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“You can’t go from calling me Drake, with that sultry, school-girl tone you seem so fucking good at, and call me Detective instead, spitting it out like it tastes bitter.”
“So… youwantme to be sultry?” I allow my brows to pinch tight in confusion. “You’re giving me mixed signals, Detective.”
“I’m fucking not!” He tears the car around a corner and forces my hands down to hold the door and seat, or risk falling to the side with the momentum of the vehicle. “You know exactly what I’m telling you, Aurora. I know you’re smart enough to understand the nuances of what’s going on here.”
“Well, I don’t know about that. Whatisgoing on here, Detective?”
“Rory…”
“I’m a woman,” I start easily, lifting my hands to tick my points off. “You’re a man. I’m in medical school, though I’m still not entirely sure where I’ll go with that. And you’re a cop who deals with trauma daily. My life is in danger, and there’s a chance I may not survive the day. And there’s you… some kind of dummy who has decided he’ll step between me and death, so at least, should I not survive the day, odds are, you’re dead, too.”
“Rory!”
“You find me attractive…” I wrinkle my nose and try to quash the embarrassment flooding my veins. “I think. I mean, that’s kind of what I’m picking up. And I clearly, against my better judgment, find you attractive, too.”
“Stop.”
“I offered myself to you last night.” Can’t be any more humiliated than I already was. “You said no and cited things about circumstances and age. Oh, that’s right.” I bring my focus across and look into his green stare. “Age. That’s what we were talking about.”
“Move on, Swanson.”
Pleasure rolls through my veins and out to touch the tips of my fingers. “Swanson? Not Aurora. Not Little Bird? Sheesh,” I shake my head. “You must really be mad. Wait,” I pinch my bottom lip between my fingers and smirk, “weren’t we talking about me being mad? Which, I feel I’ve proven, I am not.”
“Forget I mentioned anything.” He brings the car into a massive parking lot that dips beneath street level in an instant.
Our wheels squeak on smooth concrete, much like they did yesterday, but as I look around, I ascertain that we’renotat the hospital. “Where are we?”
“Somewhere important.” He slips the car into a parking slot and yanks the keys from the ignition, then shoving out, he stalks around to my door before I even have a chance to remove my seatbelt. “Let’s go.” He grabs my arm and pulls me up until my sneakers touch the floor. He’s cranky at me. Frustrated. But he still shields my body, guarding me from anyone who might think to take a shot. “I don’t want to talk in here,” he murmurs, more serious now. “I don’t want you to dawdle.” He wraps his arm across my back and hooks his hand on the opposite hip to keep me up, since I don’t have my cane—again. Then he starts toward the entrance, lit up and crawling with security cameras.
“What is this place?” I twist my body and rely on him to guide me toward the door. Then I sniff the air, noticing a tang I’ve come to recognize this week. “Drake?”
He drags me forward anyway, nodding when we pass a handful of uniformed cops standing guard. Their presence startles me, but not nearly as much as the shocking BOOM of a gunshot that has me wrenching back around. “What the—”
“Relax.” He leads me toward a check-in desk of sorts and shows his badge, words unneeded as the man on the other side nods and turns away.
“Drake?” I fight his hold and try to slow our steps, but he continues along in spite of my bad leg and with no care for the way I jump when another shot goes off. “Drake!”
“Stand here.” He releases me, but he places my hands on a counter and stares into my eyes almost as though to ask, “You good?” When I don’t fall, and I don’t run away, he turns on his heels and accepts a box of… things, from a man I don’t know. There are dozens of people in here. Not just police in uniform, but other kinds, too. Some, I can tell are cops anyway, despite their plain clothes. And others, who may or may not be regular civilians, but they aim their weapons at a paper target and hit the right circles every single time.
“We’re shooting?” I push away from the tall counter and hobble forward a half-dozen steps to meet Drake in no man’s land. Exasperated, he carries the box in one arm and uses the other to take my weight.
Of course.
Chivalry, for him, isn’t holding doors or smacking my ass. It’s stopping my leg from collapsing out beneath my body and sending me sprawling to the floor.
“We’re practicing.” He starts us toward one of the… well, I guess a newb who has never stepped foot in a place like this would call it a bay. It’s a teeny-tiny space, with walls on both sides, and a long, long stretch of space in front of us.
Drake places my hands on the counter, like he did last time, then he sets the box on the floor and presses a button on the wall that has a machine whirring and a steel clip zooming our way.
He takes a long sheet of paper with the typical man-shape printed on the front, and securing it to the steel clip, he hits another button and sends it away again. “Have you ever shot a gun before, Aurora?”
“Oh, we’re back to my first name again.” I accept a pair of plastic glasses when he takes them from the box and shoves them in my hand. Opening the arms and spying the scratched plastic, I bring them up to slide them on my face. “And no,” I answer. “I have never shot a gun before.”
“Do you understand the different kinds?” He takes out a set of earmuffs, but he sets them on the counter, and not in my hands. “Revolvers, versus pistols. Automatic versus semi-automatic?”
“No.” I look down at the pair he constantly has strapped to his chest and chew on the inside of my lip. “I do not know the different kinds.”
“And if you found a gun, any gun, lying around?” he presses. “Bad guy’s coming for you. What do you do?”
