Page 159 of Family Affair

The pressure on her neck suddenly disappeared, and something crashed next to her head, glass breaking. She jackknifed to a sitting position in a fit of coughing that cramped her chest muscles and made her retch.

Gulping huge gulps of air she rose to her feet, paying only casual attention to a melee of grappling male bodies next to her. A knit cap was jerked from his head, and Ross’s strained face came into view. Muscles bulging under the mesh t-shirt, neck cording from the effort of holding on to Alex, he spared her a single glance and barked. “Run!”

Coco turned around and stumbled right through the beaded curtain out of the VIP area. Out of hell.

On the dance floor, she ran into somebody. “I’m dreadfully s’orry.” A garbled apology came out of her mangled throat as she found her balance and moved away.

The guy whistled. “Someone’s had a helluva time!”

You have no idea, buddy, Coco thought.

Locating a way out, she spilled out of a side door. It was dark out, hot and quiet. Taking deep breaths, she leaned her back against the rough wall and fumbled with her purse, feeling accomplished at having kept possession of it. She pulled out her phone, checked the screen, and sagged from relief. It was still on. The receiver had remained open though the scuffle in the booth. She hoped the sound quality was sufficient enough to discern the words and the voices.

Now she needed to dial Jack Willis’s number to tell him she got it.

“What do we have here?” A strong hand landed on her shoulder.

Dan.

“My phone,” she croaked.

Dan ripped the phone out of her hands and gave it a scroll. “You recorded our meeting?”

“Of course. That was the idea behind it.”

Before she had time to react, he let the phone drop on the ground and stomped his shiny loafer on the fragile device, bringing all his weight on this one foot.Crunch. And again.Crunch, crunch.

“There we go. ‘s all good now.”

All Coco could do was stare at Dan’s shoe. “Why? It has nothing to do with you.”

His cruel face was cast in the shadow. “We keep our family’s affairs private. We deal with problems ourselves.”

Coco breathed. In, out. In, out. The smell of something rotting hit her nose. Glancing around, she caught sight of a row of dumpsters, littered broken pavement, and a wall of what looked like an abandoned warehouse some fifteen feet away.

They were standing at a back alley behind Vamp Arcade.

“This isn’t your private business anymore. You can’t sweep a murder under the rug, Dan.” Her throat hurt and it was hard to talk.

Dan’s body shifted ever so slightly. “Let me be the judge of that.”

And that’s when she caught the glint of a knife.

Her eyes rounded and she snapped into motion just as Dan’s hand thrust upward to catch her between the ribs with the thin blade.

She was fast, but he was faster. The knife slid in, bringing the hot-cold burn of dry ice shoved under her skin. The pain was crippling. She cried out and swung blindly, hitting Dan’s face with her fist. He cursed and stumbled back, the motion pulling out the knife out of her body and giving her a chance to jump toward the meager safety of the dumpsters. The darkness was her only friend, the only advantage she had against him.

“That was for dumping me for Cade,” Dan snarled and the crunch of gravel reached her ears as he started walking around looking for her. “Or Frank, or whoever he the fuck is.”

Her wound throbbed, and gray mist filled her vision for the second time tonight. The blood poured down her side in a steady stream, soaking the pretty blue dress she had bought for but hadn’t worn to Dan’s party. He got to see her wear it, after all.

The blood smelled awful, like butchery, like death. But surprisingly, Coco’s mind wasn’t clouded, and she clinically evaluated her situation.

Her chances of escaping this alley were nonexistent.

She wasn’t frightened. She hoped she had succeeded in recording Alex’s spewed confession, but she worried about the quality of the sound, about whether it successfully transferred to the cloud. Now she would never know for sure if Frank walked free. Life was such a bitch.

Coco’s lips twisted at the epithet. She bet life hated being called a bitch as much as she did.