Page 138 of Stolen By the Billionaire
The elevator bounced to a halt, and the doors whooshed open, revealing a hallway carpeted in cream-swirled taupe that looked like latte art. A single door interrupted the white wall to the right.
The understated wood and metal plaque beside the door read 24B.
Blaze nodded and backed off. “If I tell you to run, you run. The stairwell door is right there.” He pointed to the nondescript white door in the opposite direction. “You run and keep going.”
“I would never do that,” she said. “I would never leave you behind.”
“You will. I save people, and I’ll save you if you need me to. That’s my job, Sarah.”
“But you retired from the Navy. Or quit, or something.”
“No such thing as retired. Being a Navy SEAL is who I am, down to my core. I save people. I reach out and pull them out of Hell, whether that’s a third-world warlord’s prison camp or a depression spiral in their own heads. And right now, I’m responsible for you, and I’ll make sure you’re all right, no matter what. If I tell you to run, you run and don’t look back. I’ll make sure you get away and then extricate myself from the situation.”
“Okay.” She nodded, her voice breathless. “Okay.”
“Keep back and against the wall on that side when he opens the door. Stay behind me when we walk in.”
Sarah retreated two steps and flattened herself against the wall like he’d told her to, watching him like he was telegraphing unease, which he probably was.
Good, she knew when to brat and when the hell not to.
He knocked on the door, the metal inside the wood echoing his fist like a drum.
The door opened too soon after his knock, and Logan poked his head out near the top of the door. “Blaze!” he whisper-shouted heartily but not too loudly because they were in a Manhattan apartment building after midnight. “How’re you doin’?”
Logan’s New York accent swallowed half his words, and he was holding the door only a quarter of the way open with his hand over the edge and leaning out the narrow opening. He’d have to turn his head around like a demon-possessed owl to see where Sarah had pressed herself against the wall.
Blaze stared into Logan’s bright green eyes, as green as the Russian steppe in summer, and found only traces of resemblance to Sarah. The full bow of their lips was similar. Logan’s high, wide cheekbones above his bulldog jaw squared off his face, while her slim jaw narrowed from her cheekbones like a heart.
They might have been half-siblings.
Logan continued, “You finally made it! I thought you were never gonna show up. Sarah’s with youse, right?”
Logan knew that she was.
Deception.
He was hiding that he’d known from Blaze’s location sharing that they must be right outside, and his cramped stance shouted that he was hiding something just out of sight inside the apartment.
Blaze asked, “What’s going on?”
Logan scoffed, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m glad you made it here safely. Isn’t Sarah with you?”
Blaze stilled, slowing his heartbeat and holding his breath like he was wrapped around a sniper rifle, listening in the silence for any shuffles or clicks from the apartment behind Logan.
Logan’s apartment had the floor plan of a palmier cookie. The front door opened into the middle of a small hallway that led on the right to the public spaces, a traffic pattern that snail-spiraled inward through the living room, dining room, and galley kitchen. To the left, the entry hallway ran to the two-bedroom suites, the primary one’s walk-in closet wrapping around the guest bedroom.
Attackers could be hiding in either direction, behind the door or beyond where Logan was blocking Blaze’s line of sight.
Or both.
If this was a trap, Blaze wasn’t sure he could save Sarah, let alone himself, but a US Navy SEAL always had options.
No matter how much it hurt, how dark it got, or how far Blaze fell, he was never out of the fight.
So, he felt with his feet through his trail-running shoes for vibrations in the floor, watched the shadows on the white wall behind Logan’s head, and listened.
No footfalls. No encroaching shadows.
