Chapter 8 #2
“He could teach you first aid, though,” I point out, dipping a chip in guac and scooping it into my mouth.
She smacks my hand. “Stop eating all the guac, you heathen. And I already know first aid. I have to. One time, someone stabbed me right here.” She points at her right side. “I used a pantyliner to slow down the bleeding until I got to a doctor. Smart, right?”
I chew on my chip. “Very. One time, I got shot through the hand.” I point at my palm, and the glimmer of a scar. “You could see right through it.”
“What?” Her mouth drops open. “That’s so cool. Why has no one ever shot me in the hand?”
“Have you been shot before?”
She nods. “Four times.”
“Four?” I gape, and she nods. “Where?”
“Two in the leg, one in the shoulder and …” She takes another bite of her taco and mumbles the last one.
“What? I didn’t hear that.”
She rolls her eyes. “In the arse.”
I burst out laughing, and she smirks into her taco. “You’re lying.”
“Seriously. And I wasn’t running away, before you even suggest it. I thought the bastard was dead, but he wasn’t and he had another gun hidden. He shot me in the arse, then died before I could make him pay for it.” I’m still cackling, and she playfully punches my arm. “Stop that! It hurt!”
“Do you have a scar?” I ask, and she rolls her eyes again and nods. “Can I see?”
“You pervert, no!”
“Come on, this is strictly a work wound discussion. Nothing sexual about it. Show me.”
She sighs, puts down her half-eaten food, and leans toward the window, pulling down her leggings. A small, white scar mars an otherwise perfect ass cheek, and now I wish I hadn’t asked.
“Wow,” I say. “I’m almost proud of you.”
She sits back down and grins. “Thanks. So, who was your biggest bust?”
Now that’s a question with an easy answer. “Hoping it’ll be you, to be honest.”
“Hardy har. Chief Gibson, the comedian.”
I shoot her a smirk. “William the Barbarian.”
“Ooh!” She turns to face me and leans her shoulder into the seat. “Who was he?”
“God, I forget how young you are.” I groan.
“He was a serial killer in the nineties. No MO, no discernible pattern at all. He started off kidnapping people, bodies never found, then eventually, body after body showed up. And do you know who he turned out to be?” She shakes her head. “The first victim.”
She smacks my arm. “Shut up!”
“Yep. He’d faked his own disappearance, so we’d never suspect him.
Really fucking clever. We’d never look for a dead man, except, I did.
The lack of a pattern was the pattern. No victim was linked, not even slightly.
Except two of them. A woman was on a dating website and had matched with a guy months before she died.
I was going through those matches, hoping to find anything—”
“And you found William!”
“Nope, I found his neighbor.”
She pouts. “That’s a bit of an anticlimax.”
“It was a connection, though. So, I went back to the first victim and checked his phone, too. Sure enough there was a deleted profile from the same dating site, and he’d used his neighbor’s photo for it. Blew the case wide open.”
Monty crunches on a chip. “I’m so attracted to you right now.”
I huff a laugh. “What about you? Who’s your biggest … job?”
“Contract killing. Lesson one: do not confess to a cop.”
“Come on, I’m not a cop right now. I’m your date. I won’t tell anyone. Scout’s honor.”
She narrows her eyes, then shrugs. “Congressman Whitby.”
I pause mid-chew and stare at her. She continues eating, avoiding my eye, and I wonder if I heard her right. “He had a heart attack.”
“Yes, he did.” She winks at me.
I place my hand on her forearm to pause her next bite. “Wait, Monty, are you being serious? You killed Jackson Whitby?” I ask and she nods slowly. “He raised millions for charity. He was the face of change. He was doing so much good for the community. How could you do that?”
“He was also beating the shit out of his wife on the daily.”
I freeze in place. “What?”
“He’d been doing it for years, and he was turning on the kids, too.
So, his wife hired me. I killed him. She asked that it look natural, so that’s what I did.
She got her life insurance, moved her and the kids away, and now she’s happily single and living in Texas.
Good for her, I say. I support women’s rights and their wrongs. ”
I lean back in my chair, speechless. I met Jackson and his wife once, and while she was quiet, there didn’t seem to be anything off. I can’t believe I missed that.
“Grossest murder?” She asks, totally unaffected by the moment.
My mind has gone blank, though. I’m still too focused on her confession. “Too many to say. You?”
“Watched someone fall under one of those big lawnmowers. Tore him up. RIP Karl.” She takes a sip of her drink.
“He was a prick, though.” I force a smile, and a few seconds tick by.
“Are we going to talk about earlier?” she asks, balling up her wrapping and placing it in the bag the food came in.
“If I hadn’t stopped it, would you have kissed me? ”
She meets my eye, and I put my own packaging away. “Yes.”
“So … it’s good that I stopped it, right?”
It is. But it doesn’t stop the warmth that follows her words, or the need to throw caution to the wind and kiss her anyway.
“It’s good it didn’t happen, because I wouldn’t have stopped at just a kiss.”
She shifts in her seat, and the silence that falls has me wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.
But maybe speaking about it gives life to the almost-mistake and we’ll be more careful in future.
Leaning forward, Monty tears a strip of the paper bag and takes a pen out of the glove compartment. She scrawls something on the brown packaging and hands it to me.
IOU one kiss
I look at her.
“Now you can have one anytime you want. Or never, if you want that, too. And you know it will never go any further than just a—”
Seizing the back of her neck, I pull her lips against mine.
It’s a mistake. A glaring, glowing, horrendous mistake, but fuck it. It’s just a fucking kiss. Who the hell cares who it’s with or if I’ll regret it? We’re grown-ups. We can be intimate and not have it mess up our friendship, if that’s even what this is.
Not even seconds pass before she’s leaning into the kiss, moaning into my mouth, the sound sending zips of pleasure down my spine and into my dick. She parts her lips to allow my tongue to sweep across hers, and I can’t believe I’m kissing Monty.
Murderer Monty.
Monty who swept into my life like a goddamn hurricane.
She pulls back and gasps, “I’m still sweaty from the run—”
“I don’t give a fuck.” I pull her over the handbrake and onto my lap, her firm body pressed to mine as I kiss her again.
I run my hands up her spine, my palms flat against her back, and she pushes her breasts against my chest. My dick is hard in my running sweats, and I’m glad she doesn’t grind against me, because I’d fuck her right here.
It’s been too long since I’ve slept with anyone, and I have a feeling Monty would give me a night I’d never forget.
We make out like horny teenagers at prom, my lips only roaming as far as her throat, even though I’m desperate to go further. She moans prettily in my ear as I nibble her neck, and I grit my teeth against the pleasure when she does the same to me.
I don’t know how much time passes, but soon we’re panting, our faces close. Monty’s lips are pink and plump from our frantic session, and she rests her forehead against mine.
“That was a lot more fun than telling you boring facts.”
I smile, cupping her neck. “I don’t know. I like learning about you.”
“Don’t you like kissing me more?”
“Maybe I like both.”
She presses another soft kiss against my lips. The last one. “Thank you for an amazing date.”