AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Here we fucking go.
“Listen, man,” I started, stepping right into Asher’s face. I had him by a good 3-4 inches and at least fifty pounds, something he seemed to only realize now that we were closer. “Don’t make this something it doesn’t have to be. You can seeyourselfout, orIcan put you out. I think we both know which one you’d prefer.”
He stared for a few more seconds, then narrowed his eyes. “I’ll wait outside.”
“You’ll go home. After she talks to them, she needs her rest,” I said, firmly enough to leave no room for debate. The only person coming back in here after she talked to the police was Kora, who didn’t give me closeted psycho vibes like “Asher” did.
“Come on, Asher,” Kora intervened, grabbing his arm to pull him toward the door. “He’s right. Monica needs to rest after everything she’d been through. You can walk out with me.”
Asher didn’t give Kora any resistance – they were gone a few seconds after that. But Crowley and Bauer both turned to me, as if they were waiting for something that must have gone over my head.
“Are you going to talk to her or not?” I asked, and Crowley chuckled.
“Uh, yeah. Just waiting for you to step out.”
I shook my head. “Don’t think so. You two have tried to railroad her once, and it’s not happening again. I know her rights, and mine, and you aren’t talking to her alone. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Her rights?” Bauer scoffed. “What, are you her legal counsel or something?”
I shrugged. “Well, I do have a law degree, so sure. Call it whatever the hell you want. I’ll be right here while you’re talking to her.”
To stress my point, I finally stepped to the other side of that curtain, where Monica was, to stand beside the bed, bringing us face to face for the first time since that day in the store. I knew she was in bad enough shape that the doctor had insisted on keeping her overnight, but I didn’t expect her to look so… fragile.
I swallowed hard as I took in the troubled apprehension in her eyes, the shadows underneath, and the lurid purple bruising around her neck. I knew from experiencejusthow hard someone had to compress to make markings like that – evident hand prints, if you knew what you were looking at – and the shit made it a little hard formeto breathe.
“Fellas,” I said, turning to the detectives. “Look, can this wait? She’s not in—”
“It’s okay,” Monica spoke up, catching me off guard with the roughness of her voice – a quality Iwould neverhave used before to describe how she sounded. “I just want to get it over with, so… what do you need from me?”
“Just a few questions, Mrs. Stuart,” Crowley said, stepping up to the foot of the bed. “Would you like your boyfriend to step out, give you some privacy while we talk?”
Monica narrowed her eyes. “He’s mysecurity, and I would feel much more comfortable if he stayed.”
“That’s fine.” Per usual, Bauer parked himself near the window, away from the action, leaving Crowley the work of being the asshole.
“So… you claim you were attacked last night, at your place of business?” Crowley said, flipping open a pad to take notes.
“It’s not a claim. It’s a fact.”
He shrugged. “Fine. Tell me what happened.”
“I got attacked in my office.”
Crowley looked up, glaring at Monica. “Can you start from the beginning, with details?”
“Yes. I was… I was working late. My assistant had already gone home, but I stayed back, trying to finish up.”
“Why were you there without your assistant? If you were working, wouldn’t you need assistance?”
Monica puckered her eyebrows. “What? No, not necessarily. These were all things I needed to do myself. Emails directly to certain people, things like that.”
Crowley wrote that down. “Okay, so you worked late. Until when?”
“Midnight, I think.”
“You think?”
“Yes,” Monica snapped. “Ithink.I have a concussion, so it’s a little fuzzy.”
