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DECLAN
“She’s not pregnant, right?” Carter questions as I walk into the small room in the back of the hall. From outside it would seem like a utility closet; in fact, that’s what it used to be before we took over this place.
“No, asshole.” I answer him firmly but with the same smirk he wears, although, to be fair, it would make everything so much easier if she were. If she was pregnant and we got married, she couldn’t testify and she wouldn’t want to leave me.
“No judgment,” he comments with a smirk.
“They rushed the blood work,” I tell him and pass him a stack of papers that all boil down to one simple fact: it’s just a cold.
“Not pregnant and everything else is in normal ranges.” Guilt still washes over me. The stress and temperature extremes from the bath obviously caused it. She’s not well because of them … because I allowed them to take her. My tone drops as I tell him, “She’s sick, but she’ll be fine.”
I watch her from a few rooms away where the closed-circuit monitors are stationed. The doctor fusses about her, asking her questions while physically examining her. Dread and guilt stir in my chest as she tells him she got locked out of her friend’s house in the cold rain a few days ago.
“Want to sit?” Carter asks as he takes a seat himself and I join him, attempting to hide how on edge I am.
The small room is much less comfortable, with only three chairs, a long desk that takes up the length of the room and four monitors that display the camera footage from the exam room.
“Is it recording?” I question.
“We can if you’d like. This is your show,” he tells me.
“No need,” I answer him, feeling nerves prick the back of my neck as the tension gets the best of me. It’s only the two of us; no one else even knows this is happening. Just in case she says or does something she shouldn’t.
“So it’s just a cold, that’s a good thing.”
“I would never forgive myself if it had been anything serious,” I tell him without thinking much of it as the doctor leaves and she’s alone in the room.
“You have strong feelings for her.”
“I like her, Carter, I told you that.”
His gaze doesn’t waver but I turn my attention back to the screen, even though I can feel him willing me to look at him.
“Any idea why she threw up?” he questions and his tone is more … concerned than expected. It’s hard to know what he makes of her. I think whatever happens today will add to his judgment either way.
“She said she was just thinking about what happened. Just a queasy stomach over … everything that happened.” I swallow down the bitter knowledge.
“That’s understandable,” he comments in a murmur. We’ve all had our fair share of squeamishness over some of the shit we’ve done and certain things we’ve been through.
They’ve saved my ass more than once but I’ll never forget the first time I stared down the barrel of a gun. We were in a shoot-out and cornered in the back of the warehouse we were working out of. By all accounts, we shouldn’t have made it out alive.Even the memory of that moment makes my heart race and a cold sweat line the back of my neck. I stared down the gun that was about to end my life and I knew I was going to die.
I didn’t see Carter's gun at the back of the guy’s head. I watched as he shot him three more times for good measure, though. Standing over him, Carter's expression would have been the definition of a hateful gaze if not for the way he glanced back up at me. His eyes were filled with the fear of loss. He waited for me to stand, to catch my breath before handing me the spare gun in his holster. I wasn’t the only one who thought I was going to die right then and there.
“You think she needs help for that?” he asks and my hackles rise.
“Help? Like what?” I bite back, hating how he’s battering me with questions and that I don’t have a good fucking answer for them. “She’s fine,” I tell him with finality.
“I don’t mean any offense by it … just that she might want someone to talk to?”
So now instead of wanting her gone, he wants her in a fucking padded room? I keep the snide thought to myself.
“Calm down, Declan,” he tells me and his hand lands on my shoulder. “I’m not judging. I’m only trying to look out for the both of you. You want me to shut the fuck up? I will.”
My throat tightens as the uneasy emotions wash through me.
“You’re scared of what she’s going to say?” he asks and gets right to the bottom of it.
“She said she didn’t do it, but it’s not like the feds could have hacked it.”
