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Someone else would clean me, some other forensic technician.
This wasn’t supposed to be how it ended.
I loved Jonah.
I could admit that now. I knew it, fully and completely, with the same ferocity as the breaths I pulled in.
I’d fallen for him.
I’d miss my sister.
My family.
My future nieces and nephews.
I wouldn’t be there to hold my parents’ hands when they needed me.
They’d attend my funeral, rather than me attending theirs.
My sister would get married without me at her side.
Her wedding—she’d be mourning me instead of getting married.
That wasn’t right.
That was supposed to be the happiest day of her life, and now this—this guy!
Rage sparked in me, warming my belly, growing, spiraling.
I started for the guy, and that seemed to shock him.
His eyes widened.
He hadn’t been expecting that, but screw him.
“Who the fuck are you?!” I snarled, dropping my hands. “Why are you doing this?”
He backed up, his eyes still big.
I just kept coming.
He moved back again, but then logic kicked in, and he stopped. A hard look came over him, and his arm firmed, holding that gun steady at me.
“It’s nothing personal,” he said. He took off the safety. “You’re a loose end.”
Did I really want him to be the last thing I saw before I died?
No.
I closed my eyes.
I thought of my sister.
My parents.
My grandparents.
Jonah.
I thought of Jonah.
And I waited.
BANG!
I braced myself, expecting pain, but nothing.
I opened my eyes. The guy was turned away from me, blood everywhere.
His gun was on the ground.
He held his arm, and I rushed to grab the gun at the same time he dove for it.
I kicked it out of the way, but his hand closed around my ankle, and he yanked.
I went down.
“Stop!”
Jonah.
He came toward us with a gun in his hand. He was advancing, fast.
“No,” I tried to say, but the guy moved fast. He whirled behind me, his arm whipping around my neck. He had it bent at an angle, and he dragged me with him.
“Get back!” he yelled. “Get back or I’ll snap her neck.”
Jonah kept coming, kicking the gun on the ground behind him.
I couldn’t look away.
He was here. I knew he’d keep me safe.
But that look on his face? He was cold. Ruthless. He was like his brothers.
But there was goodness, too. He was a doctor. He wanted to heal people.
We’d never talked about it, but I saw it in him. I understood that side of him. The good, the bad. I saw it all. I understood it all.
I still loved him.
I loved him.
It had happened so quickly. One look in the morgue, and that was it for me.
Love at first sight? Did I believe in that?
I think a part of me did. A part of me must’ve, because a part of me knew.
That part loved him.
That part had recognized him in the Bresko’s bathroom.
That part had kept me from being scared of him.
That part knew he’d take care of me.
That part knew I’d found home.
I shuddered, all of those emotions spreading through me while a guy was threatening to snap my neck.
“Let her go!”
The arm tightened around me. “No! You leave. I’ll let her go once I’m clear.”
He was trying to walk me to the other end of the hangar.
I saw people moving in behind Jonah, but I was almost transfixed. I didn’t want to look away from him.
BANG!
The body behind me went rigid, and then the arm slacked from around my neck.
I stepped away, feeling disjointed. The body slumped to the floor behind me, and I turned, staring down at him. I couldn’t comprehend what I was looking at.
He was a stranger, but he’d been holding me, threatening my life, and now he was on the ground.
His eyes were like glass, frozen in time, a hole in his forehead.
Almost black-looking blood gushed from it, flooding his body, and he was bent at a weird angle.
His leg went one way as his body had landed on it.
One arm was flung out, the other arm still bleeding.
There was a presence beside me. I felt someone’s breath on my face.
An arm wrapped around my waist, and pulled, carried me away. “Don’t look.” A hand cupped the back of my head and turned me away from the stranger bleeding out on the cement.
I knew whose arms I was in.
Safe. Home. Jonah.
I could come back to my body.
“Jonah…” A sob worked its way up my throat. My whole body started shaking.
Bits of reality started to piece together, what had actually happened.
“It’s okay.” He smoothed a hand down the back of my head. He stopped and held me tight. “It’s okay. You’re okay. He’s dead. He can’t hurt you. You’re okay.”
There were others here now. I heard them. I felt them.
They stopped and talked to Jonah, but he didn’t move. Not once. He held me.
He conversed with them over my head, but he never let me go.
