Blush(58)

It was a damn good thing they weren’t playing truth or dare. Because if Amelia knew the truth—that he’d been the hit man sent to kill her—she never would have let him in the front door, let alone into her bedroom with the stripper pole.

Cruz crossed his ankle over the opposite knee and leaned back, assessing her. She didn’t sound or look spooked about having someone trying to kill her. Annoyed, yeah. But not running scared.

She should be, damn it. She had no business telling him—a perfect stranger—any of this. Well, maybe they weren’t strangers, exactly. She might trust him with her body, but she had no basis to trust him with this kind of information.

“What made your security people suspect someone was trying to kill you?” And when?

“Apart from the regular threats a beauty-based business gets from animal rights groups, activists, and the like?” She indicated the seven-inch scar on her upper arm with her wineglass. “This. Someone took a potshot at me from the building across the street from our Blush headquarters seven weeks ago. If I hadn’t shifted to close my laptop, the bullet would have struck the back of my head.” She took a sip of wine. As she swallowed, she squeezed her eyes shut.

“You were damn fortunate someone didn’t take into account that movement.”

“The bullet shattered the window behind me. It sounded like a bomb exploding.” Her eyes were dark, glassy, lost in memory. Cruz imagined that this shocked, frightened look couldn’t have been much different the night she was shot at. “The sparkling shards of glass looked like a waterfall breaking over me. It seemed to happen in slow motion, yet it was over in the blink of an eye. Weird and surreal.”

Jesus fuck. Did she have any idea how damned close she’d come to being a statistic? Cruz’s fury rose. Crap. He never lost his temper. Never let shit get under his skin. And now . . . Fuck. “Your security people raced in and—”

She shrugged. “Not much they could do. I had small cuts all over me. They administered first aid, patched me up, then waited for the police and paramedics to show up. It was only after they arrived that I discovered I’d been grazed by the bullet.

“I was too shocked to faint, and too pissed off to puke, but not too anything to stop shaking. I have to tell you, I wasn’t feeling anything close to brave at that point. It took me days to stop looking over my shoulder. And loud noises still make me jump. But I damn well won’t live in fear.”

He’d noticed. “What did the cops discover in the other building where the shooter was?” Nothing, he bet. A sniper had made that shot. It could be any one of a dozen contractors, and none of them would leave even a shoe scuff to indicate their presence. Not like himself, who’d already left his fingerprints and DNA all over the fucking house.

“It was from a neighboring fortieth floor, under construction for new occupants, in the building directly across the street. From the distance and the almost pinpoint accuracy, they know it was a professional sniper. That said they weren’t surprised that not a single clue was found over there.”

Professional. No clues. No surprise.

Mia downed the rest of her wine, then cradled the glass against her chest. “The bullet recovered from my office was an HSM230 from a .338 Lapua Magnum sniper rifle. I did some research. That’s a weapon used by police and military snipers. Not something anyone could buy off the street. Whoever shot at me meant business.”

Cruz knew that the HSM230 cartridge was designed to arrive at a thousand meters with enough energy to penetrate five layers of military body armor and still make the kill. A plate glass window and a pretty head of hair in a French twist would be as easy to crack as a hot knife cutting through butter.

The effect would be just like what had happened to his mother. Nothing left to make an identification. Cruz’s finger tightened on the stem of his glass. The effective range was over one mile in the right shooting conditions. Cruz had made a kill shot with the same rifle in excess of 2,000 meters. But realistically 1,500 meters was within the range of a trained sniper. Shooting between two buildings, a street’s width apart, was child’s play, no matter what the conditions.

“They could’ve just been a bad shot and aiming for someone else in the building. . . .” Like hell. Anyone in the business would know they hadn’t, and he felt a rise of ire. If they’d hired him out of the gate, the job would be done, no questions asked, because he wouldn’t have used a goddamn sniper rifle. She’d have had a fall, a car accident, a fall in the shower. A sniper was just sloppy and asking for an investigation.