My mind wraps around what that would look like—that unbelievably sexy man with the dark hair and piercing blue eyes completely naked as a woman or two make him moan, his muscles tightening, his teeth gripping his bottom lip…
Shaking my head, I snap out of it. Well, I figure they can’t possibly have gotten started yet, right? He just left here. “I’ll be quick.”
“No!” she says, a stern look on her face. “Don’t do it! Promise me!”
My mouth falls open, and then I shut it again. She seems pretty serious about this.
“Fine,” I say. “I won’t.” She eyes me again for a second but then lets me go and disappears into the crowd, swallowed up by the twirling blonde who has become the bane of my existence, as well as a few other people who are dancing right here.
I take a deep breath as my eyes go to the hallway where the private rooms are. Hunter just went down the hallway a minute ago. He can’t possibly be getting it on, or whatever, just yet, right? And if Allie meant he had actual business to attend to, well then, I could interrupt that for a quick apology, couldn’t I?
I see one of the other waitresses coming back from that direction with a full tray full of drinks in her hands, and she seems irritated. I rush over to her, hoping we can help each other out. I can’t remember her name, so I don’t try to guess it as I stop in front of her, making her pull up short so she doesn’t splash the six glasses of what look like Guinness all over me.
“You need a hand?” I ask her.
“Oh, uh, no, it’s okay,” she stammers. “It’s just the guys in room six said they wanted these, and then they changed their mind, so now I’ve gotta go all the way back up there to the bar, and I have no idea what to do with these.”
“Huh. Well, there’s a table over there that’s been ordering them all night. I’ll just take them over there. I bet they’ll drink them.” I hook my thumb over my shoulder, gesturing at a nonexistent table I just made up for my own purposes.
“Do you mind?” she asks, scrunching her face up like she hates to bother me.
“Not at all!” I hastily take the tray from her as she thanks me for my help. It’s clear she doesn’t know my name either, and I don’t tell her because there’s a good chance this is about to backfire on me, and I don’t want there to be a trail of evidence. My whole purpose in doing this is to not get fired, after all.
But I’ve got to try. The only way I can gain access to the back hallway is if there seems like a legitimate reason why I would be there, and hunting down Hunter…my boss…doesn’t seem like a legitimate reason.
Once I have the tray secured, I take off at a pretty good clip, hoping I can figure out what room he went into somehow. I know it’s not six, at least I think it’s not, since that waitress just came from there. I suppose Hunter could be meeting with those guys, but I doubt it. When I walk past six, it’s really loud, and it sounds more like a group of guys watching a football game than anything else.
But I have no idea what goes on back here. I caught Carter’s mention of the package being delivered earlier, but I don’t think that meant there’s a shipping department in the back.
I walk past the doors slowly, listening to each of them. I don’t know why I’ve gotten it in my head that Hunter’s back here meeting up with some chick—or a fleet of them—but I can’t help but continue to let images of his muscular body bare of even a scrap of clothing, writhing on a couch on top of a woman while another woman strokes him from the floor, fill my mind.
“Get your head out of the gutter, Meghan,” I tell myself. I should definitely save my lewd thoughts about my boss for when I’m home, not while I’m still at work.
I get to a door a little bit farther down the hallway, and it seems fairly silent except for the murmur of voices and some heavy breathing. Then I hear a strange sound I can’t quite put my finger on, but it sounds vaguely familiar, like something I might’ve heard in a movie. Was that a…silenced gunshot?
No, it couldn’t be. I know Mr. Stone has a reputation for being a hard ass. But he’s not a murderer.
Is he?
My curiosity gets the better of me, and I push the door open. What I see takes my breath away, and the tray of drinks I’ve been so careful with tumbles from my grasp, pitching forward as every glass of Guinness falls to the ground in slow motion and shatters.
I can’t think about that at the moment, as my hands fly to cover my face and try to prevent the scream lodged in my throat from breaking free.
Before my eyes is the most gruesome sight I’ve ever seen in my entire life. A man, his face bloodied and broken, slumped in a chair, a splotch of red growing wider by the second on his forehead, and behind him splattered on the wall of the club…
Nothing but blood and brain… and is that… skull fragments?
The scream I am about to release is stifled when a hand is forced over my mouth, and I’m pulled tightly against a body. I never even saw anyone else in the room, except for me and the corpse, so I have no idea how he got to me so quickly.
“Don’t scream.”
The words are practically whispered against my cheek in a short, clipped manner that makes me not even want to breathe, let alone release the wail that’s still fighting to part my lips.
I swallow it and the burn of bile back and catch a whiff of whiskey. Without even turning my head, I know exactly who has his arms around me, and my emotions jumble together. I’m terrified, outraged, mortified, and…nope, not even going to allow my mind to register how turned on I am by the solid wall I’ve found my body pressed up against for the second time tonight.
I take a few deep breaths around his hand as he turns to a woman I am just noticing for the first time and says something I don’t understand. Perhaps my ears are clogged with my own unreleased scream, but the next thing I do hear is Hunter telling a couple of guys who may or may not have already been in the room before me to get the body the fuck out of there.
Body.