Текст книги "Tangled Bond"

Автор книги: Emma Hart

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

If it isn’t Nick, who is it?

This is the question that’s been bugging me since five a.m. I managed to lie around in bed for thirty minutes before I sneaked my way out from Drake’s sleepy hold and crept downstairs in my bathrobe.

Now, curled in the corner of my sofa, I realize I’ve asked myself the question “Who is it?” more this year than I planned to in the next decade.

We’re missing something. I’m almost positive of it.

Now, it’s almost eight in the morning and I have the urge to talk to do the one person we haven’t interviewed yet. The mayor himself.

That could cost me everything though, and Drake definitely can’t know. If the mayor suspects for a second that he knows about my desire to ask him every question in existence, then Drake’s fired. For sure.

Even though the mayor is in Dallas, I call his office anyway.

“Mayor McDougall’s office.”

“Ellis? Is that you?”

“Yep.” She yawns. “Who’s this?”

“Noelle—Noelle Bond. Sorry. Is Mayor McDougall there?”

“Nope, sorry. He’s out of town until tomorrow. Can I take a me-message?” Another yawn.

“Nah, it’s okay. I was hoping to catch him before meetings, but if he’s out, no worries. Have a good day!” I hang up and drop my phone on the coffee table.

Damn.

That girl sounds like she needs a coffee or ten.

I swing my legs off the sofa and carry my empty mug to the kitchen. I rinse it out under the sink, looking out at my yard. Needs flowers.

“Mornin’.” Drake yawns.

I turn. He’s still yawning, his hand buried deep in his hair. He’s wearing nothing but the pants he wore to work yesterday, and they’re slung low on his lips.

“Morning,” I reply absently, half distracted by my mind and half distracted by those little dent things at the bottom of his stomach that disappear beneath his waistband.

“My face is up here, Noelle.” He grins and walks toward me, hugging me from the side and kissing the side of my head.

“Sorry. I’m...thinking.”

“Already?”

“Hush. I’ve been up since five.” I set my mug in the sink and rest my elbows on the edge of the counter. “Just...thinking.”

His eyebrows draw together. “About the case?”

“Hmm.” I nibble on the side of my thumb, focusing on my yard once more. “It’s bugging me.”

I feel like I’ve said that a thousand damn times in the last few days. Probably because I have. God only knows how many times I’ve thought it, too.

“Did you ever find out what happened last night?”

“The tape thing?” Drake grimaces. “Yeah. The mayor got it, but they couldn’t get any kind of ID on the other person. All they got was a similar profile to the guy we got on camera in the hotel and the club.”

“So, it could be the same person? Couldn’t we tell the mayor that we found some stuff at Natalie’s house and know he was meeting someone last night and ask him?”

“If we want to lose our jobs, sure.”

“Ugh.” I drop my head down. “Can’t we lie and say it’ll help us arrest Nick?”

“If we want to be shot.”

“Oh my God, you’re so dramatic!” I stand up and huff my way to the stairs.

Seriously. If I didn’t know he was being deadly serious, I’d be calling the mayor’s private line right now.

I’m halfway up when my phone rings from the living room. I cannot catch a break here, can I?

“Hello?” I snap into the phone.

“Uh…” Carlton’s voice travels hesitantly down the line. “Did I wake you?”

“No,” I reply, softening my voice. “You didn’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep well. What’s up?”

“Can you go to the office to meet me? I did some more research last night and, uh, found something else.”

“Something else?” I frown as Drake appears in the living room doorway. “What something else?”

“You really need to see it.”

“See what?”

“There’s another video of the mayor,” Carlton replies after a long moment. “But, um, Natalie isn’t the girl in it.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.” I hang up and throw it on the sofa. Then I fight my yawn as I look at the ceiling. “Fuck me.”

“Noelle?”

“There’s another video.” I throw my arms out to the sides. “But fuck knows who the chick in it is.”

Drake’s face hardens. “Let’s go.”

My sentiments exactly, Detective. Not that I needed him to say it out loud, of course. Captain Obvious strikes again and all that. I should probably get him a cape with that on for his birthday or something. Except it’ll have to say Detective Obvious.

Ha. That’s it. His new nickname. Detective Obvious. I won’t be saying it out loud any time soon, because as hot as he looks buttoning that shirt while his muscles do that flex thing, I think he’s kinda pissed.

