Grave Phantoms
Page 19

Astrid let out a long breath and heard something else inside the restroom . . . Light footfalls. Not the click of women’s shoes. Surely Max wouldn’t come in here? Whoever it was, they approached the stalls and stopped. Blood swished in Astrid’s temples as she silently waited for the sound of a stall door opening.
It never came. Only a brief shuffling.
Someone was checking beneath the stall door.
A moment later, hinges squealed. The door banged . . . and then the person stepped to the middle stall.
Oh-God, oh-God, oh-God. Astrid lifted her legs and held them up in the air as the same noises repeated only a few feet away, shuffling, hinges squealing, door banging. Why didn’t they put locks on these doors? Why—
The person stopped in front of her stall.
Feet shuffled. A shadow fell across the floor beneath the door. Astrid’s heart drummed against her rib cage. The hinges began rotating.
She didn’t think. Her legs shot forward and she pressed the soles of her T-bar shoes flat against the stall door, pushing it closed with a bang.
Outside the door, a murmur of surprise echoed off the marble. Masculine.
Holy living God, it was Max!
Without warning, the door exploded inward. Astrid yelped as her legs folded back like an accordion, and she slid sideways on the toilet seat. She braced her hands on the stall walls and stared up at the dark figure of Max.
“Found you,” he said with a dangerous smile.
Survival instincts kicked in. A dozen scenarios raced through her mind at once. The simplest hung on a chain around her wrist: a silver mesh handbag. It was heavier than she preferred, but she’d worn it tonight because it matched the band on the wristwatch Bo had given her. A small bit of fortune. She tightened the chain, and when Max reached inside the stall to pull her out, she swung the handbag and struck him in the face.
He cried out and stumbled backward a step, more surprised than hurt. One hand caught the casing around the stall while the other touched his cheek briefly and dabbed blood.
“Little bitch,” he muttered through gritted teeth.
Inside her head, she heard Bo’s voice instructing her how to protect herself if she were ever in a situation like this. Kick a man straight in the balls, he’d said. A childish thing to do, she’d thought at the time, but she didn’t much care at the moment. She started to raise a leg and do just that. But Max suddenly stilled.
“You’re going to want to move away from her, slowly, before I blow a hole in your spine,” a familiar voice said behind Max.
Max grunted and raised both his hands as he stepped out of the stall. Bo stood behind him in a long navy coat. The muzzle of Bo’s gun was pressed into the man’s back.
Relief washed through Astrid’s limbs.
“Now, then,” Bo said, patting Max’s suit jacket with one hand to search for weapons. “You want to tell me just who the hell you are and why you were stupid enough to touch her?”
Max’s elbow swung backward and struck Bo in the jaw. Hard.
Bo let out muffled grunt of pain as he stumbled backward. His shoulder cracked against the restroom wall.
Shouting savagely, Astrid jumped out of the stall and tried to whop Max with her handbag. This time he wasn’t surprised. His arm shot up and he swatted it as if it were a fly. His signet ring caught her on her wristbone—the ring is inlaid with turquoise, her mind realized as pain shot up her arm.
Pain, and something more . . .
Time seemed to slow. In the space of a few rapid heartbeats, Astrid watched Bo shake his head like a wet dog and quickly retrain his gun on Max.
Just not quickly enough.
Max raced through the restroom and was already pushing open the door into the club. Chaos erupted as he plowed through the bar area. Bo growled and took off after him, only to come to a skidding stop when Astrid cried out in horror.
Like an electric bee sting, a strange series of aftershocks radiated from the spot Max’s ring had clipped her on the wrist. The shocks buzzed and hummed until they wracked her entire body. The stark-bright light of bathroom dimmed. And all around her, dark water poured from the cracks of the tiled walls.
Dark, odious water.
It flowed down the mirrors. Flooded the sinks and overflowed, cascading black waterfalls onto the floor until it began filling the restroom, rising and rising, covering her feet and climbing her legs. It was briny seawater, reeking of salt and rotting fish, and it quickly rose over her knees.
She tried to wade through the icy water, tried to get to Bo. He looked so confused. Why was he just standing there, staring at her like she’d lost her mind?
Then she realized that she might actually have lost it. Out of the floodwater, a dark shape bobbed to the surface.
It was the size and shape of a human body, and it was encased in a burlap sack.
Astrid swayed and fell into blackness.
EIGHT
Bo holstered his Colt and squatted by Astrid’s collapsed body. His shoulder ached where he’d slammed it against the tiled wall, but he ignored its protest and flipped her faceup.
It wasn’t like the first time on the yacht when she was unconscious. Her eyelids were fluttering, the whites of her eyes showing. He shouted her name, and ice blue irises rolled back into view and stared up him.
His head dropped in relief.
“Bo,” she said weakly before turning her face to survey her surroundings. “The water is gone? My clothes are dry?”
“Whoa, now. Don’t try to sit up.”
“Did you see the water? Did you see . . . the body in the sack?”