Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 18

Chapter 018

CELESTE

The shots kept coming.

Each one hit somewhere outside and I flinched at every single one, my back pressed against the wall beside Dominic, my heart doing something violent and irregular in my chest.

“Why would anyone want you dead?” I asked.

He did not answer immediately. He was looking at the door, listening, calculating something I could not see.

“Dominic.”

“It is a long story,” he said.

Another shot. I flinched again.

“What do we do?” I asked.

He looked at me. “Come with me.”

He took my hand and moved.

We went fast, through the corridor that ran along the left side of the house, away from the front door and the sound of the shots. He snatched his phone from the table as we passed it without breaking stride. We reached a door at the end of the corridor, plain and unremarkable, and he pressed a button set into the wall beside it.

The door clicked open.

We went inside and he locked it behind us.

I stood in the middle of the room, panting, and looked around.

A bedroom. A completely normal bedroom. Wide bed with clean white linen, two nightstands, a lamp, a wardrobe, a window on the far wall looking out at the water. The window was shut tight, the glass thick in a way that ordinary glass was not.

“Your bedroom too?” I said.

“Everything in here is bulletproof.” He was already at a monitor mounted on the wall, picking up a remote from the dresser. “The glass, the walls, the door. Do not worry. We are safe in here for now.”

He pressed a button and the monitor came on.

I looked at the screen and my stomach dropped.

The feed was split into sections, each one showing a different angle of the island’s exterior. And on every single feed there were men. Armed, moving through the trees, taking positions at the edges of the property. I counted quickly and lost count.

He was already on the phone.

“Sparrow.” His voice had changed. All the ease was gone, all the warmth. What was left was something cold and precise. “We have a situation at the island. Someone’s trying to kill me. I need you to move.”

A voice on the other end, sharp and clipped. “How many men?”

He looked at the monitor, his eyes moving across each feed with the systematic efficiency of someone who had done this before.

“More than ten,” he said.

I stared at the screen.

More than ten armed men on a private island, shooting at a house I was standing in, and Dominic was on the phone with someone named Sparrow discussing it the way other people discussed traffic.

The call ended.

“Who is Sparrow?” I asked.

“The head of my security detail.” He set the phone down. “He handles the difficult situations.”

“Difficult situations,” I repeated. “You mean like this.”

“Among other things.” He looked at me. “Sparrow is a dangerous man. He is very good at what he does. Do not worry, Celeste. You are my ally. You are safe.”

I looked at him.

Then I looked at the monitor, at the armed men moving through the trees outside this bulletproof room on this private island, and I thought about the fact that three hours ago I had been in a cab on my way to Helix Research to celebrate a funding announcement.

What kind of man was Dominic Ford?

What had I walked into?

We sat on the edge of the bed and waited.

The shots continued outside, distant and muffled through the bulletproof walls, and every time one sounded I felt my shoulders go up toward my ears. Dominic sat beside me, still and quiet, watching the monitor with that expression that gave nothing away.

My heart would not slow down.

He must have seen it on my face because he said, “Don’t worry,” and put his arm around me and pulled me into his side

I let him. I was not too proud to admit that his arm around me was the only thing keeping my breathing even.

Then I saw his arm. The wound from the shot that had grazed him at the door, which I had been so frightened that I had almost forgotten about. The makeshift pressure I had applied earlier had not been enough. The blood had spread.

“Is there a first aid box in here?” I asked.

He pointed to the wardrobe.

I got up and found it on the lower shelf, white with a red cross, fully stocked. I brought it back and sat in front of him and opened it and began to work.

He was quiet while I cleaned the wound. I focused on my hands, on the task, on doing it correctly, and tried not to look at the injury directly because every time I did something cold moved through me that I did not want to examine too closely.

What if it had not been his arm?

What if it had been his head, or his neck, or his chest? What if he had opened that door half a second sooner or been standing half a step to the left? What if the shot had not grazed him but gone straight through?

His phone rang.

He answered it, listened, said, “Okay,” and hung up.

He stood. “I need to go and speak with Sparrow.”

“Now? Out there?”

“It is safe now.” He looked at me. “Stay here.”

He left

I stayed in the bulletproof bedroom for approximately two minutes before I got up.

I went carefully, the way you move when you are not entirely sure the danger is over even though

someone you trust told you it was. I came out of the corridor and went upstairs to the room where I had bathed, the white shirt of his still on my body, and I found my bag on the chair where I had left it.

I took out my phone

I had put it on silent before we left Dominic’s office and I had not looked at it since. The screen showed missed calls stacked on top of each other. Julian. Pat. Julian again. Seraphine. Julian. A number I did not recognize. Seraphine again.

I scrolled through them.

Then I saw the voicemail notification.

I pressed play and lifted the phone to my ear.

Seraphine’s voice came through.

“Listen to me and listen well.” Her voice was very calm. The particular calm of someone who was

holding something much less calm underneath it. “I don’t know what game you are playing. But I am warning you. Stay away from my husband. Otherwise, I will destroy you.”

The message ended.

I stood in the upstairs bedroom of a bulletproof mansion on a private island, in a man’s white shirt, with a fresh first aid dressing on the arm of the man downstairs, having just survived a shooting, listening to my former best friend threaten me on a voicemail.

I scoffed.

Then I smiled.

Stay away from her husband.

I saved the voicemail.

Something told me I was going to want it later.