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“I didn’t know her,” Mark replied, his smile tinged with blood. “We just fucked after the mud run event up at Cutthroat Mountain.”
Lucas lunged ag
ain. Either the big detective was weak or he let Lucas hit Mark again. I was thinking the latter. With one well aimed punch, Mark toppled once more, right onto the coffee table with a grunt.
“Glad you skipped my dad and saved that shit up,” Cy told him. “Nice hit.”
A police officer came in the door and when the guy Lucas called Nix saw him, he hoisted Mark to his feet once more, pushed him his way. Besides the bloody nose, his eye was quickly swelling. He’d have a black eye within the hour.
“Book him for assault and murder,” Nix said.
“He hit me. That bastard hit me with my arms behind my back.”
“I didn’t see anything,” Nix said. “Did you, Miranski?”
“Nope. Just like he didn’t know Erin Mills.”
“Shit. Wait! I didn’t kill Erin,” Mark said, breathing hard and tilting his head to wipe the blood from his face onto his shoulder.
“We’ll question you at the station after you’re read your rights.”
“I couldn’t have killed her. I was in Canada.”
Lucas stilled, glanced at Cy, then at me. Nix kept his gaze on Mark, studied him perhaps for deception. It was pretty hard to fake being in a foreign country. There were plane tickets to track. Customs.
I shrugged, not knowing my coach’s schedule, only that he had been at the mud run. “It’s possible.”
“We’ll check it out,” Nix said. “Read him his rights before he says anything else.”
The uniformed officer nodded, took Mark away while reciting the usual Miranda rights.
“Is your face okay?” Cy asked, turning me back to him, gently brushing his knuckles over the hot skin.
“It’s fine. I’ve fallen harder skiing than he can hit.”
He didn’t seem reassured by that statement because his jaw clenched.
“You think he killed Erin?” I asked, looking to Lucas. God, I’d let a murderer into the house? I’d been working beside one for years? I felt nauseated at the thought that I’d been in danger. “God, is it my fault they met? I was the reason he was at that mud run.”
“Don’t think that, doll. I’m the one who told her about the event. None of this is your fault. These are the detectives on the case. Nix and Miranski,” Lucas said. They nodded my way as greeting.
“Do you need an ambulance?” Miranski asked.
I put my hand to my cheek. It was sore, but that was it. “No, it’s fine. All I need is a little ice.”
“His fingerprints were found at Erin’s. Miranski shared his name with us while you were meeting with him. It’s possible he did it,” Lucas added.
“He said he was in Canada,” I said, repeating Mark’s words.
Lucas shrugged. “Maybe all he did was have a fling with Erin and that’s how his prints are there. He certainly has the hair trigger for the crime though.” His gaze lowered to my cheek.
I’d heard they didn’t think it was pre-meditated, but a crime of passion, of the heat of the moment. I wouldn’t put it past Mark, now that I saw the real man. But if he really had been in Canada…
“We’ll get to the bottom of it. When you’re ready, come to the station and give a statement,” Miranski said. “I assume you’ll press charges?”
“She will,” Cy said for me, his voice and tone I recognized as meaning there was going to be no sway.
I nodded. I wasn’t letting Mark get away with what he’d done. I might have quit, but he would go on to someone else, and I wasn’t going to let him hit anyone else. “I don’t like a bully.”
