AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“He never would’ve been shot if I hadn’t hung around here longer than I should have.” She raised her voice, needing to make certain she was getting through the noise inside her head. “Which is why I have to go, right now, before it’s too late. What if it’s you next time? I couldn’t—I couldn’t live with that.”
Grabbing the railing, she threw one foot over with the intention of climbing. But Ace surprised her, trapping her wrist in one hand and producing a zip tie—which he must have swiped out of her street clothes—and securing her arm to the railing before she could get out a whimper.
“You’re confused right now and groggy, so let me explain. Here’s how things are at the moment,” he told her, while she gaped in shock at the betrayal. “According to the doctor, you need to stay a
t least another day here, if not longer, so that smack to the head you took can be properly assessed and you can begin the healing process. In your current state, you’re not safe to drive or care for yourself—and you certainly aren’t fit to make decisions.”
“I’m not an invalid, or a child, either,” she insisted, her face burning as she yanked helplessly at the zip tie. “I’m fine—or I will be. As soon as I’m clear of you and some nurse who can’t even get my name straight. So let me out of here.”
“Uh, about that name thing,” Ace said, grimacing as his eyes avoided hers. “There’s something else I have to tell you. A decision that’s been made.”
Shaking with outrage, she said, “There’s nothing I want to hear from you except, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve overstepped here big time. Now let me cut this zip tie, and here’s the keys to your car so you can get on down the road.’”
He winced. “I am sorry, for the record, but I’m not about to let you walk out of here, Sierra. For one thing, the doctors think you’ll be okay, that this is only a mild to moderate concussion, but they haven’t completely ruled out a more serious brain injury.”
“I’d have to be brain dead to want to be tied up here, helpless, while those killers are out there somewhere, circling like sharks,” she said. “And anyway, don’t you still have plenty of troubles of your own to deal with? Have you even visited your father yet? Or looked any more into this thing about—”
“I’ve been a little busy, Miss Higgins,” he said sharply, countering her attempts at distraction by throwing out that odd name again, “handling the details of your unfortunate demise.”
“Demise?” she echoed, her skin creeping with the memory of waking to the feeling that she’d been choking on a mouthful of grave dirt. “You mean, like death? Are you sure you didn’t get knocked upside the head, too, Ace? I mean, please correct me if I’m wrong here, but I’m still kicking.”
“Not, I’m afraid, according to the press conference given by Sergeant Spencer Colton last night, condemning this outrageous act of violence and asking the public for assistance in bringing your killers to justice. Which is why, for the time being, you’re going to be referred to by the name of Iris Higgins.”
She blinked hard. “Iris Higgins? That’s the best you could do? Sounds like somebody’s great-aunt who smells of mothballs. The kind whose tuna casseroles go untouched at family reunions.” Not that she’d ever experienced such a gathering, but she had definitely heard things. Terrifying things that made her glad she’d never been forced to hang out with people she had nothing in common with but the tiniest trace of DNA.
Ace chuckled at that. “Sorry, Sierra. It was three in the morning, and anyway, I happen to have known a very kindhearted older lady named Iris, whose casseroles were very well regarded.”
“Don’t make a joke of this—of me,” she said, feeling sick, helpless and frustrated, all of which left her furious—and scared out of her wits. “We’re both going to end up dead if those killers figure out you’ve got me sitting here trussed up like this year’s Thanksgiving turkey for them.”
“There’s a guard keeping watch outside in the hall, and anyway, the shooters are long gone,” he told her. “While you were, um, out of it, Spencer—Sergeant Colton—and I found the Mercedes, torched, in the industrial area.”
A different fear pulsed through her as she thought of Nova and the siblings who’d met with them last night. “Not near your condo? Is your family all right?”
“Not too close, but I warned them just in case. They’re fine. Worried about you, mainly.”
“But not mourning me, I take it?” she asked before it occurred to her that though her “death” might cause brief shock and perhaps the same momentary sadness many felt whenever someone in her early thirties bought it, there were few who’d seriously grieve her. Not even the half-feral cat that had shared her home, as long as her friend Brie kept popping open the tops of his canned food and fluffing his favorite pillow now and then.
“I decided to let some of my family in on it,” Ace told her, “just those who needed to know, since I’m going to need their help to keep you hidden, and Kerry, too, since she’s working with Spencer on this. And all of them know how imperative it is that as far as anyone else is concerned, even the medical staff who first saw you when you first came in downstairs, you succumbed as a result of the injuries sustained in the parking lot last night.”
“So you plan to keep me hidden?” Sierra echoed. “Or prisoner, you mean. How long do you imagine—”
“That depends on what your friend, Detective Stratford, tells us.”
“What? Brie’s in on this madness, too?” Sierra’s eyes burned at what felt like another betrayal.
“She’s one hundred percent in, Sierra—which is why she’s put the word out both on the streets of Las Vegas through one of her confidential informants and through an LVMPD press release regarding your murder. Because otherwise, she assured me, the attempts would never end until you really were dead.”
“No,” Sierra said, head throbbing and hot tears spilling as she covered her eyes with her hands. “No, no, no. Tell me this is a nightmare.”
“We only wanted to keep you alive, Sierra. You were helpless, hurt,” Ace said, his warm brown eyes holding a plea for understanding as he passed her a box of tissues from the rolling table by her bed. Yet, in his voice, she heard, too, the set stubbornness of a man fully committed to his action. “I was terrified you really might die—and willing to sacrifice anything to keep that from happening.”
Pulling free several tissues, she wiped at her eyes. “But don’t you understand? Sacrificing my life, what I’ve made of it to this point—no matter what a mess it might look like by Colton standards—isn’t a choice you were entitled to, you or Brie, the sergeant, or anybody but me. What about my home, my—”
“First off, I’m the last Colton in the world to judge what anybody else has going on in her life, especially someone like you. You were only trying to do the right thing by your father and then stick to your professional ethics when it came to Ice Veins’s nephew.”
“Such a brilliant decision on my part,” she grumbled, though she knew in her heart that even if she could go back in time and amend that misstep, she’d still haul that piece of trash to jail—if only to wipe that smug sneer off his face.
“I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but Detective Stratford informed us there’s been a fire at your townhouse. The cause hasn’t been determined yet, but—”