And hey. We did manage one whole day without fighting. As much as I like this new nice us, I’m kind of bored. And pissing him off is fun. Aw, hell. I’m gonna end up blurting that out by the end of the day. Then he’ll threaten to spank me or cuff me or something along those lines.

Wait. That’s an excellent reason to piss him off. One of these day, I’ll do it so much that he’ll simply have to follow through on his threats.

“Noelle. Focus.” He snaps his fingers in front of my face, jolting me back to reality.

“What?”

“You’ve been fondling that pair of panties for minutes. What the fuck’s wrong with you this morning?”

I look down at the blue thong in my hand. “I don’t know. It’s like my brain is broken from all of my epiphanies yesterday. I can’t focus on anything for longer than a few minutes.” I tap the side of my head. “Seriously, it’s like fucking kindergarten up in here.”

“Well, try to focus, yeah? We need to get to your office to see this video.”

“Video? Oh—right. That video,” I add when he looks like he wants grab my ankles, tip me upside down, and give me a good shake.

I put the underwear on and pull a dress from the closet. The red is bright and the skirt is full, probably not made for a day of running around like a fool like it seems like I could be doing today, but what the hell.

The dress is pretty.

And here I go again with the tangent.

I get dressed and quickly apply my makeup before my mind decides to waltz with a peanut or something. Honestly, I should video myself spewing out every random thought I have so that, next time I wake up at five in the morning and decide that it’s a good idea to get out of bed, I can watch it and remember why I need to roll the hell back over and go the fuck back to sleep.

Even that thought was way longer than it should have been.

Ugh, Drake was right. I really won’t use five words if I can use fifty. Or even five hundred.

Oh my God. I’m doing it again.

I need to be knocked out. Stat.

“Noelle!”

“I’m coming!” I yell, tugging my cowboy boots on, not even bothering to fully slide my feet into the bottoms before I run toward the stairs. I almost trip over my own feet, so I grab the banister and make sure my feet are in them properly before I run downstairs.

“What the hell is wrong with you today?” Drake asks me, handing me my phone and my purse.

“Ask me what’s right with me. It’s a shorter answer.” I set the alarm and follow him out.

“That’s always the shorter answer where you’re concerned,” he mutters, pulling his keys from his pocket as I throw mine into the depths of my purse. “I was hopin’ you could give me a definitive answer on the wrong side for once.”

“You know,” I say, getting into his truck, “I’m about to attach my gun to my person. It’d be a real shame if my finger accidentally played with the trigger.”

“And you’re back to normal. Your version of it, anyway.”

I take a deep breath and come to the conclusion that my gun should stay in my purse for a little while longer.

I’m pretty sure Drake breaks just about every speeding limit in town as he fights to get us to my office. My spacing out earlier has put us behind, and by the time he pulls up in the parking lot, Carlton is already waiting outside the front door.

“What’ve you got for me?” I ask before I’ve even put the key in the lock.

“If I knew the chick, I’d tell you.” He shrugs, holding his laptop tightly under his arm.

“All right.” I push the door open and stalk inside.

He and Drake follow me to the meeting room, and I sit on the table.

Carlton takes the chair next to where I’m sitting and opens his laptop. He clicks a few times then says, “Here.” He turns the screen toward me, and I bend forward to watch it.

It’s definitely the mayor, and the images are the same grainy quality as before. Vince must have gotten these, too, maybe thinking Natalie would be meeting him? Who knows? It’s the same hotel room, the same layout of sex toys on the sofa, and the mayor is wearing the same old Y-front underpants as he was at the start of the other video.

But the girl is definitely not Natalie, and my heart stops when she walks on screen.

“Holy shit.” I grab Drake’s forearm. “Holy shit.”

Of course. Of course. Of. Fucking. Course.

I jump off the table and run to the stairs, storming up them, leaving two confused faces behind me. Thankfully, the door to my office is unlocked, so I quickly get inside and head straight for the case file.

“Pictures, pictures,” I mutter to myself, flicking through every sheet.

“You’re like a fuckin’ chihuahua today,” Drake grumbles. “Now what’s wrong?”

“Shut up a minute.” I pull out one security image from the hotel then the one from the club. They’re the clearest ones they could get, and they match. Almost perfectly. “Come back down. I need to check something. Oh, grab that file.”

“Seriously,” he mutters, and I hear the sound of the papers shuffling as he gets it.

