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Lights started flashing in the trees, and Bianca could see several cars making their way up the drive toward where they were in the circular driveway in front of the house.
Elias backed away from her. “Your brothers are coming,” he said.
“You brought them?” Bianca asked, still dazed.
“They came to me as soon as Goh contacted them,” Elias replied, sounding detached. “They were with me when I came to get you. Can you walk?”
Bianca nodded and Elias took another step away from her and started walking toward the front steps of the house.
“Do you need to sit?” he asked in a compassionate but professional way. Like he was dealing with someone he didn’t know.
She remembered that they were no longer together and the tears started. She dropped her head and crossed her arms over her aching heart.
“Bianca!” Cassiel called, with Rafe right behind him.
Car doors slammed and in moments she was swallowed up in her big brothers’ arms. They barraged her with questions, and she answered them as quickly as she could, trying to listen in on the exchange happening between Elias and the woman who’d arrived with her brothers.
Bianca recognized her as the attractive woman who had been at the hospital when she’d gone to ID the security footage of Rick Ronson discharging Eden. The woman was wearing an FBI jacket and hat over her auburn hair. It occurred to Bianca that while Elias was wearing dark cargo pants and a tight black shirt with a close-fitting black jacket over it, he wasn’t wearing anything that said FBI on it. As soon as the woman approached him, Elias swung the rifle off his back and handed it to her.
“That was some shot I took,” she said, with an eyebrow raised in surprise.
“Yeah, you hit him from about there in the tree line,” Elias said, pointing in the direction from which he’d emerged from the woods.
The woman looked over the gun, then through the scope, and then slung it over her shoulder, adjusting the strap to fit her. “I must have borrowed this one from you on our last mission. That was Bangor, I think?”
“Yep,” Elias said, nodding and looking away. “That’s how I remember it.”
Bianca looked between the two of them. “What’s going on here?” she asked.
“It’s okay Bee,” Cassiel said. “I’ll explain later.”
“No. I want to know now,” Bianca said. A paramedic stepped forward with gauze that was soaked in antibacterial lotion and started dabbing at her face. “Is it deep?” she asked him.
“You won’t need stitches,” the paramedic said. “But you’ll want to get it looked at.”
The FBI woman with Elias raised her hand. “Can I just? Here. Just one quick little second if I could get you to come over here with me, Miss Loring,” she said, bustling between all the much larger male bodies and taking Bianca’s arm. “Here. Let me have that,” she said, taking the gauze with her.
She handed the gauze to Bianca and led her away from Elias and her brothers. She brought her around the line of police cars and official vans that were now joining them, and past a car that had flashing lights on top and Ben Goh sitting handcuffed in the back.
“Let’s go a little bit further so you and I can have a real chat,” she said.
The woman ended up bringing Bianca to a side garden where there was a gazebo, fully decked for Thanksgiving.
“Isn’t this enchanting?” she said dryly as she switched on the fairy lights and a heat lamp. “That better?” she asked Bianca, who nodded in response. “I’m Agent Diana Mansfield. You can call me Agent Diana Mansfield. Kidding! You can call me Diana.”
Bianca laughed under her breath, not sure where she stood with this woman, but sensing a kindred spirit.
“Diana. What’s going on with you and Elias and that rifle?” she said, pointing to it. “Why is he saying that you made that shot?”
“We’re both saying it, and so should you, because none of us want Elias to go to jail for manslaughter,” she replied.
Bianca’s eyes widened in shock. “Why would he go to jail? He was rescuing me.”
Diana was nodding her head. “And if he was still an FBI agent all he’d have is a bunch of paperwork to fill out. But Elias quit the Bureau, what was it? Three days ago? So now he’d probably go to jail for killing that guy.”
Bianca stared at Diana. “He quit? Why’d he quit?”
Diana took a deep breath, and let it out, pretending to think about it deeply. “I think it might have had something to do with you and the fact that he’s madly in love with you.” She shrugged. “Just guessing here.”
