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She reached the lobby floor, her heart pumping wildly as she gasped for air. She glanced back at Cole, steps behind her. She backed away from him, stumbling toward the next set of ascending stairs. “Please don’t–”
He pointed to the emergency exit. “They must have gone out the side door,” he said through his ragged breath as he came to a stop on the landing.
Her thoughts were scattered and fragmented, but she paused her retreat. He wasn’t coming after her?
She scolded herself for being so ridiculous. Of course, Cole wasn’t trying to kill her. It was all in her imagination, fueled by adrenaline and the sight of a dead body with Kensington leaning over it.
First of all, they’d heard someone leaving the basement. And second of all, what was the likelihood that a billionaire was doing his own dirty work?
No, there was someone else. Someone who had, in fact, shot the woman downstairs.
Her gaze followed Cole’s gesture, and she became aware of the high-pitched ringing from the emergency exit alarm on the door beside them. Joey pushed the door open and was greeted with an unfamiliar alley. She took a few steps out, jogging toward the street, where the silhouette of a man was nearing the end of the alley.
A flash of light and a loud bang made Joey duck.
A gun!
She scrambled to the edge of the alley, searching for cover. Another shot fired, and pieces of brick rained down on her as the bullet struck the building overhead.
Cole yelled at her from the doorway. “Get in here!” She flinched at another gunshot and darted toward Cole.
She ducked behind the door, waiting for more gunfire.
“We have to go after him,” she urged.
“Are you crazy? The man has a gun. He killed Laura. Besides, he’s long gone by now,” Cole replied.
Dang it.
Kensington was right.
With one last careful glance at the now empty alley through the cracked door, they went back to the basement. Cole went ahead of her, and when Joey came back to the office door, Cole was next to the body, holding Laura’s hand and staring intently at it. Her gaze faltered on his normally perfect suit covered in dark-red stains. His hands, sticky with blood. “Cole.” She tried to get his attention. He didn’t look at her. “Cole,” she tried again, louder this time.
Undoubtedly, this sight of Cole covered in blood would haunt her.
“Cole!” she finally yelled. He jolted and looked her way.
“She’s dead,” he said, his voice strangely detached from emotion now that the intensity of the previous moments had passed.
She softened her voice. “Cole, you need to get out of the office.”
He looked around, as though seeing the space for the first time. “Who would have done this?”
Joey shook her head. “I don’t know. I do know that they’re probably going to assume you did. We need to call some backup. Do you have a lawyer?”
Cole blinked and looked back at Laura. Joey saw his pain clearly reflected in his face. How could she have thought he had done this? “Come on,” she said again. “Let’s get you into the other room. Call security. They’re going to need tapes. Access logs. Everything.”
As the 911 dispatcher asked him questions, he looked up at her, and Joey’s heart broke at the anguish on his face. How had he ever seemed cold to her? Now, as tears streamed down his face, it seemed impossible she had ever thought that. He shook his head.
“No,” he choked out in response to something on the line. He hit a button to put the call on speaker phone.
“The police are coming. Please don’t touch anything, sir. It is a crime scene.”
Joey waited until the call disconnected. “Cole. Did you see anything when you got here? Anything at all?”
He shook his head and reached to run his hands through his hair. She was coming to realize he did it when he was stressed. Even more so after business hours were over. He stopped as his hands came in front of his face. He grimaced and shut his eyes. “No. Nothing. It was quiet. I was supposed to meet Laura at seven to talk about the project. To talk about our suspicions.” He eyed Joey. “What are you doing here? You don’t have lab access.”
Yikes. He was right. She hated to physically doctor the access logs, knowing that the police would need them in their investigation. But those logs weren’t going to show her arrival, which would be suspicious.
