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ChapterFifteen
Blake slept through Thursday night and most of Friday, and she could tell he was in more pain now than when he’d arrived home initially. She knew that to be the case firsthand too, had experienced it the night after hurting her feet in Blake’s driveway, and now her entire body ached as well. Luckily, she wasn’t exactly going anywhere that required either heels or a lot of walking at the moment, but she’d known that they would feel worse the day-after the crash than the day-of. The truth was, they’d been lucky. The cops had put out alerts at the local hospitals in case the driver had been injured, but Rose couldn’t get the memory of those boots walking away from her out of her head and she knew that this guy had to be a pro of some kind. He’d driven a car into them and hadn’t been injured. He was either even luckier than them or he knew what he was doing. But how? Cop? Firefighter?
Blake couldn’t make it up the stairs to his bedroom yet, so she took care of him in the TV room, bringing him drinks and soup, helping him walk to the bathroom and then stumble back to the couch. Somehow, being the one in charge while she took care of him made her feel more comfortable than she had been before in the house. She decided it was probably time to wash her towels and bedding and went hunting for the washer and detergent, and she came to a shocked stop when she finally located them in a room just off of the kitchen.
Mounds of towels, bedding, and clothes sat in neatly organized piles next to the machine, and Rose peeked inside to check there wasn’t a load going around or forgotten about – nothing. A giggle snuck out as Rose stared at the piles of laundry. Then another. So. Blake wasn’t doing amazingly at everything since he’d had to let the staff go. He could cook for sure, but clean?
Rose wound up laughing, clutching her stomach as she shook silently. David Blake didn’t know how to do washing. Once her laughter had mostly got itself under control again, she got to work on the piles. Thankfully, Blake had one of those crazy big industrial sized washers that could fit in alotof laundry, so it probably wouldn’t take too long to sort. It occurred to her in that moment that since she’d been here, she’d been feeling so anxious and tense that she hadn’t even really snooped about, barring the study, which was so unlike her it actually made her stop in her tracks to consider that for just a second.
She checked in on Blake and found him asleep, blonde lashes fanned out across his cheek and breaths deep and even. His bruise had come up fully and covered his left temple, brushing all the way down to the peak of his cheekbone. She’d iced it for him last night, and thankfully most of the swelling had gone down, but she was still hit with a strong amount of both guilt and gratitude when she saw his injuries. He hadn’t needed to go with her, but he had anyway. What she still didn’t really understand was why. They weren’t friends, hadn’t ever been friends. Having sex definitely didn’t change that. Her mind flashed back to the photo of her he kept in his desk and settled there uncomfortably. She hadn’t mentioned the photo to him – both because she’d have to admit to snooping and because she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what he would say.
She pulled her eyes away from his bruise, only for them to fall to his mouth, and she cursed a little as she spun around to leave the room. Luckily his lip wasn’t totally busted all the way through, just a deep cut with dissolvable stitches that should heal up by next week if he was lucky – not that she’d been doing much research while she lay upstairs in bed awake each night. A quiet whine drew her attention, and she followed the sound to see Bailey through the doorway waiting patiently by the backdoor, one paw up on the wood and big eyes looking to her for help. She’d known it was going to have to happen some time. Bailey was too young to be allowed out by himself, too curious. She had to go outside with him.
Thoughts of further snooping abandoned, Rose walked reluctantly into the kitchen and rubbed Bailey’s ears. “You’re lucky you’re cute, pup.”
Breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, Rose reached down and tugged on a pair of boots that were left by the door and grabbed a whistle hanging on a hook. She probably wouldn’t need it, but better safe than sorry. She didn’t want to have to tell Blake she’d lost his dog in his own garden.
She opened the door and Bailey was off like a shot, sniffing around bushes that were clearly his favorites as she worked to stop the prickly feeling sweeping over her from freezing her movements. Instead, she kept her head up and her eyes alert, the cool air helping with the sweats that had suddenly come on, scanning the landscape for anything that looked amiss or anything Bailey could potentially get into that he shouldn’t.