I run back into the meeting room and stop right behind Carlton. “Turn it back to the beginning. The very start when the woman walks in.”

He rewinds it then hits play. The first two minutes are all the mayor, but then she walks out of the bathroom.

“Pause it.”

She’s every inch a woman—except for her haircut.

Her short, pixie-style cut. The one that, on security camera photos, could easily be mistaken for that of a guy, especially if the woman wasn’t wearing a particularly feminine outfit.

“It’s Ellis,” I breathe, dropping the photos onto the keyboard.

“In the video?” Drake questions.

“All of it.” My voice is a whisper. She was yawning on the phone this morning—because she’d been up late. “The stalking, the murders, the exchange with the mayor last night... All of it is her. Ellis Law. She’s our killer.”

“Why would she kill Natalie? What does she have to stand to gain from that?” Sheriff Bates asks me, pacing the length of the briefing room.

“I have no idea. But look at the images. You can’t argue with it, and it’s totally plausible. She has the opportunity, and if we don’t have a motive, that’s important. She would have been at the hotel prior to the mayor’s talk, and if she was a member of D.O.M., no one would question her being in the club at the time Vince died. I bet the account numbers on the fake transactions to Nick will match hers.”

“What about shooting Brody?”

“The rental company lists the car as being rented by a Stacey Ellis-Law,” Trent throws out there. “I never made the connection, but this does make sense.”

“We need to find her.” I bite the inside of my cheek then release it. “I doubt she’ll be at the office anymore. She knows I’m looking for the mayor.”

“Do you think he knows about this?” Drake asks. “He knows about everything else.”

“There would have been a payoff somewhere if he did,” Sheriff Bates responds. “Find Ellis Law. Or Stacey, whatever her damn name is. Find her and bring her in for questioning. I want alibis for every damn thing we have on record, and I want them now.”

“Yes, sir.” Drake stands, grabs my hand, and tugs me up with him.

Trent follows after us as we leave the room. “Where do we start?”

“We split up,” Drake replies through a tight jaw. “I’ll drive Noelle back to her place to get her car. Then we’ll try to find her. Trent, go to her house first. I’ll check the bank. Noelle, you know women. Check wherever.”

“Like, what? The hair salon? The nail salon? The cupcake store? The shoe store? The clothing store? Why do I get all the female places?”

“Because you’re a female,” Trent sighs in exasperation. “I’ll take the shoe store. You’re only gonna get distracted going in there.”

“Or you could try getting her car registration details and put local stations on standby in case she tries to leave town.” I shrug. “But hey, what do I know?”

“That’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard you say this morning.” Drake opens the door to his truck, grabs my waist, and hauls me into the passenger’s side seat.

I oomph as he signals to Trent to do what I suggested.

Honestly, am I working with them or am I their new boss?

“Do y’all actually think of your own ideas or do you just wait for me to tell you what to do?”

Drake gives a harsh turn on the keys then shoots me the biggest, smuggest grin I’ve ever seen. “We wait for you, sweetheart. We figure that, if you keep thinkin’ of these awesome ideas, you’ll be too tired to talk.”

“I swear to God, when we find Ellis and you arrest her, I’m going to beat your cocky ass into next week.”

“Sounds like a date.” His laughter is drowned out by the revving of his engine, and he pulls away from the station like he’s a fucking NASCAR driver and not a cop.

I’m pretty sure we’re in the wrong car to be doing these speeds, but hey, I’ve just about exhausted my bright ideas for today.

Where is Ellis?

And are we going to find her?

My purse is sitting between my feet, and I reach down into it. My fingers find my thigh holster buried beneath my wallet, and I pull it out then hike it over my left foot and up my leg. I have to slouch in the seat and pull my dress up to get it to where it belongs, and if the tingling feeling worming its way across my skin is anything to go by, Drake’s noticed.

“What are you doin’?” Yep, he noticed.

“Accessorizing.”

“With your gun?”

I pull my favorite Tiffany-blue Glock out of its case in my purse and hold it up, smiling innocently over the top of it. “Yes. Although my color coordination leaves a lot to be desired.” I hike my dress up a little further and secure my gun.

“I hate it when you wear that thing like it’s a damn bracelet.”

“Hey, this is me being sensible. If you haven’t realized, I haven’t worn my gun for, like, two whole days. Okay, one. But whatever.” I wave my hand dismissively. “I’m actually being sensible instead of paranoid this time.”

