Page 97 of Keep You Close

Both?

The fuck was going on?

Was he high? Overdosing?

My gaze moved over him, seeing the white gauze wrapped around his upper arm where AJ’d stabbed him.

Nothing there seemed off.

But as my eyes found the gauze lower on his arm, I started to understand what was happening.

Because that gauze wasn’t clean and white.

It was saturated in fluids in various shades. The red of dried blood. And the offensive yellow of infection.

My gaze shot back up, taking in the state of him all at once again with this new knowledge. And now knowing exactly what was going on.

He was septic.

From the dog bite.

And from the looks of things, he wasn’t going to make it without immediate medical intervention. If even then.

I tucked the gun back away, knowing there was no way a man in his condition was going to be able to charge at me.

I realized as I watched the man for a moment that Kingston would be happy with this development. That my other siblings and the Mallicks would as well.

I didn’t have to kill anyone.

I just… needed not to call an ambulance.

Time and his raging infection would do the job for me.

I wondered, though, if this would be worse for AJ. Finding out that the bite from her dog had killed her ex.

But it wasn’t like Joss didn’t have it coming.

And Samson had done what he’d needed to do to protect his owner.

It wasn’t Samson’s or AJ’s fault that Joss hadn’t sought out medical treatment. Or sufficiently cleaned the wound.

Everyone knew dogs’ mouths were filthy.

Not getting treatment after a deep cut was just asking for trouble.

The kind that had clearly caught up with Joss. I moved around the living room, finding an open notebook set on a small table under the front window.

I flipped as much as my stupid leather gloves would allow, seeing a seemingly endless list of phone numbers. All of them but the last one with lines drawn through them.

Reaching for my phone, I snapped a picture of the page, wanting to know what those were about, then kept flipping through the notebook, but finding nothing else inside of it.

As Joss’s breathing got more and more erratic, and his consciousness seemed to be slipping away from him, I moved through the house, finding his laptop, phone, and his tablet, then slipping them into one of the bags from the kitchen, not wanting anything in them to lead back to the doggy daycare or AJ. I tossed the notebook in for good measure.

Then I stood there and watched as the man slid from mere unconsciousness to complete stillness over the next several hours.

I pressed my gloved fingers into his neck, finding no pulse.

It was done.

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