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Gabe turned in his seat to see Molly stroking Harper’s hair with a hand that trembled. “André wants to know if there are any security cameras in your building.”
She nodded. “Several. One in the garage, one in the stairwell, and one at each landing. The feed is saved to a hard drive in the building owner’s apartment, which is the unit below ours.” Her hand abruptly stopped stroking Harper’s hair, flying to cover her own mouth. “Oh God. Mr. Wilkins. I didn’t even check on him. He’s an old man. Can you have André see if he’s okay? If he’d heard the gunshots, he definitely would have tried to help us. That he didn’t? I... Please, just ask André to check on him.”
“I’ll do that right now,” André promised when Gabe relayed the information. “So that I’m prepared, who is responsible for the three bodies I had to step over on my way up the stairs?”
Bodies. Shit. “Is the man in the garage—” He broke it off, not wanting to say dead around Harper.
“Dead?” André asked. “He is.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.Gabe swallowed hard, bile burning his throat. I killed a man. “The, um, the man in the garage was mine, but I was aiming for his shoulder.”
“Damn, Gabe.” André sounded impressed. “The guy on the stairs?”
“Lucien.”
“And the guy on the landing outside Molly’s place?”
“Molly.”
“That she didn’t kill the bastard on her living room floor was a testament to her good nature,” André muttered.
“His ID says he’s Nicholas Tobin.”
“I know. I saw it. He said that you tampered with his phone.”
“I did not.” He wasn’t going to admit what he had done. He wasn’t sure if texting screenshots from a killer’s phone was illegal—although he’d killed a man, so how could anything be worse than that?
I killed a man. Oh my God.
“Okay,” André said simply. “I’ll check on the building owner downstairs and let you know. Is there anyone living upstairs?”
Gabe asked Molly, and she shook her head. “Tell him that the third-floor unit is unoccupied right now.”
Gabe relayed it, then thanked André again when he said the medics had arrived for Lucien. Ending the call, he gave Farrah back her phone. “He said he’d call when he could.”
“I know the drill,” Farrah said with the sweet smile that André had mentioned.
Pressing his fingers to his temples against a headache, Gabe looked to the back seat and found a little pocket of peace. Shoe had all but climbed into Harper’s lap and she was petting him, her face pressed into the fur at his neck.
“Good boy,” Gabe said softly, and Shoe’s tail wagged. “He bit the man who was in the apartment.”
“Good boy,” Farrah echoed. “He’s a hero.”
Molly managed a tired smile and stroked Shoe’s back. “He really is.”
Gabe was startled by a buzzing in his pocket and retrieved his cell phone. Three missed calls, all from the same number that was calling him now. New dread settled on him like a shroud. “Hello?”
“This is Val, and Patty is okay.”
Tears stung Gabe’s eyes. No more, please. “What happened, and what number are you calling me from?” Although he was afraid that he already knew.
“We’re at the hospital. Patty has a mild concussion.”
Gabe scrambled to sit up straighter. “I’ll come there now.”
Farrah shot a concerned glance his way. “Go where?”
“Patty’s in the hospital,” he said, hearing his own fear.
