Chapter 9 #2
“I heard you guys. I got worried, and I didn’t want anything happening to you.”
She handed him a shirt, and he folded it three times and pressed it down onto the wound, soaking up some of the blood.
“You brought a knife to a gunfight. You should’ve taken my gun.”
“And risk him getting both weapons and leaving you defenseless?”
Her fingers wrapped over the top of his bicep after a moment of silence passed. “I think he’s dead.”
He checked for a pulse again, but Emily was right. “Do you recognize him?”
Eyes wide, she nodded, her color a ghostly pale now. The woman had just killed a man in her bedroom. Thank God for rentals, but still.
“He was sitting at the bar the other night when I was having dinner with Sam and Owen. I thought he was just checking me out.”
“And you never saw him before that?”
“No.”
He motioned for her to sit on the bed then checked the guy’s pockets. “Nothing. No phone. No ID. Not even emergency cash.” He removed the guy’s boots and checked beneath his blood-stained clothes.
There were no visible tattoos. Nothing to connect him to a gang or organized crime.
“Police should be here soon,” she said in a near whisper.
“You got ahold of your boss?” He stared at his blood-stained palms.
“Yeah, I didn’t have much time, so I rattled off the info and asked him to call the cops.”
“Good.” He went into the bathroom and quickly scrubbed the blood from his hands, then turned off the shower that’d been running now for .
. . hell, he had no idea. He grabbed his cell phone from the counter where Emily had left it and returned to the bedroom.
“I want to get a copy of his prints and a blood sample for my people to check.” He snapped a few photos of the man with his phone.
“The Feds will do that,” she said, her voice hollow as if in shock, and who could blame her?
“Yeah, well, I want to know who he is, and I don’t want to have to cut through red tape to get answers.”
She stood, her eyes trained on the blood oozing like a spilled can of paint beneath the body. “I, uh, killed someone.”
“It was him or us.” He squeezed her arm, hoping to knock her out of her trance-like state. “Try and remember that.”
She dragged her attention to his face. “Was he here to kill me, or to get information out of me?”
“Probably both,” he admitted, but he also knew someone else would be coming after her to finish the job. “But I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
“The government will keep me safe.”
He jerked his head back. “Like they did tonight?” He let go of her arm and tipped his head skyward.
Before he could say more, she whispered, “My bodyguard, Hugh, is he dead? Should we go out there?”
“Let the police and medics handle it. I’d say we already took too many risks with your life tonight.” He motioned for her to sit, but she remained before him in a daze. “I’m going to grab a glass from the kitchen to put his prints on.” He gently gripped her arm, ensuring she heard him. “Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” She staggered out of his reach and dropped back into a seated position on the bed, her gaze landing on the corpse. “So much blood from one bullet.”
“Yeah, that happens.” He cleared his throat and rushed from the room. With the police closing in he didn’t have much time to work.
He lifted the man’s prints by wrapping his hand around a glass tumbler, then used his knife to rip a piece of Goliath’s bloody shirt for a DNA sample. He put the cup and cloth into a freezer-size Ziploc bag and set it on her bed.
“You good?”
“I, uh,” she began, her eyes on the bag, “this is the only piece of furniture that’s actually mine in the place, and now I kind of want to burn the bed.”
He patted her shoulder like she was one of the guys, nearly forgetting he was with an attorney and his wife. And just because she was capable of such a phenomenal shot didn’t make her someone who should be putting her life on the line like she did. No, he’d never want that for her.
“Can we put that bag in your safe until after the police do a sweep of this place? They’re not going to let me walk out of here with it.”
“Better than on my bed.” A tiny curl of her lips had his heartbeat steadying a touch.
She gave him the code, and once the items were locked away, he escorted her back into the living room, worried her legs may give out at some point.
“I’m missing the garlic smell from my neighbor right about now. It beats the stench of death.” Humor to hide from the shit reality of what happened—maybe she was more like his teammates than he realized.
“Emily, I need you to tell me what case you’re working on so I can better protect you.”
“I’m not your responsibility just because—”
“Because you’re my wife?” he asked. “Well, you’re also a friend. You became one of us when Sam married Owen. You and Sam are best friends, so you’re sort of a package deal.”
She crossed the short bit of space to get to him and rested her hands on his biceps. “I almost got you killed.”
“You kidding? You saved my ass.”
“But you shouldn’t have been in danger in the first place.” Her fingertips buried a little deeper into the muscles of his arms.
“Everything happens for a reason.” She let go of him, and so, he brought his palm to her cheek. “Emily,” he started, but he didn’t have a chance to say more because the sirens outside cut him off.
“They’re here,” she whispered.
He lowered his hand and separated the blinds to look out the window. “Medics are checking the bodyguard.”
She stepped up next to him. “They’re putting him on a stretcher with an oxygen mask.”
“That means he’s still alive.”
“Thank God. I couldn’t handle anyone dying because of me.”
A black Mercedes pulled up behind a squad car. “That’s your boss, right? The AG?” He’d seen the guy on the news before. The AG had been an Army Ranger back in the day before switching from a battlefield to a courtroom.
“He’s not going to let you be my protection because he’ll never let me tell you about the case we’re working on.”
“I can handle him.”
Accidental marriage or not, Emily was his wife, and if anyone was going to keep her safe it’d be him.