He Thought His Mother Was Dead for 8 Years—Until She Appeared on Screen as a Gunman Threatened His Wife!

Adrian hit the floor hard enough to knock the breath out of him. Mara crawled toward him through shattered crystal, expecting to find a bullet in his chest.

Instead, the blood came from a long gash across his ribs. The bullet had grazed him. That should have been good news. It wasn't.

Victor lay unconscious beside an overturned table. His pistol was still in his hand, pointed harmlessly at the ceiling.

“There's another shooter,” Mara said.

“I noticed.” Adrian pressed a napkin to his side. “North balcony. Gray suit. Don't look.”

Naturally, she looked.

A man with an earpiece stood near the sound booth, lowering a compact handgun. He met her eyes and lifted two fingers to his temple in a mocking salute.

“Run,” Adrian said.

The lights died. Someone screamed. Emergency strobes washed the ballroom red, then black, then red again. Adrian pulled Mara into a narrow passage behind the bar. The world smelled of spilled whiskey and burnt wiring.

“You've got about thirty seconds before they're here,” he said.

“Who are they?”

“People my father pays to make problems disappear.”

“Your father is Senator Graham Cross.”

“I know who my father is.”

Mara nearly laughed. For twelve years she'd watched Graham Cross tell the city how he'd rescued it from the Larkspur apartment fire. Her father, Samuel Vale, had been convicted of setting that blaze. Seventeen people had died. Samuel died in prison still swearing he was innocent.

“And you work for him,” she snapped.

“Not anymore.”

Footsteps pounded on the other side of the door. Adrian pulled a service cart against it.

Mara touched her necklace. “Why does Victor want this?”

“Because your father hid something they couldn't destroy.”

“You knew my dad?”

Adrian met her gaze. Whatever answer he carried looked painful.

Before he could speak, Evelyn's voice crackled from a speaker above them. “Adrian, the building's security system is mine for ninety seconds. Basement level. Laundry elevator. Go.”

“Where are you?” he shouted.

“Closer than your father thinks.”