Of course it was raining.
The first man smiled. “Mrs. Park sends her regards.”
Adrian’s face did not change, but something in the room went colder.
“What does she want?”
“You know.”
“No,” Adrian said. “She wants many things. Be specific.”
The man’s gun shifted toward my chest.
“The woman.”
Me.
I could not breathe.
Adrian said, “She has nothing to do with this.”
“That’s not what Mrs. Park thinks.”
The second man moved toward me.
Adrian struck before he reached me.
It happened so fast I barely saw it. One moment Adrian stood still, hands raised. The next, he had driven his elbow into the first man’s throat and slammed his wrist against the gun hand. The shot went off, deafening, cracking into the ceiling.
I screamed.
The second man lunged.
I grabbed the nearest thing on the counter—a copper saucepan—and swung with every ounce of diner-shift rage, hospital terror, and unpaid-bill fury in my body.
The pan connected with his face.
He dropped.
“Nice,” Adrian said.
“Don’t sound surprised!”
The third man caught me from behind.
An arm locked around my throat.
Adrian froze.
The first attacker, coughing and furious, retrieved the gun and pressed it under Adrian’s jaw.
“Enough.”
The man holding me tightened his grip until black dots swarmed my vision.
“Tell him,” he hissed into my ear. “Tell him to open the vault.”
Adrian’s gaze fixed on mine.
In the red emergency light, his eyes looked almost black.
“No,” I choked.
The gun dug harder into Adrian’s throat.
“Open it,” the attacker ordered, “or she dies.”
Adrian looked at me for one endless second.
Then he said, “The vault is biometric.”
“Then use it.”
“It requires my bare hand.”
The attacker smiled. “Take off the glove.”
Slowly, Adrian removed his right glove.
The attacker shoved him toward a wall panel near the study.
But as Adrian passed me, his bare fingers brushed mine.
Just a touch.
A spark.
A flash ripped through me.
Not rain this time.
A room with green walls.
Evelyn Park standing beside a hospital bed.
A younger Adrian unconscious, bandages across his face.
A doctor saying, “The nerve response is gone.”
Evelyn replying, “Good. Then he’ll never know who touched the brakes.”
I gasped.
Adrian heard it.
So did the man holding me.
“What did you see?” Adrian demanded.