“For a damn change.” He steers into my driveway.

I shift in my seat so I’m facing him, and he cuts his eyes to mine.

“The last time I came face-to-face with a murderer,” I say, “I thought he was going to kill me, too. I didn’t know what weapon he had then, either. This time, I do. If I find Ellis before all y’all do, I know she has a gun, and I know she’ll use it. I’m not afraid to do it again to protect myself.”

His jaw tightens, and his answering nod is a sharp dip of his chin.

I lean across the center console and kiss his cheek. He’s not going to reply. I can see it. His brain is whirring in macho-man-alpha mode, where all he can see is the danger he’s potentially allowing me to walk in to. But…whatever. I have to do this, too. I can’t sit around and do nothing while she’s running around with a gun in her pants and a heart of stone.

I pull my car door open and throw my purse in, but then there’s the distinctive slam of Drake’s truck door. I turn as he stops in front of me.

His hands clasp on either side of my neck, his thumbs curving up over my jaw and brushing my lower cheek, and his mouth comes down onto mine in a kiss that is equal parts fear and frustration. The resignation is in his following sigh.

“Letting you go and do this goes against every fuckin’ instinct in my body.”

I curl my fingers around his lower arm, tilting my face down into his touch as I meet his eyes. They’re icier than I’ve ever seen them, yet there isn’t an ounce of coldness in his gaze.

“You’re not letting me. I’m choosing to go.”

“I know.” He grinds his teeth. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel sick at the thought of you getting hurt.”

“Then find her first,” I say simply.

He touches his forehead to mine. “We both know you’re a killer magnet. If you find her, do what you did before and call me and leave the line on, okay?”

I nod. “I promise.”

He takes a deep breath and moves to step back, but I grab his collar and pull his mouth down to mine. He freezes for all but a second before he returns it. The kiss is fierce. It’s desperate and frustrated, and each brush of our lips is my fear mingling with his.

But it’s still more. Still everything. Still every breath we are struggling to take and every touch we wish we could give.

When he pulls back, my heart is pounding inside my chest, and I think he’s transferred all of his worry into me.

“Be safe, cupcake,” he whispers, resting his forehead against mine again. “Just don’t get yourself fucking killed, okay?”

“Believe me. Not getting myself killed is at the top of my to-do list. And then, when I survive, you’re second on it.” I smile.

He does, too, and a little bit of the tension disappears.

“Now, go,” I demand, pulling his hands from my face. “And be safe yourself, okay? Because, if you get shot, you’re getting bumped down my list.”

“Got it. Now, since there’s no way I can stop you, go let your badass gene out to play.”

Nothing in the town hall building. Nothing in the hair salon. Nothing in the nail salon. Rosie hasn’t seen her, and neither has Melanie or old Mr. Beatty, who runs the hardware store next to the bookshop. My whole team is on the lookout as they do their own jobs, and I’ve driven past enough cop cars to know that Sheriff Bates has pulled out all the stops and has almost the whole department out on this wild-goose chase.

I can’t believe she disappeared so quickly. It’s barely been two hours since I called her, yet she’s absolutely nowhere to be found in Holly Woods. Drake has checked her house and her parents’ place, while Trent searched the town hall top to bottom immediately after I did.

She’s all but vanished into thin air, yet there’s no proof of her even leaving town. And if she tries to, she’s getting caught there, too, because Sheriff Bates called in some favors from the Austin PD to bolster town security, and there are more than one or two cars on every road in and out of Holly Woods.

Sure. We can’t be absolutely certain that it’s her on paper, but my gut says it is. And my gut is never wrong.

Apart from right now, when it’s telling me that I need a cupcake. I don’t have time for that, but I happen to have a big bag of crispy M&Ms stashed in my glove box, so I reach forward and tug them out, opening them. Hey, I’m parked.

I throw a handful into my mouth and chew. Running around like a six-headed chicken on steroids washed down with vodka isn’t going to get me anywhere. It’s not going to get any of us anywhere.

One of the most important lessons my nonno taught me when I was eight and fell in love with Sherlock Holmes was that, to catch a killer, you need to think like a killer. And, he said, unless your killer is psychotic, then the chances of you finding them without a plan are nothing. Someone who kills for a reason will always have a plan, and in that plan, you’ll find every reason a hundred times.

I take another handful of M&Ms.

