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“He didn’t,” she snaps. “I wasn’t lying. He stood to get his pants off and that’s when I shot him.”
I nod. “Okay.”
I don’t feel better knowing he didn’t sexually assault her. The man never should’ve had the chance to hurt her in the first fucking place. I should’ve been there to protect her. Dixon never should’ve been sneaky enough to get the jump on me that first night and then again on Bishop. We’re both trained fucking professionals. But that tiny window that allowed Dixon to drug Bishop could leave the man dead, and I can’t help but feel as if that’s somehow on my head too. If I would’ve been able to stop him the night Elizabeth Burr was attacked, then Rochelle would still be alive, Lennox wouldn’t have a face covered in bruises, and Bishop wouldn’t be fighting for his life at the hospital.
All of this shit is on me. I wasn’t able to protect her. She was left to do that on her own.
I hate myself for it.
“You’ll need to give a statement,” I tell her. “Monahan wanted to get that info from you last night, but Kincaid told him he’d have to wait.”
She nods, but she doesn’t look very impressed to be told Kincaid put his nose in her business.
“I need to see if I’m going to be able to keep my job.”
“They have no reason to take it from you,” I tell her, but there’s a part of me that feels as if I have a right to tell her that she needs to find something less dangerous.
Yet, it was her connection to her sister that might have brought Dixon back to Farmington and not the fact that she was working the case after he murdered Elizabeth.
“But if you’re not ready to go,” I say, stepping out of the doorway of my room and grabbing her hand, “It can wait. All of it can wait until you’re ready.”
“I’m ready,” she says, a snap of irritation in her tone. She pulls her hand away as if I have no right to even think she’d need more time. “I’m fine.”
Instead of arguing with her, I just nod. I know the dangers of trying to pretend nothing happened until it’s easier to deal with, but she’s not in a place where she’d even listen to me. The effort would be wasted and she’d probably tell me to fuck off.
Moving too fast now, trying to outrun those feelings, won’t last forever. I can only hope she’ll let me stick around long enough to help her through them when it finally does hit her.
She looks annoyed when I reach for the passenger side door of the SUV when we get down to the parking lot, so I step away and let her tug it open herself. The wince of pain on her face is indicative of the bruising the doctor mentioned her having on her ribs. I’d like nothing more than to wrap her in a protective layer and hide her from the world, but she’d never allow it. It makes me wonder, not for the first time, just what kind of life she had after her sister was murdered. She sees support and kindness or the need for it as a weakness. I don’t know if it’s because she was smothered as a child or missed out on that from her parents altogether.
She wouldn’t be the first person to be forgotten in her parents’ grief, but I’ve also seen people pull back and create distance in fear of losing someone else. They’re trying to hedge their pain if it happens again.
“I feel naked,” she whispers, her eyes locked outside the passenger window as if she can’t stomach the sight of me.
“I can have one of the guys go by your place and grab you some more clothes.”
She shakes her head, rejecting the idea outright.
“I can run into Target—”
“These clothes are fine,” she says, tugging the front of the softest t-shirt I own.
I should be ashamed of how my body reacted at seeing her in my clothes, especially after what she’d been through. I shut it down as quickly as I could when she came into the living room last night, but those thoughts still happened.
“My gun,” she continues. “I feel naked without my gun.”
I know the weapon she used last night was confiscated for evidence, but I have no idea what happened to the one she normally carries at work.
“Did the chief take it from you?”
She doesn’t turn her head in my direction.
She asked her boss at the hospital if she was fired and he dodged the question. The man would have a lot of nerve to do that to her, especially after she was proven right about the link between the recent murders and her sister. If the man was worried about me suing for being falsely arrested, he’s not going to be very happy with how hard I’d advocate for her if she lost her job over this.
