Page 87 of Dublin's Danger Dancer

“Why didn’t you help her?” I say pushing against him harder.

“You should have helped her.”

“She was gone. There was nothing anyone could do.”

“She was my whole world and you killed her.” I say, lunging at him again.

He pushes me up against the wall.

“Take a breath.” He says.

“Yes, you should both take a breath,” Admir is standing at the door. “If Liam sees you touching his girl like this, well, you both might save me a job.” He snaps a picture with his phone in one hand and motions for us to move with his gun in the other.

“I want to know where your other boyfriend is,” he says.

“I’ll take you to him. I don’t care if you kill Aaron and Liam.”

“That’s good to know,” he says. It’s only now that I see the silencer. He raises his gun and shoots Aaron in the chest. Aaron falls to the floor in a bloodied heap.

“You take me to him now or you’re next,” he demands, pushing me towards the door.

“I’ll have to show you where he is. I don’t know the address, but I remember the place.”

“Give me your hands.” Admir demands.

I put my hands together in front of him, feeling my hair wet with tears.

He pulls out cuffs from his pocket.

“Anastasia and I keep these for games.” he smiles. “But I have to say I like them better on you,” he says, licking his lips.

We leave and I don’t know whether Aaron is dead or alive.

“If you weren’t so stupid, you could have made the introductions I need to your friends on the continent.”

“My friends?”

“The network we use to abduct girls, all pigs like you.”

“Freddie was going to do it, and now I need Liam to make the introductions.”

He opens the boot of his car parked in the basement. “What’s the name of the village?”

“Tawdrydowns,” I say.

“You’ll be getting out of the boot there. In.” He demands.

Chapter Twenty-two

Once I’m freed from the musky, airless boot I’d struggled for an hour to breathe in, it takes me a while to get my bearings to navigate us back to the barn that Liam was tied to the bed in.

The logical part of me fought against taking him there because I knew how it would end. He would shoot us both.

Another part of me wanted to sink into the total oblivion only death could offer. I’d be dead soon enough anyway and it would certainly be less painful to go by gunshot.

I’d devoted my life to finding my sister’s murderer, only to discover that she died accidentally, that no one was to blame. I’d watch the video. I couldn’t blame Aaron or Liam, not really.

Though I hated them for leaving her there like that, there was no chance they could have done anything to save her.

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