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MINKA
“Let’s move her back to the George Stanley and go through the steps.” I stop beside Aubree and supervise as Ethan loads Lana into the back of his transport van. “It’s cold out here and I’m over the dark.”
“You alright?” Aubree places a gentle hand on my arm. Not for long. Not too tight. Then she releases me and goes back to watching Lana. “That looked kinda intense.”
“It’s fine. We’re—”
“You and Archer are important,” she cuts in before I can brush her off. “Even if it’s new, and even if it’s scary, it’s something that means something, Minka.”
“I don’t want to discuss this, Emeri. And I don’t want to commit to a relationship.” I push my head high and fight off the weird stab of pain in my chest. “I especially don’t want to be in a relationship withhim.”
“Because he’s not soft and quiet and willing to exist on your terms?” She brings her ocean blue eyes across to me and attempts to gentle her words with a smile. “I don’t mean that to be an insult. But the fact he’s got this whole attitude and life and experience that you can’t control doesn’t make him a bad bet. It just means you’re intimidated by it, and you’re busy, and the thought of folding someone else into your life, someone as large and domineering as Malone, scares you.”
“Aubree, I—”
“If you could, you’d prefer someone who doesn’t come with a single iota of baggage, purely because that makes things easier for you. You’d choose someone who is basically a stand-in for a man. Gentle and passive and weak. But you screwed yourself over, because you fell for Archer. And he doesn’t know how to be small.”
“I didn’t fall for him,” I scowl. “I’m seeing him.”
“Okay.” She snorts. “And the rest?”
“I’m busy.” The moment Ethan locks the brakes on Lana’s gurney and steps back to secure the doors, I move to give him space to work. “I don’t have room in my life for a guy who has a past with the likes of Miranda London. She wanted to slam me, Aubs, and she got it without even trying.”
“So you’re insecure? You’re jealous he has a past?”Jab, jab, jab.She shakes her head and laughs under her breath. “You’re mad at him for having sex with someone years before you even met?”
“I’m not mad.” I move back to our med bag and pack things away. “I’m not angry. I’m just—”
“Riding the sting, because she poked you. And it hurts as much as it does because you fell for him.”
“You’re actually annoying the crap out of me right now. You know that?”
Amused, she grabs the bag when I close it and hefts it onto her shoulder, then stepping closer to Ethan, she smiles for him when he makes his way to the driver’s side door. “We’ll see you back at the George Stanley.” Then back to me. “Want me to go smash Miranda’s nose in?”
“What? No.”
“I have a bunch of siblings, so I know how toaccidentallysmash someone’s face in and act all innocent about it. She’ll pay to get it fixed as soon as she can, but we can make a mess of it for a few weeks first.”
“No.” Scowling, I step away from the transport van and make my way back to our car. “I’m gonna sulk about it for a bit. I’m gonna stay away from Archer, because I genuinely don’t have time for any man, let alonethatman, and by dragging this out longer, I’m only dragging out our pain and complicating our working relationship. I’m going to do my job and find justice for Lana and the others. And after that…”
“Love Paradise?” Aubree stops on her side of the car and rests her forearms on the snow-covered roof. “You wanna watch trashy TV with me, like I said we would all along?”
“Guess so.” I slide into the car and ignore Archer’s stare from thirty feet away.
He has a crime to solve, a murderer to find. But across the park, while Fletcher does the work for both of them and Miranda yammers in front of the cameras about the medical examiner leaving the scene and taking with her the body of Lana Blayney, Archer watches me with eyes made of fury and passion and intensity.
He has no intention of letting me walk away from us and cop out with flimsy excuses about how busy I am.
Yet, I can’t tell him the entire truth about me. I can’t tell anyone. Because if I do, we’re bound to pay the consequences.
“Let’s go.”
* * *
Lana Blayney died the same way the women who came before her did.
In pain. Terrified. Bleeding out internally and with complete organ failure within minutes of injection.
While Aubree conducted the autopsy and spoke aloud her thoughts for the record, I sat in the corner of Autopsy Room One—not being lazy, but thinking. Processing. Hypothesizing.
