Chapter Fifteen
There was a lot, she guessed, that they could have said.
Eve, in bed at Darius’s side, careful to keep her distance.
Darius, in bed at Eve’s side, polite enough to not comment on the fact that she had once again invaded his space.
Yet, neither one spoke after she adjusted the blanket around her neck, trying to get warm.
And after that?
She fell asleep to silence.
It wasn’t until she opened her eyes again that she finally felt the need to say something to the boy next door, now a man with a badge and a six-pack.
Mainly because, when she woke, the space Eve had been careful to give him had disappeared somewhere in the night. That chiseled upper body she had been in awe of the week before? She no longer wondered if it felt as impressive as it looked.
Eve woke up on top of it, her chin on his shoulder, her chest and stomach against his, and one leg pulled over him like she was his personal seat belt, and he wasn’t going anywhere unless he unbuckled.
But it didn’t seem like he had been trying to undo said seat belt during his shut-eye either.
One of his hands—warm and big—was resting on the bare skin of her thigh, her shorts having shifted during sleep.
The other hand and arm that weren’t bandaged had wrapped around Eve to accommodate her position.
She felt his fingers flex on her lower back as he also stirred from sleep.
For all the years she had slept in the same room with Darius Williams, waking up in such a position was a first.
A first that felt extremely intimate.
Eve might have just woken from sleep, but she was immediately and keenly aware that there was something else she could feel beneath the fabric of both of their sleeping attire. Something just south of the muscles she had been admiring.
Her face heated—her body heated—and she readied to apologize for stepping over a line she herself had drawn to give the man a boundary from her.
But something was wrong.
The hand on her thigh tightened, and her chest rumbled as Darius spoke three words, low.
“Eve, go hide.”
It was the equivalent to ice water being thrown onto her face.
Any vestiges of sleep, or thoughts of Darius’s body, turned into alert obedience.
Eve unbuckled herself from Darius and slid out of bed on swift but quiet feet.
By the time she was crossing the threshold of the attached bathroom, Darius was already on his feet, heading for the gun on hand.
If it wasn’t for the small light on in the bathroom behind her, Eve wouldn’t have been able to see his expression.
But she could, and it let her know absolutely one thing without any context: their quiet night was about to take a turn.
Darius motioned for her to go deeper into the bathroom, a simple point-and-go. She wanted to ask what had woken him, what he had heard, what he thought was happening. Instead, she backed up and watched as he slowly turned the doorknob.
Eve held her breath. Part of her had expected to jump. But nothing, and no one came through.
That didn’t stop Darius.
He raised his gun and moved into the dark hallway. Before he was out of sight, he reached back and locked the bedroom door from the inside.
Eve held out her hand to stop him. He disappeared before she could.
The small light in the bathroom did nothing to alleviate how dark the room felt after the soft click of the door closing.
Eve closed the space between it and her on bare feet. She didn’t unlock the door—she didn’t even touch it. Instead, she leaned close to it and listened.
Her heart was beating too loudly, racing since she had realized Darius had gone into fight mode. Her breathing, too, was off. Too fast, too distracting.
She couldn’t hear anything but herself.
Eve put a hand to her chest, closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
It helped.
There was nothing at first, but then she heard a faint sound of movement.
Eve tilted her head, trying to figure out exactly where it might be coming from.
Too far away to be from the hallway bathroom or Darius’s childhood bedroom. Close enough, though, that it couldn’t have been the foyer or the living room.
The kitchen?
Maybe Theo had gotten up for a late-night snack? Or maybe he had risen early to go do his marathon training?
Eve realized she didn’t know what time it was, just when she realized her Theo theory was most likely wrong.
The faint noise in the distance turned into something breaking. Glass shattering. A loud thump. Something scraping against hardwood.
Then, worse.
Silence.
Eve’s eyes flashed opened.
Hearing a gunshot would have been more surprising.
She strained to hear something—anything.
No one spoke.
Eve reached for the doorknob.
Surely if it had been Theo that Darius had run in to they would have said something or—
Footsteps.
Eve stopped her hand midair.
They were coming down the hallway.
Maybe it was Darius.
Maybe he had come to explain what was happening.
Creak.
The floorboard outside of the door—the one Darius wouldn’t have stepped on—sounded.
But Darius didn’t say a word.
The doorknob, however, started to turn. It stopped at the engaged lock.
If it were Darius, this would at the very least be the first time he would say it was him. Let her know to unlock it. Called out to Eve, giving an all clear.
Instead, the silence was only broken by another twist of the doorknob.
Eve hadn’t realized she was already backing up on reflex.
It made running for the window even easier when the sound of frustration went from trying the lock to someone trying to break down the door.
DARIUS PLACED HIS gun in the kitchen sink. To say he was unhappy was an understatement.
The second shooter from the steel mill, the woman who had gotten away, had now found her way back into his life.
Into his home.
And she, and the gun she had pressed against Theo’s back, had backed him into a corner in the kitchen.
He hadn’t yet seen the second person in his home, but he sure heard him trying with everything he had to get into the main bedroom.
“I don’t know what this is, but I can tell you that he has no part in it,” Darius said, aggravated. Theo’s deep frown seemed to mimic the feeling. Both men were angry and trying to put a lid on that rising rage so they could all come out of this safely.
The woman wasn’t taller than the boy but had angled herself to where she could see Darius clearly from his side without losing the upper hand.
Without the gun trained on him, she would have looked all but normal among them. Casually dressed, somewhere between their ages, and a pleasant-enough smile without context. Though, even without the gun in her hand, two glaring details would have eventually shattered the image.
For one thing, her lip was busted, blood dripping down her chin, and two, she was wearing black gloves.
