Chapter 4 - THE DARK IN THE BALLROOM
The darkness was instantaneous and absolute.
Women screamed.
Tables scraped against the parquet floor as guests scrambled in blind panic.
The smell of ozone, burnt wiring, and shattered crystal flooded the air.
Graham’s arm caught me around the waist before I could take half a step.
His grip was bruising.
He pulled me against his broad chest, spinning us both behind the massive marble pillar near the bandstand.
Crack.
A single gunshot shattered the dark.
A round punched into the plaster inches above my ear, showering my hair with white dust.
“Down,” Graham hissed against my temple.
His voice didn't waver.
Panic did not exist in his blood.
He pulled me flat against the carpet behind the overturned mahogany buffet table.
The smell of spilled champagne and raw acid was suffocating.
I reached into the secret pocket of my dress.
My fingers wrapped around the pearl handle of the .22.
Graham felt the movement against his ribs.
His hand shot down, his fingers wrapping around my wrist in the pitch black.
“What do you have?” he whispered.
“A gun, Graham.”
“Where did you get a piece?”
“You gave it to me six years ago,” I snapped, my voice steady despite the adrenaline roaring in my ears.
“When you still pretended my life mattered to you.”
His hand flinched on my wrist.
In the dark, I couldn't see his face, but his breath caught in his throat.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Automatic gunfire tore through the banquet tables fifty feet away.
The muzzle flashes strobed through the darkness like strobes of lightning, illuminating the chaos.
Men in dark windbreakers were moving along the perimeter of the room.
Not federal agents.
Julian Vance’s harbor enforcers.
Across the room, standing beside the shattered service bar, was Marcus Kane.
In the brief flashes of gunfire, I saw Marcus holding a suppressed automatic.
He fired two rounds into the chest of Graham’s personal bodyguard.
The loyal guard collapsed into the white roses without a sound.
“Marcus,” Graham breathed.
The word was barely a vibration against my collarbone.
It wasn't surprise.
It was the terrible, cold recognition of a man who realized the viper had been sleeping in his own bed.
“He took the red folder from your office thirty minutes ago,” I whispered into his ear.
Graham’s head snapped toward me.
“How do you know about the red folder?”
“I watched him hand it to Julian Vance in the courtyard.”
“Eleanor, why were you watching the courtyard?”
“Because I was trying to find a reason not to hate you!” I hissed.
Another burst of automatic fire chewed through the mahogany buffet above our heads.
Splinters of antique wood rained down on my bare shoulders.
“The cellar passage,” Graham whispered, his mouth inches from my ear.
“Behind the wine storage near the kitchen.”
“It’s locked,” I said.
“I have the key.”
He reached into his pocket.
He pulled me up, keeping his body between me and the open ballroom floor.
He drew a heavy matte-black Kimber from beneath his tuxedo jacket.
He didn't fire wildly.
He raised his arm over the edge of the overturned table.
He waited for a muzzle flash from the darkness.
Flash.
BANG.
A man screamed near the dessert cart, his weapon clattering across the floor.
Flash.
BANG.
A second shooter collapsed backward through the plate-glass doors leading to the terrace.
“Move!” Graham commanded, shoving me toward the service pantry door.
I ran.
My heels were gone, kicked off in the first seconds of the shooting.
My bare feet hit the cold hardwood floor, stepping over broken glass and crushed lilies.
I didn't feel the cuts.
The pearl-handled .22 was cold and heavy in my left hand.
We breached the kitchen doors.
The commercial kitchen was empty, bathed in the eerie green glow of emergency exit signs.
Pots of simmering stock sat abandoned on the six-burner ranges.
We sprinted past the stainless steel prep tables toward the walk-in cooler.
Behind the meat hooks hung an iron-reinforced door that led down to the 18th-century smuggler’s tunnel beneath the foundation.
Graham shoved the heavy key into the lock.
He turned it with an iron screech.
The door swung inward into black, damp air smelling of marsh mud and centuries of rot.
“Go down,” he ordered, his eyes scanning the kitchen behind us.
“Graham—”
“Go, Eleanor! I’m right behind you!”
I stepped onto the wet brick stairs.
Before Graham could step through the threshold, the swinging kitchen doors burst open.
Marcus Kane walked into the green light.
His suppressed pistol was leveled directly at Graham’s chest.
And standing behind Marcus, holding a heavy steel tire iron, was Cecelia Vance.
May you like
“End of the line, Calloway,” Marcus said smoothly.
“Drop the piece, or I put a hollow-point through your wife’s throat.”
