Heath glanced at me. “Remember what I said the first time I met you, babe?”
I frantically searched my mind.
“Keltan’s a shit shot anyway.”
Heath seemed to sense I’d found it, the memory.
“I was lyin’, babe,” he said meaningfully.
I was aware enough, through everything, what he was trying to get at. My life depended on it.
I looked to Keltan, who nodded stiffly once.
“Still,” he ordered, his voice soft. Heartbreakingly so.
I immediately closed my eyes and did just that—still.
The bang of a gunshot in a small space was enough to burst an eardrum. The roar in my ear was so painful it felt like my head was going to explode. My eyes seemed to flash with patches of white as two more shots bounced through the space, chattering my teeth with their force.
I didn’t get to still my frantic heart as to who fired those shots and who they hit because I tumbled to the ground, wet blood spurting down my head. And because of the dead weight on me, I slammed painfully into the inconsiderably uncarpeted floor.
And then there was nothing.
“That’s withholding evidence,” Detective Max accused, snatching the paper from my hands to run his eyes over it.
The manifest that had almost gotten me shot. I was more than happy to be rid of it.
“Not withholding,” I said. “I was just holding. So, I could give it straight to you. Before you snatched it, of course,” I added.
The corner of Keltan’s mouth tipped up beside me, despite murderous being the mood of choice since this whole thing began.
Considering this ‘whole thing’ meant two men trying to kidnap me, hitting me and him having to end up shooting moustache guy point blank, with me inches away, it was a wonder his mouth could even move that much at all. He’d had constant contact with me since the moment I’d regained consciousness in his arms with his calm yet frantic voice.
“Baby, I need you to wake up. Now,” he’d ordered through the fogginess of my head.
I’d blinked against the painful stars in my vision. “Are you really ordering me not to be unconscious?” I’d snapped, though my ears were still ringing so I didn’t know if it was a yell or a whisper.
“I fuckin’ do if my last waking image of you is with a gun to your head, and then I had to watch you tumble to the ground after a bullet was fired,” he’d clipped, his voice dancing with demons. With chaos.
I’d tried to push myself up, but I couldn’t because his arms circled me to gently and effortlessly bring me to his chest. I didn’t protest, fearing I would topple over, or at the very least throw up if I tried to stand.
Especially with a partially headless corpse in such close proximity.
“Well you’re the one who fired the gun,” I’d said, trying not to look at the corpse again. Three was enough in a lifetime. “I’d hoped you were at least sure that the bullet didn’t hit me.”
His jaw had flexed, as had his arms around me as he carried me to the front doors, illuminated by flashing lights.
“Better late than never,” he’d muttered to the lights. Then he’d focused on me. “Would never have taken the shot if there was a prospect that the bullet would even fuckin’ brush the air you breathe,” he told me as the paramedics tried to bustle in. “Never. Surest shot I’ve ever taken,” he promised.
The small pocket of stillness after those words momentarily numbed everything but the pain in my soul from the demons in his eyes.
Then the rubber band snapped back.
Chaos was an understatement. Police had swarmed everywhere, but not a single one talked to me. I was to be taken to the hospital. Keltan did not budge on that, and I didn’t argue. Because I knew the demons he was dancing with.
So, I went.
I was fine.
Apart from a bruised cheek, a split lip and a mild concussion.
Obviously to Keltan, that wasn’t fine. Just like the broken arm after the car bomb wasn’t ‘okay.’
Heath had gotten the other guy. He was in police custody.
“Should’ve killed the coward for winging me,” he’d muttered, stitching up his bullet wound at the offices we’d gone back to after everything.
Yes, he was stitching up his own bullet wound. Because it was “only a flesh wound. I get worse cuts while shaving. Or in bed.”
Crazy kiwi guys.
And that’s where Keltan had finally allowed the police to speak to me. In the offices. After, of course, I’d spoken to him and told him what they were after—the manifests I was now handing Max.
To say he wasn’t happy I’d kept it from him was an understatement, but I guessed I got a bit of a free pass from the full extent of his rage considering the whole “almost got shot” thing.