Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 98819 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98819 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
And then. . . silence.
My ears are ringing again, and I taste ash. Bright lights flash behind my eyes.
And then Rex is lifting me, carrying me to the car. I cling to him, half-hunched into a ball. The world has gone gray.
Rex bundles me into the back seat and slides in beside me. “Alfie, get us out of here.”
I’m half in his lap. “What happened?”
“The warehouse. It exploded.”
I manage to turn my head and see the plumes of smoke and ash filling what was once a clear blue sky. The warehouse walls are caved in, and whole sections have been turned to rubble.
My teeth start chattering, and I’m rocked with a whole-body shiver. My adrenaline crashing and the fear rolling through me are too much to contain.
“My gods, Rex. We almost died.” A few minutes ago, Burgess had me locked in the warehouse. Now he’s dead, and the warehouse is gone.
“I know.” He squeezes me tight, and I’m relieved because his arms are the only thing holding me together.
Someone planted a bomb in the warehouse, enough to blow it sky-high. Was it the Bondage Killer? Was Burgess working with him this whole time?
My mind blanks. I can barely hold myself together, much less think of any answers. I lean into Rex, slumping against him as the car turns a corner and carries us away.
Rex
* * *
Sirens scream in the distance. I instruct Alfie to call the authorities and then Hamish to tell him we’re okay. The car will take us to Hotel Magnifique, where we’ll need to dig into Burgess and figure out his part in all this.
But all that can wait. I have Inara safe in my arms. She’s curled into me, shivering like she just had a nightmare. I want to soothe her, but I’m fighting the urge to strip off her clothes and touch her everywhere and make sure she’s real.
I was so close to losing her. If I hadn’t found out about Burgess in time—
“How did you know I was in trouble?” she asks.
I press my lips to her temple, unable to keep from kissing her before answering, “We got evidence that Burgess was the one who left the birds in your apartment. A neighbor saw him leaving that night. One of my team canvassed the neighborhood and got her to make the ID.” All my tech and an old-fashioned eyewitness broke the case. “Hamish reported it just as we realized you texted Ivan that you were headed to a crime scene with Burgess.”
She coughs, and I fumble for a water bottle. This car is state-of-the-art, with turbo engines and anti-surveillance technology, but it needs more cup holders.
Once she drinks some water, I find wet wipes so we can clean some grit off our faces.
“I can’t believe Burgess was involved in this. I should’ve known.”
“We’ll look into it.” I tuck a strand of damp hair behind her ear and brush more debris off her head. I can’t stop touching her.
“His body. . .?” she trails off.
“Gone.” No need for a clean-up crew now. The explosions took care of that.
I’ll still have to reckon with Inara’s distress over killing a cop. I have zero moral qualms over Burgess’s death. He threatened her. He professed to be working with the Bondage Killer. Whatever his plan, he had her locked up in a place rigged to explode.
“Burgess said, ‘He wanted me to trap you.’ He was talking about Dennis Bundy. Did the Bondage Killer set those bombs?”
“I don’t know.” I have the world’s best explosives engineers working at Knight Corp, my PMC. I’ll offer their expertise to the NRPD to make sure we get a thorough analysis of the scene. “We’ll find out.”
“Why would he make the building explode like that? All his kills have been up close and personal.” Her teeth are chattering again. I instruct the car to increase the interior temperature.
“I’m usually able to hold it together better than this,” Inara says between shivers.
Is she really beating herself up for having an emotional reaction to all this? “You were betrayed by a man you thought you could trust.”
She snorts, and I amend my statement. “You thought he would have your back as a fellow cop.”
“I always knew he was rotten. But this. . .”
“You couldn’t have foreseen this.”
She jolts as if unnerved. She licks her lips, her gaze darting to my face and then away. There’s something she wants to tell me, but she’s still holding back. . .
“You don’t have to hide from me,” I say. It addresses her earlier statement and applies to whatever she’s reluctant to share with me now. “You don’t have to hold yourself together. Not around me.” Whatever she’s feeling, I can hold the space for it. If she breaks down, I’ll hold her tight and then help dry her tears. “I want to be here for you if you’ll let me.”