She stepped out of her heels, picked them up, and padded closer to the window. His voice was partially muffled, growing louder and quieter. He must be pacing. She didn’t dare peek to confirm.
Inside, he kept speaking. “Are you threatening me?” He muttered something in what sounded like Russian. “Listen to me, you little der’mo. You agreed to this and you took your payment. That means I own you. Though I’m starting to think I overpaid.”
She grinned despite the cold sinking into her bones. Apparently the perfectly temperate Dmitri could get frazzled.
“No, things haven’t changed. If anything, it’s even more vital now to follow through on this.” A pause, and then his voice dropped until she had to strain to make out the words. “Don’t misunderstand me, Michael. If James Halloran doesn’t die tonight, you will go in his place, and I will take personal satisfaction in drawing out your last breaths until you’re begging for the mercy of the afterlife.”
Carrigan clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle her gasp. That murdering backstabbing bastard. She reached blindly for the wall, the world turning slow circles around her. All she’d done, all she’d sacrificed, and James was still in Dmitri’s crosshairs.
From the sound it of, he had been even before she agreed to marry the Russian.
He kept speaking, oblivious to her world falling apart around her. “And that is if Ricky doesn’t get to you first. You know what happens if you fail me. Don’t.”
She held her breath as he paced and muttered in Russian. Surely he had more phone calls to make? She tensed, ready to slam the window shut to prevent him from realizing she knew. But then his voice rose to normal speaking levels. Another phone call. She listened for a few moments more, long enough to realize she wouldn’t be able to glean any information from this particular call since he wasn’t speaking English.
It didn’t matter. She knew enough to know she couldn’t stay here another minute longer.
Carrigan padded back inside and slipped on her shoes. They weren’t ideal for escaping guards and fleeing into the night, but she’d run in higher. She eyed the door to the master bedroom, half expecting Dmitri to rush out and demand to know what she thought she was doing. He didn’t, and the longer she waited, the greater her chances of discovery were.
How the hell was she going to get out of here? This wasn’t like the Halloran house, where she could slip out a window and onto the roof and then drop to the ground safely from there. They were at least twelve stories up. The only person who jumped from this balcony would be someone courting death.
She grabbed her purse, digging through it for the one thing that could tip the situation temporarily in her favor—the Taser. For the first time since Aiden had given it to her, she wished it were a goddamn gun. The men outside that door weren’t good men, and while a Taser might put them on the floor temporarily, they’d be up and after her before too much time had passed.
I’ll just have to be quicker than they are. Or smarter. Or something.
Before she opened the door, she ran her hands through her hair, mussing it, and then smeared her lipstick a little. She held the Taser in one hand, tucked behind her purse, and opened the door. “Help!”
There were two guards. One was less than a foot from the door and the other several steps beyond him. Too far. This had to be quick, before they realized what was happening, or it’d be over before it began. She put some stumble into her step, and lowered her voice to little more than a whisper. “Help.”
The guards exchanged a look. The closest one frowned. “Where is Mr. Romanov?”
“He’s…” She ducked her head, watching them through the shield of her hair. “He’s…” They moved closer, trying to hear her. When they were an arm’s distance from her, she raised her voice a little. “On the phone.” She tased the furthest one, holding down the trigger to keep shocking him even after his body hit the ground. She hit the other guard’s body as he drew his gun, her purse flying from her hand as they slammed into the wall. He dropped his gun, and she dove for it, rolling and coming up to fire wildly. The shot took him in the shoulder, knocking him onto his back, and she wasted no time scrambling to her feet.
Then she ran for the elevator, their groans ringing in her ear. It wouldn’t take long for the tased one to recover—less than a minute if Aiden was right—and that hadn’t been a killing shot to the other one by any means. She had to be out of here now.
The damn elevator would take too long, so she shoved through the doors to the stairs. Her bare feet slapped the cold concrete and she almost went down before she realized that was exactly where they’d expect her to go. Carrigan ran up the stairs; all the while a small voice in the back of her mind pointed out that she was violating the cardinal rule of horror movies—never run up.