Normal didn’t seem to be on her docket.
She nodded to Theo, whose eyebrow had a nasty gash with a matching blood drip, and kept her smile tight.
“You just voluntarily put your only weapon in the kitchen sink,” she pointed out. “He might not have been a piece on the game board, but you can’t argue the results of using him.”
She was right.
Even as he had walked into the living room following the sounds of her and Theo’s scuffle, Darius hadn’t had the time or the space to go on the defense or offense. Not without risking Theo’s life.
Never mind having to deal with whoever was trying to break down the bedroom door.
If the lock hadn’t held, Darius wouldn’t have cared if there was space or not for him to move. He would have found a way to get back to Eve come hell or high water.
But the lock and the door were holding.
Which would give Eve enough time to hide or escape.
She was, as history had shown, good at climbing in and out of windows.
“What do you want?” Darius asked. He was hoping to stall for time to figure out a plan that got everyone he cared about out of harm’s way. “Why are you here?”
The woman used her free hand to wipe some of the blood away from her chin. She sighed.
“I’m running into more complications than I intended, that’s why.” Her hold on her weapon and aim didn’t waver while she multitasked.
“Then, quit,” Darius said. “Tell me who you’re working for, what game they wanted you to play, and then leave. Cancel whatever deal you made, whatever contract you entered, and go.”
The woman’s eyes widened in obvious surprise.
She said as much.
“The honest, rule-following Detective Williams giving me an out?” She shook her head a little. “Well, that wasn’t on my bingo card for this trip, that’s for sure.”
Darius shrugged. He pointed at Theo.
“You holding me and my friends hostage in my house wasn’t on my bingo card either,” he pointed out. “Putting my gun in my sink was also something I didn’t plan for. We all gain some and lose some in this.”
The mystery man who had kept plowing into the bedroom door finally made progress. Before the woman could respond, the sound of splintering wood sent a new surge of adrenaline through Darius.
He didn’t need to see into the hallway to know that the bedroom door was no longer hanging on its hinges.
Along with adrenaline, anger flooded his system.
He bit out a warning.
“Pull him back,” he said. “Now.”
The woman’s smile was like the slithering of a snake. It twisted into one that indicated that she wouldn’t take his order.
“I might consider this one,” she said, motioning to Theo. “But everyone else needs to stay. Sorry.”
She wasn’t sorry, and Darius wasn’t going to just stand there.
He could go backward for his gun in the sink or close the space between the woman and Theo in an attempt to disarm her.
Then, he could deal with the man in his room.
By then the backup that Eve had no doubt called would arrive to assist. The only variable he would have to worry about was Theo and, Theo’s tensing body language probably meant he was about to try to make some kind of move to help.
Darius felt the muscles in his legs tighten in anticipation.
His fingers wanted to flex, ready to retrieve his weapon.
All he had to do now was make the first—
A body flew into view from the hallway, crashing into the woman with a loud yell and toppling her and her gun to the floor. The gun went off, but the shot embedded into the ceiling.
Darius moved quickly.
Before Theo could turn around to figure out what had happened, Darius was pushing him deeper into the kitchen.
“The sink!” he yelled.
Darius didn’t wait to see if the boy understood. Instead, he joined the current fray happening in the space between the kitchen and the hallway.
And the person who had not, in fact, escaped to call for help.
Eve had attached to the woman’s side like a koala. Legs wrapped around her, one arm trying to pull back the woman’s neck, the other wildly flailing to try to get to the gun still in her hand.
While Darius had been surprised at her sudden appearance, their attacker looked completely taken aback by it. Her reflexes had probably kept the gun in her hand, but the rest of her didn’t appear to be on the offense.
Not that she would have been able to do anything for long. Eve was too close to her—to the gun—and there was someone else in the house that, one step into the hallway, would have a clear view of Eve.
He needed the upper hand now.
Darius dropped down and grabbed the woman’s wrist.
Then he broke it.
She yelled out in pain as the gun dropped from her grip and clattered to the ground.
Darius had it in his hand within a heartbeat.
Which was good because he had to pivot even more quickly.
Darius dropped his hold on the woman and switched his hand over to Eve. Timing wasn’t on his side. He trained his new gun down the hallway on the bedroom door, hoping the man who had gone searching inside was slower than him.
He wasn’t.
The man came out of the main bedroom, gun already up.
Darius shot the second he could. He missed but knew he would.
He was too busy yanking Eve by the shirt backward into the kitchen with all the force he had.
The sound of fabric tearing was overshadowed by the man’s returning fire.
“Stop!” the woman on the ground yelled out.
The man didn’t listen. Darius jumped backward into the kitchen, out of sight, while the man continued to unload his clip with no obvious regard for his partner lying in the way.
She tried to make herself flat, yelling out for the man to stop, eyes closing at each shot. Pain already etched into every syllable from her broken wrist.
Whoever the man down the hall was, he was unaffected.
Darius wasn’t.
He reached down to grab the woman’s leg and pulled her back with him into the kitchen. She didn’t fight him, but she sure yelled.
Darius didn’t join her as the man thundered into view, eyes wide and gun up.
The fact of the matter was Darius had already decided to pull the trigger the second he saw the gunman. He had been after Eve, and he had no issues about shooting at her, at his partner, and obviously no issues with killing Darius too.
This was no longer a defensive play.
He was only waiting for a kill shot.
So the nanosecond the man showed his face—sharp lines and stubble and rage—Darius’s index finger flexed, pulling the trigger with certainty.
The gun, however, had other plans.
For the first time in Darius’s career, his gun jammed.
The shot that tore through the house after was deafening.