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 planned for this. To defend an assault, yes—but she’d never be able to keep them from entering the hotel on her own. No, if they were coming in—and they were coming in—she needed a gun and a place to hide.
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 running past a stretch of windows that were uncovered. Sunlight poured in. Dust motes swam and danced in the vast shaft of light, as if drawn to it like moths to a flame.
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.
Trinity hit the floor in a tumble, came up on one knee and glanced at the windows again. How many cars, how many men? It didn’t matter, really. The answer was too many.
She bolted, willing them not to see her. She expected shouting and gunshots, but then she darted into the corridor, felt the crunch of crusty old carpet under her boots, and knew she was clear.
Gun.
It was the only word in her head. Her right hand clenched and unclenched, yearning for the weight of a weapon. Guns are hateful things, Maureen Ashby had always said to young Trinity, but remember, love, that bullets are like presents—better to give than receive. It was how Maureen had justified so much of the family’s violence.
Trinity reached her room, twisted the knob, slipped inside without banging the door. Her gun was where she’d left it, top shelf of the closet underneath a leather jacket she’d had no use for since they’d arrived in Vegas. Loaded, always.
She was out in the corridor in a handful of heartbeats, glancing both ways. Slipping into the hallway, she heard glass shatter in the lobby, and suddenly her options had narrowed. Lagoshin’s men were coming in. They’d search the hotel. Trinity couldn’t shoot her way out, which meant the only question that mattered was: Where could she hide? Where could she tuck herself away and still have an exit strategy?
Elevator shaft? The doors were wedged open, and she could get in, maybe drop down to the elevator itself, hide in the dark. But where the hell could she run from there?
Walk-in freezer in the kitchen? Dead end. As was every bathroom and guest room, all of which they’d search. Doors banged open. She heard wood splinter.