“Jesus Christ,” Rowan growled, reaching for Alex. “Where are you bleeding?” he asked calmly, even if his gaze suggested he wasn’t calm at all.
Alex, finally coming to her senses, glanced down, finding her hands and the rest of her body covered in blood. “No. No.” She gasped. “It’s not my blood.”
“Some of it is,” he said, then tilted her head to the side and looked at her neck. “He must be wearing a ring. He caught you here. You’ll need a few stitches.”
The pain didn’t even register. Nothing registered until Rowan cupped her face.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded, and then nodded again, actually believing it this time. But then she was struck by the realization that the only person who crossed her mind in those seconds she thought her life was over was Rowan. Not Ryder, her closest friend and the only person she trusted. Just Rowan. Not even able to grasp what that meant, she glanced at the deceased man. “Oh, no, Rowan, what have you done?” It occurred to her then that any chance they had at finding Mia was gone. Rowan had just killed the Casanova Sadist.
Rowan slowly rose, as if letting her go pained him. Right now, she didn’t want him to let her go either. She realized she shook from her head to toe, the scary awareness suddenly dawning on her that she’d nearly been murdered, if Rowan hadn’t gotten there in time.
He moved to the man, then lifted up the man’s shirt. “I doubt this is our killer. It’s not his style.” He shoved the man over. After which, he reached for his cell phone and took a picture of his face. “But I’m going to find out who he is and get this cleaned up.”
“We can use Ryder,” Alex said, rubbing her neck and pushing her shaky self off the ground to get farther away from the dead man. He was on the floor, bleeding all over the carpet with a gunshot wound in his chest and in his head.
“There’s no need,” Rowan said. He dialed a phone number then pressed the phone to his ear. “I need a cleanup at the Landon Bridge hotel room number 1602.”
“How are you going to explain this”—she pointed at the dead guy—“to the CIA? You’re not working a case.”
“I’m always working a case,” Rowan responded. “I’m just not supposed to be working my sister’s case.” He moved back to the man and grabbed the guy’s wallet from his back pocket. He took a look at his ID. “Jimmy Valens.” Rowan’s eyes flicked to Alex, concern heavy in their depths. “Do you know him?”
She shook her head, aware of the warm blood dripping off her hands, and now feeling her own blood trickling down her neck. Her stomach roiled, so she went back to her earlier thought. “What do you mean, you don’t need to explain to the CIA when you kill a man?”
Rowan shot her a measured look. “In my line of work, causalities are part of the business. Besides, Valens has given us a way to dispose of him.”
Brows up, and fighting against the sickness turning her stomach inside out, Alex asked, “How?”
“The fire.”
She turned to the deceased man. He was looking right at her. She swallowed her emotions. Death was never anything she’d been good at handling. Exactly why her job never happened on site.
“What do you have?”
She glance
d up as Rowan spoke again, but not to her. She found him on his cell phone. “Yeah,” he said. “All right. Yes, I’m leaving now.” He ended the call then looked at Alex. “Gather your things. We need to go.” He headed into the closet and took all her clothes out, including the hangers. He tossed a new shirt at her and she quickly changed and handed Rowan her soiled shirt. “Go wash your hands and face. Put a cloth on that wound.”
Her body felt light, her mind not really there when she entered the bathroom. She saw the darkness in her eyes, the absent, mindless look in them too, when she began washing her hands and face. Rowan wasn’t wrong—the cut on her neck was deep, gaping open, and definitely needed stitches. She hurried to get herself cleaned up then grabbed the washcloth off the towel rack, placing that against her neck to stop the bleeding. She finished up by throwing all her makeup into her night bag then left the bathroom.
Rowan stood over the dead body with a frown.
“Regretting shooting him now?” she asked, closing in on him. Ryder always preferred to keep people alive to question them.
“He almost killed you,” Rowan said, slowly lifting his eyes to hers. They were tense. “I will never regret killing him.”
She saw the intensity in his gaze. The warm affection and the sweet worry there too. And without thought, she moved closer to him, needing his warmth, needing him to get this chill out of her blood.
When she reached him, he wrapped her in his arms, holding her close. She shut her eyes, falling into his warm embrace, as he added, “Besides, he’s a hired hitman on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.”
She let out a long, deep breath at that. Killing anyone was wrong, but at least this guy wouldn’t take any more innocent lives than he’d already had.
Before she could voice her thoughts, Rowan leaned away then dropped his eyes level with hers. “We can’t linger here. Are you okay to leave?”
She nodded quickly, still feeling her limbs shaking.
He released her to grab her suitcase. Alex moved to the wall to take out her laptop charger next to the chair then followed Rowan out. He took her hand, and they hurried into the hallway. She kept the washcloth tight against her neck as they passed firemen in the stairwell yelling at them to get out.