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“Promises, promises,” she sent back, but luckily walked away.
Smart girl.
* * *
The timing was perfect.The two dumb cops at the door had been dismissed, and now the woman had emerged from her fortress with the asshole following behind her like some drooling dog. Was it ideal that there were two of them to deal with? It wasn’t part of the plan, for sure. But was it doable?Yeah.
Weaponing up earlier; two knives, one Glock 23 with an Omega K suppressor, and a pocket of zip-ties made up the ready arsenal, along with a syringe filled with more of that ever-handy rocuronium. The girl would feel that, first; incapacitated, but in a small enough dose that her muscles wouldn’t work but her eyes would stay open. She’d witness every minute of her boyfriend being carved up into little pieces. Then she’d die, because it wouldn’t do to leave any witnesses. And if her tastes ran to men like Eggers, better to kill her off now before she decided to procreate with another of his ilk.
* * *
“You sure youwant to go to the dam again?” Talia asked. “I mean, I know it’s beautiful, but that’s where you went yesterday.”
“Right. When all I could think about was how many feet I was allowed to walk, and how a certain someone would kill me if I overstepped.”
“And today?”
“Today, that ball-buster is with me, and understands that my surgeon has given me leave to do as much as I feel fit to accomplish. That means, walking to the damn, having a nice long look around, then strolling back.”
“You’re easy to please today.”
“Being stuck in a house, bored, will do that to a person.”
“Does that mean it wasn’t you who reorganized my kitchen?”
Ah,she’d seen that, had she?
“As much as I’d like to take credit, it was Pixie all the way.”
“I figured,” she chuckled. “My sister has become a real neatnik.” Her expression sobered. “I think it’s her way of keeping things in her life under control.”
“Probably. But look at the step she’s taking today. Maybe someday soon it will be you cleaninghercupboards.”
“I can only hope…” Talia stumbled a bit, then stooped to pick up a pretty rock from the side of the road. As she arose, her eyes blazed. “Uh, Fleet?”
“Yeah, Tallie?” Should he be worried at how tightly she was holding her lips?
“Don’t look behind us, but someone’s following.”
Fleet sucked in a breath. “How do you know?”
“I thought I heard a person’s footsteps keeping time with ours, so I bent to pick up that stone and took a glance back. And I’m right. It’s a big, hulking individual with a hoodie pulled down over their face.”
“ID? Is it either of your suspects?”
“They were both about the same size,” she huffed. “It could be that EMT, Brian, or your bruiser of a night nurse. But we have to figure it’s one of them.”
Either way, they were in serious trouble.
“So what do you want to do?” Fleet asked. He was worried, but didn’t let it show. He wasn’t trained to take on this situation, but Talia was. He needed to defer to her and follow whatever plan she came up with.
“We’re going to keep walking because I don’t want anyone in the neighborhood getting hurt if there’s gunfire. One stray bullet into any of these houses and someone could die.”
“I get it, but how are wenotgoing to die once we get to the damn?”
Talia looked grim. “I’ll figure that out once I ascertain how our perp is going to approach us. I have to assume he or she is weaponed up; guns, maybe knives. Perhaps even more of the drug they shot into you. Let’s have them make the first move.”
“Talia, just in case anything happens…” God, Fleet hated talking like that, but he wanted her to hear what he’d already planned to say. “…I love you. Completely, with all my heart. I want to marry you someday and have children. But in the meantime, I want us to live together until you’re certain of me. You can move in with me, I can move in with you, or we can find a new place for the two of us to call our own.”
