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I nodded at him, making my way down the hall, then heading up to the top floor.
And as I made my way down the hall to her room, I realized something that stopped me in my tracks.
If her problem was fixed, then she was done here, she was done with me.
She would go back to her life.
I would go back to mine.
And that was the end of it.
There was no accounting for the strange gut-punch sensation I felt at that realization.
It was almost enough to make me want to turn away, wait another day or two to tell her.
But I couldn’t do that.
I owed it to her to give her the information now, not let her worry another day.
And, well, I was a fucking professional; this was part of the job. This was how it worked; I wrapped up one case so I could move on to the other.
Simple as that.
And yet, for the first time, it felt anything but simple.
ELEVEN
Aven
The knock woke me up.
Groggy, a little sleep-confused, I looked at my phone, not quite able to tell if it said it was twelve at night, or twelve in the afternoon.
The knock sounded again, making me slow-blink the sleep out of my eyes.
“I want a rematch,” I called out, figuring it was Fenway.
But then the door pressed open, making me realize I had forgotten to lock it. I was a bit too comfortable in this place it seemed.
It wasn’t Fenway.
No.
Quin was standing in my doorway, the hall light behind him casting his body in shadow like some dark, avenging angel.
“Rematch?” he asked, reaching to the wall to flick on the light, making me blink hard against the harsh change.
It wasn’t until his eyes trailed down that I realized I must have been tossing in my sleep, because the sheets were twisted up around my calves, leaving my thighs – right up to the line of my panties – exposed.
My somewhat damp hair was around my shoulders, the material of my tee underneath wet and cool, making a shiver course through me.
“Ah, yeah. Fenway beat me at Monopoly four times,” I admitted, scrunching up my nose, still a little bitter about it.
To that, a small chuckle rolled through him as he moved inside, closing the door. “If it is any consolation, he sucks at poker. Loses his shirt every time.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said as he kept advancing, seeming to be coming toward the bed to sit down.
He looked exhausted.
Bone-deep tired.
The kind of sleep-deprived that said when he crashed, he was going to crash hard.
I pulled my knees to my chest, making some room for him.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, watching as he sat, looking off at the wall as he raked a hand down the scruff on his face.
“Depends on your definition of okay,” he mused, turning over his shoulder to look at me, his face unreadable, making me realize he was right; I would never beat him in a card game.
My leg shifted, my toes sliding into his thigh, making his gaze go there for a minute before his head rose. “We found the sister’s house.”
“And you went there,” I guessed.
“We were planning on talking to her. Threatening her to stay away at worst.”
“But?” I asked, stomach clenching.
“Both of them seemed to be dealing with some long-established mental health issues. I think the sister has been on a downward spiral for months. When we got there, she was ranting, walking around waving a gun.”
“Oh, God… you didn’t have to–” I trailed off, not able to force the words out.
“No, babe,” he said, reaching out, putting a hand on my bare knee. This moment was serious, gravely so. I shouldn’t have felt anything, certainly not a spark that started at the contact and shot upward between my legs, making my thighs press together as my sex tightened hard. “We actually went in to talk her down. In our business, keeping the body counts low is usually a pretty high priority.”
“Does she know that…”
“No,” he cut me off, shaking his head, giving my knee a squeeze that was meant to be reassuring, but my confused body decided to interpret it differently. “Honestly, she was so fucked, Aven. I don’t think she even really considered who we were. Just ranted and raved. Then shot at me, and kicked us out.”
“She shot at you?” I shrieked, scooting forward toward him, looking for, well, bullet wounds, I guess.
When did my boring little life start involving looking for bleeding, gaping wounds in the bodies of gorgeous men?
“She missed,” he said, but there was a bit of an edge to his words that added Just barely to his sentence. He had almost gotten shot because of me. “But that was the final straw. You can’t reason with crazy. We were going to call the cops in, and have her committed. No one was going to believe her ramblings anyway.”
