Page 85 of Beautiful Sins

He hangs up and riffles through his drawer. “Leni got a notification the security cameras are down at Kings.”

“We turned off the exterior ones this week so the sign would be a surprise.” I grab him a long-sleeved T-shirt and hold it out. He tugs it on with a grateful look.

“There was a problem rebooting them, and now all the cameras are down. We have no video of the premises.”

A chill runs through me. “Can’t someone else deal with it?” It’s late, and this is why he has people who work for him.

“I have a bad feeling.”

I follow him to the door. “I’ll come with you.”

The look he shoots me is quelling. “No. Stay here. I’ll call you if something’s wrong.”

That stalls me enough that I let him go. I stand numbly in the foyer.

I can’t reconcile our day with the middle-of-the-night call.

My feet carry me down the hall toward the bedroom.

It occurs to me how different this is from the last time I found myself alone in Harrison King’s room in the morning without him nearby. In Ibiza, I was afraid he didn’t have feelings, that everything that had gone down between us was a lie or a flirtation.

There’s none of that fear now. He loves me.

The bedroom feels disrupted, the covers on the bed thrown back. Hastily opened drawers stare back at me.

I won’t wait for him, I decide. I’m going after him.

I pull on jeans and a sweater, not bothering with a bra or brushing my hair. I snap on my gold cuff like a security measure before heading for the elevator.

The concierge looks worried when I demand a car, but he relents, waving over the valet to pull around a Nissan that evidently belongs to the concierge.

I jump in and navigate to the club. Even at three thirty in the morning, the drive is half an hour.

When I get there, the first thing I see are the flames. I hear sirens and see the lights of the approaching fire truck. They cut me off before I can turn off the road. I follow them in, my heart dropping through my stomach as I take in the sight before me.

The club is on fire.

Acrid black smoke pours out of broken windows. The sign isn’t lit, or the bulbs have shattered from the heat. The building is concrete, but the inside is wood.

Worse, Harrison’s car is in the lot, angled awkwardly with the driver’s door open.

There’s no sign of Harrison.

The sound of tires screeching in behind me has me whirling to find Leni, who I recall lives twice as far from the club as Harrison.

“Where is he?” she hollers, wide-eyed.

“I don’t…” I turn back toward the building in horror.

Firefighters pour out of the fire truck, a couple of them uncoiling the long hose from the vehicle’s side.

I start for the building and make it to within a dozen feet of the door before heat blasts open another window, glass flying outward. My hands fly up too late to shield myself, but the next second, Leni’s there.

“We need to get you back,” she says.

“But Harrison—he must be in there!”

I can’t breathe, and it’s not only because of the smoke.

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