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I don’t add that everyone else is at the hospital. Hell, if she blames herself for her attack, for not identifying Dixon before he went after Rochelle, I don’t know how she’d react to find out one of ours may have been his latest victim.
I run my hand over my neck, wondering how it took Bishop out but not me. I guess there’s always a good possibility that it was from a different batch or was something different altogether.
“This way,” I mutter, wishing I could focus on one thing at a time, but knowing the impossibility of it.
“Hey.” I jolt, my first instinct to jump in front of Lennox even with the familiar voice.
Slick gives me a small smile, noticing my reaction.
“I thought everyone was… out.”
“Just me here,” she says, holding her hand out to Lennox. “Detective Maison, I’m Brynn.”
I know there’s a reason she isn’t introducing herself as Dr. Brynn Sullivan, that she doesn’t make it known right away.
Lennox shakes her hand.
“I’m around if you need me,” Slick says, taking a step back and locking eyes with me.
Everything I need to know is there on her face. She also feels as helpless as everyone else where Bishop is concerned, but with Lennox here, she could help her if Lennox wanted to talk.
I nod in understanding at the club’s psychologist before urging Lennox down the hallway.
“You’re safe here,” I remind her. “The room is yours for as long as you need it.”
I walk past her, grabbing a couple shirts and a discarded pair of jeans from the end of the bed and throwing them into the bottom of my closet. I’m fairly certain they don’t make it into the hamper, but it’s not exactly top priority for me right now.
I pull open the top drawer of my dresser and rummage around, looking for the keyring I was given the day I arrived. I threw it in here and haven’t thought about it since.
“So you know you’re safe,” I tell her, holding out the keyring.
She gives me a soft smile, and I ache a little with the pain it causes when she takes it from my hand. As much as I wanted her to insist she didn’t need it, that she knew she was safe here with me, I knew it would be foolish to even consider it a possibility.
I step closer to her, cupping her face in my palm. “I’ll be in the living room if you need me.”
She nods a little, her eyes downcast for the longest second before she looks back up at me.
“You could tell me to forget him. You could demand I never think of him again.”
There’s pleading in her voice, but she knows as much as I do that the dynamic we’ve enjoyed in the past doesn’t work here.
I want her to ask me to stay, but even after leaning forward and brushing my lips on hers, she doesn’t.
I leave the room, pulling the door closed behind me, my heart aching when I hear the slide of the deadbolt locking into place.
“She’d never say it,” I tell Slick as soon as I step into the kitchen. “But she needs someone to talk to. Maybe with you being a woman…”
“Say no more.” She gives me a quick smile as she stands from the table, squeezing my shoulder on her way past.
I watch, holding my breath, as I peek my head out of the kitchen and watch as she knocks on my bedroom door. There’s soft talking, whispers almost, but much to my surprise, the door opens and Slick disappears into the room. I don’t miss the turn of the lock once again as it echoes down the hallway like one of the many gunshots I heard tonight.
Chapter 31
Lennox
“I’m not going to lie and say I’m fine,” I tell Brynn. “But I’m not suicidal. I fought too hard tonight to stay alive to change that myself.”
Brynn gives me a soft smile, but it doesn’t feel the least amount dismissive.
“He’s worried about you,” she says.
I look away from her, not knowing exactly how I should feel about the news.
“That’s very kind,” I say because how else should I respond?
I went back and forth so many times, convincing myself that Sawyer was somehow connected to Elizabeth’s and Rochelle’s deaths, and then in the next breath, I worked to prove it wasn’t true. I wasted precious time and fell right into the trap that Dixon planned. He wanted Sawyer to be blamed, and I was ignorant enough to play right into his trap.
“I’m around if you need to talk,” she says before leaving the room.
I’m quick to move to the door and twist the lock. It’s not that I feel unsafe, but the barrier between myself and everyone else gives me the sacred seconds I need to get my shit together mentally before anyone can come in. I can’t have just anyone walking into this room and seeing me so out of sorts. It was bad enough Sawyer and his boss saw it.
