Page 62 of Sinner's Secret

Finally, Yvgeny sighed. “Okay. I’ll get a message to your partner. Do you have a code word or something so he knows I’m not trying to kill him?”

Nika found enough energy to smile. “Yeah, tell him your cousin is an asshole.”

Yvgeny laughed, shook his head, and clapped Baz on the shoulder. “I think she’s too much work, but I like her a lot.” He went to the door, opened it, and took one step outside.

Bullets peppered the doorway and Yvgeny’s body in a roaring wave of violent noise. His body jerked with each strike, pushing him back inside the room.

Nika hit the floor, while Baz grabbed the back of his cousin’s suit and yanked him down, out of the way. Staying low, Baz managed to kick the door shut. The bullets didn’t let up, hammering the door, front-facing walls, and window in a hard, brutal rain.

Her heart was pounding so loud it almost drowned out the hailstorm of bullets. The exhausted fog that had been clouding her brain was gone, blown away by a live wire of adrenaline surging through her body.

“Baz?” she shouted.

No answer.

Ice coated the current blazing through her body and panic hijacked her voice. “Baz.”

“I’m here and I didn’t get shot this time.”

Okay, okay, he was okay. But his cousin...

“Yvgeny?”

“He...took a lot of bullets.”

The assault on their room intensified. More shooters?

“Who is out there? What the hell is going on?”

“I have no idea, but we can’t stay.” Baz got to his feet, engaged the locks on the door, then hauled his cousin up and slung his body over his shoulder like the other man weighed nothing at all. “Come on.”

“Come on?” She stood, staring after Baz, then glancing at the door. “Wait...are you telling me there’s another way out of here?”

“Probably. Yvgeny is more than a little paranoid. There’s always more than one way out of any place he owns.”

Nika jammed her feet into her new shoes, tossed everything useable back into the bags, then followed Baz to the bathroom. She could have just followed the trail of blood on the carpet. There was a lot of it.

“Is he alive?” she asked.

“Yeah, he’s still breathing. He’s probably wearing body armor, but there were a lot of bullets, so at least one of them must have gotten past it.”

Okay, that made sense, mostly. She’d call them both paranoid, but they’d both been shot.

She stood in the bathroom doorway and watched Baz lean down to look at the edge of the tub. He grabbed the base of it at the back and lifted.

The entire thing rose in the air on some kind of hinge system, taps and everything.

Underneath was a narrow, steep set of stairs leading down into the dark. A few cobwebs cluttered up the corners along with a lot of dust.

“Of course, there’s a secret passage,” she muttered. “Just what kind of business does your cousin do here?”

“I try to stay out of it,” Baz said. “But he does have a talent for pissing people off.” He adjusted his cousin’s body a little, then descended the stairs into the dark.

Outside, the bullet barrage stopped, and she glanced over her shoulder. Was this good news or bad?

“Nika, hurry up.” Baz’s voice sounded like it was coming out of a deep well. “Whoever is out there is probably moving from bullets to bombs.”

She went down the stairs just as the beam of a flashlight lit up and partially illuminated the dark abyss below her. Baz must have found one. She pulled the tub back down into position, concealing the exit.

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