Chapter Eighty
Blade
P ulling around to the rear of the hotel, I threw the SUV into Park but left it idling. “Coming to get you. We’re gonna double-time it to a room. Flank my left, fall back to my six through doorways. Don’t make eye contact with anyone.” I didn’t wait for a verbal response.
Getting out of the rental, I scanned the parking lot, then opened her door.
Trembling like hell, staring straight ahead, she didn’t move.
I unbuckled her seat belt and lifted her out. Then I zipped up her jacket over the mess on her sweatshirt. The jacket itself, her hair, leggings, and boots, I couldn’t do shit about right now.
Rushing her through a back entrance and into a waiting service elevator courtesy of November, I hit the call button for the top floor.
Still shaking, she didn’t say shit.
But she’d kept her head down, paced my stride, and stuck to my left.
I got us into the room, took off her jacket, and issued an order. “Take that sweatshirt off.” We’d already left a trail of DNA I wasn’t fucking thrilled about.
She looked down and froze. “Blood.”
“Not yours.” I sent a text to November.
Me: In suite. Sitrep.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
“You’re good.” My cell pinged, and I read the new text.
November: Alpha made contact with Rawley. Situation with female neutralized. Rental handled. Hotel security cams wiped. Sweep team in process. Barrett waiting. Clothes and outerwear incoming.
I shoved my phone in my pocket, and she lost her shit.
Holding the sweatshirt away from her chest, staring at the bloodstain, her legs started to shake. “Oh my God, oh my God. Get it off!” She yanked the material up, and it caught in her hair. “ This is not okay. Get it off me .”
“You’re okay.” I whipped the sweatshirt over her head, and her tank underneath was soaked in that motherfucker’s blood. Not giving her time to think, I yanked it off too. “You’re good.”
With her tits spilling out of a sexy-as-fuck lace bra, she looked up at me with panic. “You shot them. You shot all of them .”
I grabbed her chin. “Hey.”
“There’s blood everywhere!”
“It’s over.”
“I’m a crime scene. We’re a crime scene, and I’m going to jail .”
I cursed my choice of words in the rental. “No one’s going to jail.”
“I can’t wear jail clothes. I can’t do this. I can’t breathe. There’s blood in my hair .”
“HEY.”
She flinched, then started to shake like hell.
I gripped the back of her neck and tilted her head up. “You looking at me?”
She choked on a sob. “Yeah.”
“Do I look panicked?”
She shook her head.
“I asked you a question, woman. Do I look panicked?”
Tears ran down her face. “No.” Her bottom lip started trembling.
“Then you don’t have to panic.”
“S-so if y-you panic, then I c-can panic? I have per-per-permission?”
Christ, only she would ask for fucking permission to lose her shit. “I don’t panic, woman. You don’t need to either. I got you. You’re good.”
Leaning into my grip, she looked at me like I was the second fucking coming. “G-good?”
“Yeah.” I wanted to fuck that fear out of her.
Her voice dropped to a whispered sob. “I-I can’t do jail clothes.”
“You’re not going to prison.” I’d never let her go down. I’d take the fucking fall a thousand times over to keep anything from touching her. “It’ll never come to that.”
“B-but there’re dead people.”
“Dead people happen. Fact of life. You did nothing wrong. Take a breath and hold it.”
She sucked in and bit that bottom lip.
“Exhale,” I ordered.
She complied. It lasted two seconds. Then she was right back where she’d been. “But there’re bodies. You shot three of them.” A wave of fresh tears hit her face. “You could go to jail for that.” Her voice broke. “And that can’t happen. I can’t have you go to jail.”
Fucking Christ . “That’s what you’re worried about?”
Nodding, crying, her bottom lip started back up. “Y-yeah.”
“Hang on.” I yanked off my shirt, threw it over her head, then wrapped an arm around her. Pulling her into my chest, I banged on the adjoining room’s door. “Barrett, get in here.”
“Copy.” His muffled response hit the room before the door opened. Then the superhero-looking fucker stepped into our suite with his messenger bag and glanced at her before nodding at me. “Blade.”
Stiffening against me, she sucked in a sharp breath.
“Introduce yourself,” I ordered.
The fucker smiled at her. “Mathew Barrett, attorney. Nice to meet you, Miss Lyons.”
I cut to the chase. “Am I going to prison?”
Fucker raised an eyebrow like he didn’t know why he was here. “For?”
“Murder.”
Barrett focused up. “Did you call in a sweep team?”
“Yeah.”
“Then no. Not for this.” Reading the situation, he glanced at her. “Neither of you are going to prison.”
I looked down. “Good?”
Still fucking crying, she nodded.
Swiping at her tears, I pivoted to speak her language. “No jail clothes.”
She sniffled. “Promise?”
Jesus, this woman. “Yeah.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Okay.” Her breath hitched. “No jail clothes.”
“You good now?”
She looked up at me with those haunted brown eyes. Then her raspy voice broke on a whisper. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
She bit that bottom lip again, crossed her arms, then nodded.
I studied her a beat to make sure she was good, then I glanced at the lawyer. “You’ve got ten minutes. You read in?”
“Yes.” Barrett set his bag down on the dining table. “November brought me up to speed.” He looked at the small-as-fuck woman who was swamped in my T-shirt and pulled out a chair. “Why don’t you have a seat, Miss Lyons, and we’ll go over a few things.”
Looking back up at me, she gave the same damn stare she had when I’d jumped that curb two years ago and thrown open the passenger door—a lost fucking deer in headlights.
I tipped my chin.
She sat.
My cock pulsed.