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“I have more planned if you’re interested.”
“I’m very interested,” she whispered.
“I thought you would be.”
Chelsea rushed him out the door, ready to get to dinner and then get back as quickly as possible. She’d waited over a month to experience the same pleasure he gave her the first time, and with just a taste of it in her mouth, she was impatient for more.
They drove in silence to a small diner that Chelsea chose for the sole purpose of getting in and out quickly. It was the same joint she took clients to who tended to talk a lot. The food was subpar, but the service was fast. Fast is what Chelsea wanted.
They walked inside and ordered their food, sitting at a chosen table beside the long window that expanded across the entire small diner.
“You go here a lot?” Redmond asked as she greeted the third server to pass them.
“It’s nice giving my business to the mom-and-pop places in the city. And this one is extra fast with food turnaround, so I frequent it.” Many of her writers weren’t a fan of the food, but Chelsea was far from picky. Since moving to America, she’d learned to eat many cheap, less-than-stellar foods without complaint. The burgers may have been dry, but the fries were crisp and warm. A good balance.
He nodded, scanning the diner around them.
Everything happened faster than Chelsea could register.
She suddenly found herself on the floor, with Redmond using his body to shield Chelsea’s as glass sprayed down atop them. The sound of a gunshot didn’t register until the glass had all fallen and the first scream had arisen. She tried to lift her head, but Redmond kept his hand on it, keeping her as close to the floor as possible.
What just happened?
The sound of cries and screams around her pulsed through the air, and she watched as a mother and a child huddled beneath a table across the diner. The mom took the same position over her son as Redmond took over Chelsea, but there were no more gunshots. The only sounds were those of terrified patrons and employees and tires squealing.
“Redmond,” Chelsea whispered, still processing what had just happened.
He didn’t move. He just lay atop her, breathing heavily.
“Redmond,” she said louder, trying to shake him from her.
She felt a subtle trembling begin in him and intensify with each passing moment.
“Were you hit?” she shrieked, using all her strength to push him. He didn’t move an inch.
Finally, when her terrified breathing and attempt to push him from her body became overwhelming, he rolled off her, keeping his head down. He peeked through the glass and to the street, but nobody remained aside from an alarmed passerby who looked into the diner’s shattered window.
Redmond finally looked down at her, examining each part of her body like what he found would mean life or death. His eyes held a frantic fear, and Chelsea, all at once, recalled what his trauma had been. Not only were gunshots likely a trigger from his time in the service, but shootings were an even more intense one. He’d lost the love of his life to a shooting, and Chelsea lay on the floor before him, nearly victim to one herself.
“Red, I’m okay. I’m fine,” she told him, reaching up and grabbing his arm. His muscles were tense, and he breathed heavily, the frantic look in his eyes not fading.
Redmond looked around, eyes focused on a bullet hole in the counter, directly behind where Chelsea had been standing. She looked down at herself in disbelief, but no wound rested in her chest where it likely would have hit.
Redmond had taken her to the ground before that happened.
She wondered if he’d seen the gun before the shot was taken—if he’d recognized the shooter. But more than anything, she needed to remove the skittish look in his eyes. But Chelsea couldn’t bring herself to speak. She couldn’t get past the fact that the bullet had nearly ended her life. A bullet that she’d have never seen coming.
Redmond had saved her life again.
But from whom?
10
The gun pointed through the cracked window of a small beater car haunted each of his thoughts. The flash of a man’s face in the car window—a familiar face. Dale Hartfield’s face. He’d relayed the information to the police when they questioned him, but his face wasn’t the worst image in his mind.
The mental image of Chelsea’s brain splattered at his feet as Claire’s had been echoed through his vision. He thought he could get away from it, but he’d been so wrong. Redmond felt all the pieces of himself he fought to pick up now falling back through his fingertips.
The nightmares had already started again.