He was still sniffing at the bushes near the door, but he quickly ran over when she called him and they made quick progress across the trail. It was actually… nice to be back in the outside world. Especially away from the paparazzi. One of Blake’s private security guards stood alert up ahead, and Rose offered him a smile as she passed by. She was safe here. The bastard that had been watching her couldn’t get in without half a dozen people knowing. Couldn’t hurt her or Blake again as long as they stayed here, and the rest of her family all had either private security or police escorts keeping an eye on them now that they knew just how real the danger was. If they had been willing to run them off the road, what else were they capable of?
Something else had caught Bailey’s attention on the side of the trail as he sniffed eagerly, ignoring her spoken commands when she called him. Rose moved closer and froze at the sight of blood, dark red and splattered thickly in the grass.
“Help!” she called, and the security guard looked up and over at her before breaking into a fast jog. “There’s something in the grass there. Bailey, here. Come.” The pup finally trotted over to her side, and her eyes fixed on the dot of blood on the fur of his front paw. “What is it?” she asked as the security personnel pulled on rubber gloves.
“Rabbit,” he said gruffly and offered nothing more as his dark eyes examined the grass.
“Do you think Bailey killed it?” The dog looked up at his name, panting before looking out at the tree line.
“No, not enough blood on him or in the brush.” It certainly looked like a lot of blood on the grass to her, but then again, she’d never killed an animal so she didn’t have a good reference to compare it to. “I’d say it was killed elsewhere and then dropped here.”
“Are you sure?”
The guard stood up with the small rabbit clasped in his hands by its ears, and her lunch threatened to make a reappearance. “If the dog was going to kill it, I doubt it would have used a blade.”
Fear had her blood running cold as she looked around the woods surrounding them, gray spots hovering at the edges of her vision. “Put it back down on the ground and take a photo,” her teeth started to chatter, and she knew she needed to get inside and call Jones before she passed out. “I need you to send it to me. Do you have a radio?” The guard nodded, and she let out a relieved breath. “Great, get someone up here to make sure nobody else messes with the scene, and then you’re going to walk me back to the house, okay?” Another nod, and then he did exactly as instructed, which she appreciated.
Another guard made it over to them in a couple of minutes and turned pale at the sight of the blood on the floor and the fleshy jelly of the rabbit’s neck. “Stay here, don’t look at it if you think it’ll make you puke. This is a crime scene. Don’t let anyone else approach unless they show you a badge. Okay?”
The younger guard nodded, and then she set off back for the house with the quieter guard trailing her. Bailey trotted ahead, oblivious to the panic she felt that increased the longer it took to get back to the house. How far had they gone? Shouldn’t they be back by now? Just as her breaths started to veer into dangerous territory, the backdoor came into view and she asked the guard to stand and wait to escort the officers she would be calling back to the site in question and thanking him for walking her back.
Blake was awake and propped up against the island as they walked in, and she growled. “What are you doing up?”
“I’m fine,” he said, waving her off. “I’m just a little sore. What’s Scott doing outside?”
“We found something,” she said and took his hand without thinking too much about it when he looked alarmed. “Would Bailey kill a rabbit?”
“A rabbit? I mean, there’s always a chance, but it’s not happened in all the time I’ve had him.”
“Okay,” she said, rubbing two fingers over the bridge of her nose. “Scott thinks the throat was slit anyway, but I had to check. We’ve got one of the other guards looking after the crime scene. I’m going to call Jones, and then your guys can escort them through the grounds to the scene.”
Blake nodded, blue eyes watching her with something close to worry as she hit call on her phone and explained the situation to Jones. In all honesty, she was tired of being one step behind all the time, tired of having to do the detective’s job for him while his department couldn’t even prevent information being leaked to the press.
“Are you okay?” Blake asked when she was done, and Rose looked at him frankly, letting him see the tiredness, the frustration in her eyes.
“No. I’m tired and I’m angry and I hate feeling like I’m dealing with this alone.”
“You’re not alone.” Blake took a wincing step forward and brushed his hair out of his eyes. She liked seeing it like this, a little fluffy and a lot messy, free from the gel he usually controlled it with. “You have me. We’re a team.”
