Page 100 of Don't Let Go

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

Rather than being put off, he patted me on the shoulder. “Well, you look like him,” my new drunk friend said. “Let me buy you a round and you can tell me who you are.”

“I have a drink,” I said easily enough and raised it to show him.

“So you do.” He peered blearily. “Well, if you’re not Carter you have to be someone and I need someone to talk to or I have to go home. I’m not sober enough to go home. The wife will definitely know where I’ve been.”

Honestly, unless he planned on bathing and changing his clothes, it wasn’t his inebriated state that would give him away. “Why don’t we find you a seat and then I’ll buy you a round—maybe an espresso martini to start the sobering up part.”

With a boisterous laugh, the man slapped me on the back. Drunk or not, the man had some force to his excitement. “Oh, I like you.”

The timing really couldn’t have been more perfect. While I didn’t believe in luck, not really, my target was charging acrossthe room to leave. He sort of strode like he expected people to just get out of his way.

It took almost no effort to step into his path and collide with him. The glass broke in the force of him trying to shoulder me away and splashed us both. He stumbled and I slid a couple of steps, but I patted his jacket as I kept us both on our feet.

Oh, there it was. I swapped my pen for his and then smoothed his suit as though trying to undo the damage from the drink. I would regret the damage done to my suit, but it was a worthy sacrifice to the cause.

The retired general snapped his head to look at me and snarled. “Watch where the fuck you’re going.”

“Well, that was unnecessarily hostile,” my new best friend said as he leaned into the fray between and exhaled his fumes. “We have rules here, my good man. Don’t make me ask for someone to deal with you.”

Abdias Stone justlookedlike a dick. He scowled at me and then my friend.

“Tell you what, just let me know what it costs to clean the suit and I’ll cover it.” I patted Stone on the chest once more and then nudged my companion back. “Let’s let the man go on his way.”

We were almost to the bar when a gasp went up around the room and the music cut off abruptly. Across the room, Stone had gone down and his face was rapidly swelling. Two of the servers went to help him.

It was such a spectacle as he fought for air against a rapidly closing windpipe. His epi-pen came out of his pocket and he tried to stab himself with it but failed.

One of the wait staff took it and jabbed it against his thigh, but nothing happened. “It’s not working…”

“I’m a doctor,” another man called as he pushed through the crowd. I kept an eye on the whole thing, gawking like the rest of the influential crowd. “Let me get in there…”

The doctor tried the epipen again. Then they were calling for someone to find another epipen.

“It’s all very dramatic,” the man next to me said.

“It is.”

Then he peered up at me. “Do I know you?”

“No, sir,” I said. “I think you were on your way to find a room for the night.”

“Oh, that’s right. Right.” He wandered off a few steps but then paused when the unfolding medical crisis captured his attention all over again.

I checked my watch as the doctor fought to get Stone’s airway opened but he didn’t have the equipment and no one else had an epipen. A medical kit was being rushed into the room, but it was too late.

Stone died in just under ninety seconds from our collision. Peanut rum creme was just as deadly as the peanuts themselves. It didn’t take long before the concierge and the staff were trying to clear the room. They were going to need to deal with a death on the property.

Most likely by removing him from the property. The members of this club did not pay such exorbitant fees to be caught up in the scandal. I followed a couple of senators and a man of old school wealth on their way out the main doors.

Limos were pulling up to collect their people and still others flowed to where their cars waited in the secure lot. Once I was back in my car, I followed the train of other vehicles until I could head out of the district proper.

Once on the highway, I slid my comm back in and tapped it.

“Talk to me,” she said, welcome in every syllable.

“Did you miss me, beautiful?”

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