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“It’s nearly nine.”
I figure I’ve been sleeping for two hours or so.
Lucy enters the room and sits on the edge of the bed. “Are you hungry? Rosalee can bring up coffee and breakfast.”
“I don’t want to be a burden?—”
“As I understand it, you’ve had quite the night. I think a little pampering will be good for you.” She lets out a breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t come get you. I should have?—”
I shake my head. “You had no idea what could happen.”
She bites her lip. “Except I did. I mean… I grew up in this world. I knew Liam was protecting you, I just didn’t think anyone would get the jump on him.”
I look down, realizing she knows Liam more than I do. “I don’t understand him.”
She sighs. “It’s not my place to tell Liam’s story. I know that to you, it seems like he’s broken bad. But what he’s doing right now is all for you. What I’d like to know, if you feel up to telling me now, is what happened.”
Is she asking me to reveal my relationship with Liam? Or is she asking about the men showing up and trying to kill us?
I walk through the night with her, from my snooping and finding a phone to the first phone call I made to her, to Liam returning angry. I skip the part about the sex because she’ll read something into it. I mention my second call to her and how I went to bed after that. I explain being awakened by loud bangs and then my window shattered. Next, I was on the floor underneath Liam.
As my story ends, I grip her hand. “I shot him… I didn’t?—”
“I know. You’d never hurt him no matter how angry you got.” She cocks her head to the side. “I believe you love him.”
I look down. “It’s just a stupid infatuation born out of his saving me. Hero worship. It’s gone now.” That last bit is a lie. Even after everything, there’s a place in my heart that still loves him.
12
LIAM
Iwake up feeling like I have cotton in my mouth, fire in my side, and a jackhammer in my head. “Fuck.”
“Hey, Boss.”
I blink my eyes open to see Artyom standing over me. “You’re gonna live. Let me get the doc.”
I don’t have time to lie around, but I’m not sure I can stand, much less walk, out of this room and kill that fucking Dimitri Babichev.
A few moments later, Artyom returns with Dr. Patterson. Luckily for me, he’s open to morally gray situations like I am.
I’m a former FBI agent who’s been working with organized crime. Doc Patterson is a family medicine doctor who also works with organized crime, for a pretty penny, of course.
He works at a clinic, but he lives in a home built back when doctors made house calls and often had a practice attached to their home. In his case, the back building started as a dental office but now was unused except for times like now when I have a hole in me that couldn’t be treated at a hospital.
“You’re one lucky sonofabitch,” Patterson says with a shake of his head. “Bullet went through you. Didn’t hit anything important. But even if it hit your kidney, you can live with one.”
I look down to see a bandage to the right side of my stomach. “When can I leave?”
“Well, you should rest. You lost a lot of blood, and I want to make sure you don’t get an infection. You can survive the bullet and still die of sepsis.”
Since I can’t manage to get upright at the moment, I nod, but as soon as I can, I’m up and out of here, sepsis or not.
Patterson leaves the room.
“Where’s Kate?” I imagine she’s in a more troubled state than she’d already been. I can’t believe she pulled the trigger. While I’m glad she did because it shows she can protect herself, I’m not too glad I’m the one she shot. Maybe I should have taught her how to use a gun. I’d considered it when I first put her in Witness Protection, but I wanted her to live without the dark, dirty side of life.
My heart stopped when I saw Robbie push her into the tree and hold his gun to her head. Fucking hell. I don’t think my body can take much more of the stress and turmoil.
