oleg. Would they cut off her hands and feet and breasts? Would they set her on fire?
She exhaled, shivering with a chill that should have been impossible with the heat of the day radiating through the windows.
If she’d been Krupin’s girlfriend and the situation were reversed, what would Oleg have done to her?
The question made her want to scream, but worse than that was the idea that whatever harm, whatever obscenity might be perpetrated upon her, it would be to use her as a tool, a message, an example. If she was going to die like this, she wanted it to be because of things she’d done, not whom she was sleeping with.
Keeping low, she rushed along behind the counter and then popped her head up. Through the plate-glass windows, she could see a massive black SUV and a charcoal-gray sedan, but they were off to the right. Men were standing behind them, but she was in the shadows, and she thought they might not see her. A pair of gunmen ran from the sedan to circle around the hotel. She waited, holding her breath while they passed, and then she was up and over the counter.