AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I cursed as I rolled from my hiding place. The gunman was here for me, not these people, and I’d be damned if anyone died here tonight because of me. The women in the salon were here to prepare for the best day of their lives, and instead they were caught in a living nightmare.
This was what I did to people.
I wrestled with the skirt of my lace dress and jumped over the sofa, using the arm to propel myself higher, grateful for my bare feet. Another shot rang out an instant before I collided with the girl. We tumbled down in a mass of white fabric, and she screamed the way people can only if they’ve been shot—a high, keening wail.
I pushed off her and saw the tiniest bit of skin sheared from her arm, just above the elbow. If I hadn’t pushed her when I did, it would have hit her dead center in the chest. The gunman wasn’t aiming for flesh wounds.
“Shhh, shh, shush,” I whispered, trying to be soothing when I was really impatient with her wailing. “It’s a graze. You’ll be fine, you’ll be fine.” She continued to scream, and it got worse when she saw the gun in my hand.
Heavy boot steps moved behind the wall. The woman and I were hidden only by a decorative divider where dresses were hung on display. I wrenched a veil off a mannequin nearby and wrapped the delicate fabric around her bloody arm. The front of her dress was splattered red, and the spray from her wound had left my own lace gown soiled with smears of blood. With the veil in place, I squeezed her hand and lied to her face. “I’m a cop,” I told her, and the screaming stopped almost instantly. “And you’re going to be fine.”
She nodded, still whimpering like an injured puppy.
“Put pressure on this.” I squeezed her arm gently. She winced but did as she was told. I stood, and she grasped at my free hand.
“Don’t go.”
“I have to.”
Pulling away, I moved to round the corner when another shot went off, but this one had no silencer and came from behind me. Mercedes had her elbows braced on the edge of the white loveseat and her backup revolver aimed at me.
But not at me, at the space six inches to my left where my would-be assailant cried out in pain and was calling her a stupid bitch as he dove for cover behind the dividing wall with one hand cupping his injured arm. I skirted the wall after him, my gun raised and ready, but when I got to the other side, there was nothing but a streak of blood on the ivory carpet. A thump and a wail called my attention back to the main room, and I followed spots of blood to the commotion.
The assassin, still wearing his ski mask, was holding one of the younger salesgirls in a chokehold with his gun nestled in her auburn hair. She clawed at his arm, black rivers of mascara staining her cheeks as she stared at me with a pleading urgency.
“Let the girl go,” I said, my own weapon trained on the sliver of ski mask visible from behind his hostage’s head.
“I don’t want her. I came for you.”
Dozens of gazes focused on me with new interest. I was the reason they were in this horror show, and now they all knew it.
“Too bad she’s not alone,” Mercedes said, her gun leveled at him from the side, where she could easily get a shot through his skull and still avoid hitting the girl. “NYPD, motherfucker, you have the goddamned right to remain silent.”
Panic flashed in the gunman’s eyes. He was caught and he knew it. There were two guns trained on him. No way in hell was he getting out of this with his job complete. He took the gun off the salesgirl and shoved her at me using brutal force. I caught the girl before she fell and held her as she cried into my shoulder, never letting my aim waver.
Then, with a speed neither Mercedes nor I had anticipated, the failed assassin pressed his own weapon to the underside of his chin and pulled the trigger, raining a mist of pink, red and gray all over a display of haute couture gowns and the women hiding beneath them.
Chapter Thirteen
Two hours later I was the proud owner of not one but nine wedding dresses.
The lace number I’d been wearing, the ruined gown worn by the young bride, and the half-dozen monstrous-looking dresses that now had assassin brain smeared on them. Plus one simple, elegant, tulle-and-blood-free gown with a strapless bodice and subtle beading that happened to be the right size for me.
Police connections and a hundred and fifty thousand dollar payout went a long way to getting forgiveness for a bloodbath at a bridal salon.
I was sitting in the passenger seat of Detective Tyler Nowakowski’s black Nissan SUV, still wearing the bloodstained lace wedding dress. Police lights flashed in front of the boutique, and uniformed officers were gathered together collecting witness statements while others kept the goggling eyes of locals and tourists from taking photos as the ambulance took the injured bride away and the coroner did the same with the assassin.
Tyler was talking to Mercedes, and they both kept turning to look at me as they spoke. Neither of them appeared particularly happy. Cedes was going to have to file paperwork and give a statement to Internal Affairs to justify shooting the dead man before he could shoot me, but every witness statement agreed he had been the one to kill himself.
Officially, we were calling it a kidnapping attempt gone wrong. As the bride-to-be of a world-famous billionaire, I was a target for those looking to make a quick buck on my ransom, and this guy hadn’t expected half the bridal party to be armed. As a licensed P.I., I was allowed to carry a weapon, so no one would question the SIG. It was registered and everything.
In the end, it would be a pain in the ass of paperwork and press, but none of us were going to get in trouble. I’d have liked to bypass the whole thing and call my wardens in to adjust everyone’s memory and make the whole situation disappear, but the shop manager had hidden in the office and called the cops the second the first shot was fired.
Smart woman, but her quick action meant the police showed up well before I could set a cover-up into motion.
Tyler patted Cedes on the shoulder, and she smiled at him. They’d recently partnered up at the precinct, which was an obvious step for their careers given how often they ended up working on bizarre cases together. At least if they were united, they didn’t have to pretend the paranormal shit wasn’t real. Both of them were under my protection, belonging to me by vampire law. I didn’t like being responsible for the safety of so many people, but I hadn’t been willing to wipe their memories after a winter bloodbath a thousand times worse than this one.
People had died, people they knew and cared about, and I couldn’t bring myself to brainwash their experience into nonexistence. Which meant, according to council law, they were my problem now.