One can only assume that Ellis killed Natalie because Ellis found out about the video and assumed Natalie had evidence. That would tie in to the break-in, too. She tried to get in and out but got desperate, for a reason I’m unaware of. Then, like most members of D.O.M., she was aware of Nat’s close relationship with Vince and correctly assumed that Vince would be the next obvious target.

Wait. Mr. Lawrence said that Vince had several girls he could have swapped her out for without knowing. What if Ellis was of his partners, too? What if he’d accidentally let slip about the videos and that’s how she knew? Then it would be completely plausible that she was in the room when it should have been Natalie.

So, by this reasoning, her motive is the knowledge of the video. Meaning that her next target…

Oh, shit.

Her next target would be the only other person who knows that the tapes exist.

Alyssa McDougall.

I wrench my hand out of the bright-green bag so fast that it falls to the floor and scatters the colorful candies across the black carpet. Simultaneously, I start my engine and dial Alyssa’s number. When it goes to voicemail, I use voice control to call her again. But it happens again.

“Call Drake,” I tell my phone.

“Dialing Drake,” it responds. Two rings, and then, “What?”

“Alyssa!” I shout, beeping my horn at someone driving too slowly. I move into the next lane, overtake them, then cut back in front with my foot down. “She’s the only other person who knows about the tapes and she isn’t answering her phone!”

“Where are you?”

“Like two minutes away from her house. If that. And I think I just ran a red.”

“Don’t worry about that now. Get to the house, and if you can get inside and confirm Ellis is there, do it. But try to stay out of sight until we get there. I’m calling the sheriff now.” Then, he hangs up, and I pull up outside the huge house thirty seconds later.

Apparently, I was driving faster than I thought. I wonder if I can charge the red light and speeding tickets to the mayor on account of potentially saving his wife and all.

I leave my purse in the car, but I take my keys so I can lock it. My keys end up in my bra, because, well, I have nowhere else to put them where they won’t jingle.

My heartbeat is racing while my stomach does some kind of anxious shimmy as I approach the front door. It’s ajar, and that only sends my heartbeat skyrocketing even higher. The silence of the house as I step on the top step, though, has my badass gene kicking into action. My adrenaline spikes, and although I know I should probably hide and wait for the police, my curiosity is stronger, and I slide through the gap in the door.

Drake’s gonna kill me. So is Trent. Probably Nonna, too, actually.

A floorboard creaks to my immediate left, and I turn, my head instantly reaching up my dress for my gun. I meet the eyes of a timid girl no more than twenty and hold my finger against my lips.

“Upstairs,” she mouths.

“Go out the front door now,” I whisper to her, that one word confirming everything. Like the fact that I should go back outside. “The police are on their way.”

She nods quickly, hugging herself so tight that her knuckles are white.

I’m guessing that Alyssa sent the staff “home” at Ellis’s request—except most on them live on site or in a separate part of the house.

I remove my gun from its holster, thinking this is my best bet for safety right now. Except leaving.

Jesus, I’m not going to let her scare me out of here. Besides, the bitch shot my brother.

I keep to the edge of the stairs as I take each one tentatively. It’s too quiet in this house. Yet another reason why I should turn around and go.

Damn feet take another few steps upward.

“Oh, come on!” Ellis yells out of nowhere. “You have to know where it is!”

I pause at the top of the stairs, just able to see inside the room they’re in. The same one as before again. I wonder if Alyssa lives in this room. Mind you, there was a wall pretty much lined with books. I’d probably live in that room, too.

“Trust me, darling,” Alyssa replies, sitting at one edge of the couch, her legs crossed like a lady. “If I knew where it was, I’d happily hand it to you.”

To anyone else, she’d look as calm as a puddle of water after a storm, but I can see the tremble of her fingers as they rest on her knee, and her rapid blinking hints at her fear.

“Madison has to know,” Ellis growls.

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about!” Madison protests.

I lean to the right and catch sight of her. Tears are slowly falling down her cheeks, and her bottom lip is quivering. My view of her is interrupted when Ellis steps forward with a gun in her hand.

Oh, joy.

And she points it toward Alyssa.

“Ellis,” tumbles from my lips. Aw, fuck it. Brain-to-mouth filter, you bastard. “She doesn’t know,” I say softly. “She has no idea about her parents’ relationship.”

