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I frowned. "Okay, what are you up to?" I scooted myself closer so that her legs bracketed mine like a tent. I used the new position to move my hand up her thighs, and she sucked in a sharp breath.
"Atticus, you cannot distract me right now."
I shrugged. "What? I finally understand that if I touch my wife I'm not going to be hurting her, and now you want to stop me?"
"I don't want to stop you, but focus first. I think I hacked into the cameras in the garage across the street."
If that wasn't an ice-bucket bath, I didn't know what was. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Easy does it. Remember, you weren't going to go crazy on me and act overly protective."
You just promised. "Um, right."
"I think I may have video footage of whoever shot me."
"Holy shit. Can you show me?"
She opened her laptop again. "Okay, so this is our building in this model I've made, yeah? And these are the office buildings across the way." She pointed out the window. "That's the parking structure two-blocks down, right? Across the street from it, there’s a building under construction."
She pulled up a video on her laptop then showed me as I strained to glare at the dark grimy footage. She paused it and then pointed. "See? Right there. The cameras appear to move around. They're constantly in rotation. If they were a pro, they would have known and maybe disabled the cameras, or maybe they just left that one, I have no idea. But look, you can see it. They come up the stairs, and then right there, you can see them as they get into position."
She was right, they did get into position as if seemingly looking down the street, as if expecting us. Like we had come home at exactly the time that was anticipated.
How had they known exactly when to expect us?
Again, we watched the dark grimy figure line up the shot. Then we saw two flares from the rifle. Two. Had one gone wide?
I wanted that damn bullet. I might be able to track them from the ammunition that they’d used.
"And then it doesn’t show any cars leaving or anyone coming out. There are no cameras to access on the other side of the building, but the way I figure it, if we just take to the street, we’ll find someone who was around that day. Maybe someone unhoused. Maybe a security guard. We have no way of knowing, but I figure we can at least start hitting the pavement and look."
I stared at her, shaking my head. "How did you do this?"
"I didn't do anything."
"Yes, you did. Because we assumed, given the direction, that the shots came from the building across the street."
"I mean, you're not entirely wrong, but because that building is under construction, the elevators were inaccessible. Whoever it was deliberately climbed the stairs or figured out how to make the service elevator run. They were determined."
"The question is, why?"
"And, the other question," she added, "is who that person was. And can we talk to them?"
10
Atticus
An hour later, Gwen hesitated in the doorway as I lay back against the headboard of our bed. She had taken quite a while getting ready for bed, and I tried not to focus on the sling on her left arm.
“Come here, Gwen.”
She shifted from foot to foot, peering up at me through her lashes. And fuck, all I wanted to do was jump out of bed, dig my hands into her hair, and worship her until she was melting. And then I wanted to throw her on the bed and spread her pussy out like the smorgasbord that it would be.
But it wasn't her fault that I was barely holding on to my control. It was mine. I promised myself I’d take it easy and go slow.
She slowly walked over to her side of the bed, sliding in, and I noticed under that little camisole thing that she wore to bed she didn't have on any panties. She turned off her light and rolled over toward me. “I'm here. Is there something you wanted?”
I stared at her for a moment in the dim light, my gaze tripping over the bridge of her nose, the full ripeness of her lips, the smile that hovered at the corners. My heart squeezed. She was mine. All mine. And she wanted to be here. More importantly she wanted me in here. So why was I nervous?
