Page 35 of The Game

“They’ve shut her in?” the journalist says, hardly able to contain his glee.

“Hold on, Sir. Yes,” the security guard says, pressing his headset into his ear. “Yes. Yes.”

He takes my arm. “You need to come with me.”

The journalist grabs my hand and presses a card into it as the security guard drags me away from the barrier. When the journalist tries to follow us, two other guards appear from nowhere and start talking to him as I’m pulled away from the crowd on the red carpet.

“Call me!” he shouts after me. “We’ve got footage of the whole incident. I’ll tell your version of the story!” But the guard tightens his grip on my elbow and manhandles me around the corner of the building and down an alley.

“Where are you taking me? I need to …”

Ahead of us, a door on the side of the building opens to reveal an older man with a shaved head and popping muscles like a veteran Navy SEAL. He gestures at me impatiently. Are they letting me in now? As soon I’m over the threshold the first guy disappears, and the older man points me down a corridor, thenplaces his feet wide and crosses his arms on his chest. God, theseidiots, they like to look so hard. A white-hot fizz ignites in my chest.

He’s twice my size, widthwise anyway, but I trained to fight men like this, the guys who think they’re tough and that a gun will get them what they want. Often they aren’t all that, and Fabian taught me some of the dirtiest tricks I know, although I can’t use them in jujitsu. I’m being a jerk here, butfuck this,I learned to fight for a reason. It gives me a sense of power and control against exactly this kind of male assholery. Before he can react, I lash out with my leg and he goes down like a sack of potatoes, and I have his headset off and his Taser out of its holster in seconds as I immobilize him with his arms behind his back.

“What the hell?” he bellows into the glossy marble floor of the corridor.

“You tell your buddies to be more alert at events. I wouldn’t have had to do anything if you’d all been doing your job properly,” I hiss at him.

“Fuck off!” he shouts. “What the fuck?”

“I hope your teammates got footage of me taking you down, asshole,” I say. “Stop manhandling guests like you have the right to do it. You don’t. So don’t be surprised if one of them retaliates.”

I lever off him and walk off up the corridor, hands shaking. When I turn the corner, I lean against the wall for a couple of seconds and suck in a deep breath. It’s been so long since anything like this has happened to me that the floor tips up at me for a second.Come on, Adam. You’re fine.That was easier than most of the jujitsu competitions you’ve been in.I close my eyes and a flash of a laughing face and blonde hair whips through my mind.No, Adam. Why am I remembering that now?I glance down at my suit and dust off the knees of my pants, running a hand across my hair. A white corridor leads off to my right toward a roar of chattering voices and clinking glasses, and I head down it toward the noise.

The corridor brings me out into the main hall and a sea of guests. Everyone has champagne in their hand, and I draw in a deep breath, trying to dampen down the adrenaline as I scan for Anna’s silver dress. Where is she? I pull my phone out of my pocket. Breathe in, breathe out.

I’m inside now. Where are you?

A guy in a tuxedo appears at my elbow with a tray, and I give him a tight smile as I take a glass, staring down at my screen as the seconds tick past. Nothing. A woman in a group close to me laughs loudly, red lips pulled back over her white teeth, the men all with slicked-back hair and in dark suits. I start forward, weaving in and out of the crowd, scanning over the chandeliers and made-up faces. Ten minutes later, I could swear I’ve swept the entire floor and there’s no text and no sign of Anna. I chew my lip. What’s going on? Perhaps she’s in the bathroom? Or maybe they took her somewhere? Arty didn’t reach her, but she could have been shaken up by the whole thing. As I take a sip of champagne, I spy another security guard talking into his headpiece by a door at the back of the venue, so I head over to him.

“I’m the person who was attacked outside by Anna Talanova’s ex-boyfriend,” I start, as he narrows his eyes at me. Shit, maybe he knows I took his teammate down? “I’m trying to find Ms. Talanova, but I’ve swept the place and there’s no sign of her. She said they weren’t going to let her out.”

He holds up a hand and talks into an earpiece, then makes a beckoning motion with his hand. We head down a corridor at the back of the event to a room that contains three other security guards and a bank of screens. They all turn and eye me curiously.

“Is this the guy that took Jock down?” one of the men asks with a chuckle. Another man shakes his head.

“Any idea what happened to Anna Talanova?” my security guard says.

“The tennis player?”

“Yeah.”

“I think I saw her leave about fifteen minutes ago,” another man says. He starts doing something on one of the screens, rewinding video, and eventually I see a flash of silver.

“That’s her,” I say.

He slows the footage down and runs it forward again. Anna exits the sidedoor to the venue into a waiting limousine.She’s gone home?The man peers up at me.

“That’s her, right?” he says.

I nod. She’s left me here? My heart clenches. Why would she go without texting me? Maybe she thought they weren’t going to let me in. Either way, I guess I need to try to find her. I take a deep breath.

“Okay, thanks, guys. What’s the best way out of here?”

“I’ll take you, Sir.”

At least they’re being more helpful now. No doubt worried about blowback or the way I took down that Jock guy. I shouldn’t have done that really, but I was so goddamn mad.

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