Ellis turns to me, her gun still on Madison. “She knew about us though, didn’t she? Me and Natalie?”

I’m sorry, what?

“I didn’t until I saw you!” Madison cries, and Alyssa squeezes her hand. “I was trying to scare her into going away so I could be with Nick! I didn’t know you were with her!”

“You’re her stalker?” I ask Madison. “You?”

Madison squeezes her eyes shut and nods. “I wanted her to leave. I thought she’d be alone. I didn’t even know she was bisexual until Ellis came downstairs with her.”

Oh, fuck me.

“She wasn’t bi. She was a fucking liar!” Ellis yells. “She lied to everyone. I loved her and I loved him, but she lied.”

“She was doing what was best for her baby,” Alyssa says softly. “As wrong as it was.”

“No. She was messing with everyone. I was nothing more than her scapegoat!” Tears fill her eyes. “And then she got herself killed!”

“Why did you do it, Ellis?” I ask. “And Vince, too? Was it just the video?”

“They wouldn’t give it to me,” she hisses, turning to me. With her hair spiked and her cheeks flushed, she looks anything but angry. She looks deafeated and helpless. “They were going to use it to blackmail that cheating bastard further, to get even more money for themselves.”

“Vince never was. He was videoing Natalie for Alyssa. He had no reason to video you. Yours exists because of Natalie, I’m sure.”

“No! He was working with her all along. Even when he was fucking me, he was thinking of her!” Her voice is shrill now, and her hand is shaking so violently that, if she relinquished her grip on that gun for half a second, it would clatter to the floor.

She isn’t a cold-blooded killer. She’s a young woman who had her heart broken and her trust betrayed by someone she loved more than anything. She didn’t act out of spite. It was desperation.

“Ellis, listen to me,” I breathe.

“I didn’t mean to kill her!” she screams, grabbing the gun with her other hand. “I just meant to push her. I wanted her to beg me for mercy, but it was too late. She was already dead. Vince too. I wanted him to know that it was his fault she died. I wanted him to ask me to let him live. But I knew he’d tell. And it was a little harder. I pushed down, and he was weak. He didn’t deserve her! I did! But now, she’s gone and I don’t have her at all.”

“Honey, please,” I plead, seeing Alyssa pull Madison behind Ellis. “The police will be here any minute.”

Alyssa and Madison skirt around the room until they reach me, and I pull them both behind my body. Hey, I have the gun if she tries it.

The tears are falling out of Ellis’s eyes quicker than she can control them, and every part of her is tense. Even her breathing is speeding up, and she’s gasping now, harshly and painfully.

“Put your gun down, Ellis. Please. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Her smile is jittery and weak, and she drops one hand from the gun and holds the muzzle against her temple, angling it in such a way that one bullet would… Well.

“It does,” she whispers as footsteps thunder up toward us. “I’m sorry.”

Oh, hell no.

I lift my gun and squeeze the trigger before she can. My bullet flies into her elbow, and she screams, dropping her gun. It discharges, her bullet soaring into the window and smashing it. Ellis falls to the floor, clutching her arm, and I take a few steps forward and kick her gun out of her reach.

I’m sorry she was so desperate, but I’m not sorry for her. Justice is justice, and she has a fuck-ton of it coming her way.

Cops storm past Alyssa and Madison standing in the doorway. Alyssa’s arms are tight around her daughter, and through the crowd of officers, most in uniform, I find Drake’s eyes. Trent is right behind him, and after I give him a nod, he walks straight to Ellis and demands that someone call him an ambulance, cuffing her uninjured wrist.

“Madison,” I tell Drake as he stops in front of me, glancing at her. “She was our stalker. It was a childish move. I don’t think she’ll be a problem in an interview.”

He nods and grabs Detective Johnson, relaying exactly what I just told him. He walks over to her, exchanges a few words with her, and I look away as Madison holds her hands out to be cuffed.

Drake touches two fingers to my chin and raises it. “You’re okay?” he questions.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“What happened?”

“The short version is that, apparently, crazy in love is a real thing, and you can die of a broken heart. Or want to, at least. So Ellis Law might not have much of an elbow left, but it’s easier than cleaning up a brain. So.” I shrug a shoulder. “Plus, that was for Brody. You’d rather me get revenge than Nonna.”

Drake smiles slowly, pressing his thumb to my lower lip. “Excellent work, Ms. Bond.”

“Why thank you, Detective.”