“Hell no,” I muttered. We hit the ground floor, and I hesitated a moment at the door to the lobby, checking that the coast was clear before exiting the stairwell. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, so I hustled across the run-down foyer and out into the street.
Leon reached out and grabbed my wrist before I could disappear into the midday tourist crowd, and I jerked to a halt.
“Danny,” he said with an edge of frustration.
I spun around to face him, a scowl set on my face as I prepared to threaten him. But whatever he—or I—was going to say was irrelevant as the hotel we’d just exited exploded.
3
T he force of the blast threw us several yards into the street, and the air whooshed from my lungs as my side hit the hard pavement. Something heavy landed on top of me, and my freshly stitched side screamed protests of agony.
“Fuck,” I coughed. Or I thought I did. My ears were ringing with a high-pitched whine, rendering me temporarily deaf. All I could see was dark pavement and thick smoke, but I was still alive. So that was something.
The heavy weight on top of me rolled off, and a moment later, a strong hand gripped my wrist to pull me to my feet.
Leon didn’t waste words, just kept his fingers locked around my wrist as he dragged me away from the burning shell of a hotel. All around us were bits of debris and damaged cars; it was damn lucky we’d escaped in one piece.
Luck? Or by design?
“I swear to god, Leon,” I coughed as we ran, “if you planted that bomb—”
“I didn’t,” he snapped, shooting me a sharp look over his shoulder.
He tugged on my wrist, pulling me around the corner with him and away from the carnage and noise of the explosion site. A black Mercedes sedan sat parked between similar cars on the side of the road, and its lights flicked on and off as we approached.
“Get in,” Leon ordered, going for the driver’s side door.
I hesitated a moment, weighing the risk factor. But Leon had nothing to do with last night’s ambush, and if he’d had anything to do with that bomb, I doubt I’d have been outside when it detonated. So I tugged the passenger door open and slid into the seat as he revved the engine.
For a few minutes, neither one of us spoke as Leon drove us away from the destroyed hotel. Then he glanced over at me with a frown of curiosity on his brow.
“So… someone’s trying to kill you, huh?”
I snorted a laugh. “What gave you that idea?” My side throbbed and I grimaced, shifting in my seat to try and find a more comfortable position. No question, a few of those stitches would have pulled when I hit the ground like that. Nothing I couldn’t fix myself, though, once we got somewhere safe.
Once I got somewhere safe. No offense to Leon—I liked him as well as I liked any Guild mercenary—but I was better off on my own.
“It’s not the Guild,” he commented, his expression neutral as he drove.
I arched a brow. “What makes you so sure?”
He flicked a quick glance at me, too quick for me to read any emotion in his eyes. “Because it was sloppy, and you’re still alive. If there was a kill order on you, the Circle would send an executioner and you’d be dead.”
He had a point there. I grunted. “Yeah, well, maybe this isn’t a kill order. But someone sure as fuck set me up last night. My job was an ambush, and you know full well—”
“Only a Circle member could have leaked the info,” he finished for me, sounding grim. “That’s not necessarily true, you know?”
I stiffened. “What do you mean?”
Leon didn’t immediately respond, his eyes glued to the streets ahead of us as we drove toward the outskirts of Prague. Eventually, he gave a small frustrated exhale.
“In theory, only the Circle has access to active missions. They assign the jobs, and only they have the details of which merc is on which job at any one time. Right? Well… not true. Or so I’ve heard. The Circle themselves are too busy and have a lower tier who handles those tasks. An outer circle, so to speak.”
I groaned, rubbing a hand over my face. “Great. So my suspect pool is no longer just the seven members of the Circle, it’s now also an outer circle of god knows how many people.”
“Six,” Leon corrected. “There are only six Circle members currently.”
What the fuck? He was just dropping information like grenades right now.
“Since when? It’s always been seven. Seven founding families, seven seats on the Circle.” I squinted at him, but he kept his eyes on the road.
“Since about fifteen years ago,” he replied casually as hell, like this was common knowledge. “One of the Circle died with no living heir. That seat has been empty since because the remaining six can’t come to an agreement over which family line should inherit the position.”
I blinked several times, letting that new information sink into my brain. “How do you know about this?”
He flashed me a toothy grin but didn’t give any other response. Of course, he was a hacker. One of the best. No doubt he’d taken a snoop through the Guild servers for some reason or other and helped himself to privileged information.
Not that I could blame him. I’d do the same if I had the necessary skills.
“Just drop me on the west side of the city,” I told him after several minutes of silence. “I can find my own way from there.”
I half expected him to argue with me, but Leon just nodded and drove in the direction I instructed. We didn’t speak about the hotel explosion again. I indicated for him to let me out at Praha-Ruzyně—a train station not far from the airport. Hopefully if anyone was following, they’d think I either took a train or jumped on a flight.
“Thank you for the ride,” I told Leon as I climbed out of his car. A familiar wet trickle down my side made me cringe, and I pressed my hand to the dressing to try and make it re-stick.
Leon got out as well, coming around to the pavement where I was gingerly putting my backpack on. Fucking gunshot wound was making me into a little bitch. I definitely needed to get the hell out of Prague so I could heal up.
“I’m glad you called me, Danny,” he said with an unreadable expression. “What will you do now?”
I flashed him a smile. “You know I can’t tell you that. Don’t worry, it’ll take more than this shit show to take me out for good.” I waved a hand in the direction of the city and the mess I’d left behind.
Leon tilted his head to the side. He was so fucking handsome, but that was one of the assets the Guild valued highly. Beautiful people—as a generalization—were more charismatic, more confident, and made for better mercenaries. What a shame I didn’t date other mercs, or I’d have hit on Leon about four years ago when we first met.
“You’re not going to defect, are you?” He seemed genuinely concerned by that idea.
I shook my head. “Unlikely. I like living too much. No, I just need to work out who has it in for me, and… I dunno. Deal with that. Somehow.” In a somewhat subconscious gesture, my hand rested on the butt of my gun sitting in my thigh holster. Then again, that was usually what I meant when I said I would deal with something.