Page 5 of The Last Promise You Made

She didn’t look like she believed me. Her look darted to the door.

“You want to leave?”

She nodded.

“I can take you somewhere safe.”

Her eyes landed on the dead woman, and a sob broke from her tiny chest. Tears poured over her lashes and down a cheek smeared with blood. She buried her face in her knees, her skinny shoulders shaking.

Fuck.

I wasn’t a kid person. My interactions with them were always awkward and choppy. My mom was desperate for either my brother or me to give her grandbabies, but she wasn’t getting them from me for multiple reasons. I loved my life working undercover for the National Security Agency and had no plans of slowing down or staying in one location long enough for family life to get its hooks in me.

As I lowered myself to my knees, I blocked the child’s view of the dead body. I might have been screwing with evidence, but I was more worried about getting the little girl away from here than protecting what could be found in the trash around her.

I glanced at the men. “We can’t let anyone see her. No one can know she was here.” I hesitated for a beat. “Get me one of the housekeeping carts.”

The officer left the room at a jog.

I turned back to the child, doing my best to soothe her and promising again to take her somewhere safe. She didn’t respond, but she lifted her head, eyes meeting mine in a way that let me know she’d at least heard me. I kept talking softly, and by the time the officer returned with the cart, her shoulders had dropped from her ears. I told her my plan to keep her hidden by bundling her into the laundry bin and wheeling the entire cart into the back of the CSI van where we’d take her to the police station.

When I reached out my gloved hand, she just stared at it.

I moved closer, keeping my voice and expression as gentle as possible. “You can’t stay here. I think you know that, right?”

Her gaze did another search of the room, tears still slowly rolling down her sweet face. Finally, she nodded in agreement.

I extended my hand again, and this time, she accepted it. As she stood, I saw blood coated her T-shirt and her arms. None of it appeared to be coming from her, so if I had to guess, I’d say it explained the smear along the victim’s chest.

She’d hugged the dead woman to her.

Double fuck.

Standing, the child seemed somehow even smaller. She was old enough to have lost the tubbiness of toddlerhood, but not old enough for hormones to have found her, so maybe six or seven.

I helped her over the bed frame and started toward the cart the officer had placed between us and Anna Smith. We’d just gotten to it when the little girl pulled away from me and ran to the closet and the ransacked suitcase.

To my surprise, she pulled back the inner lining and withdrew a letter-sized envelope. She pressed it to her chest and then turned wide eyes at me in a face as beautiful as the murder victim’s. They had the same high cheekbones and pointed chins with a fragile, haunted look to their frames—birds with broken wings.

I pushed the cart closer to her. “Is it okay if I lift you up? Put you inside?” When she didn’t respond, I mimed lifting her into the empty laundry basket.

She gave a barely perceptible nod, and I put my hands around her waist and raised her up. She seemed impossibly light as I set her inside. The sense of fragility hit me all over again and, along with it, a deep-seated need to protect her. She sat, still clinging to the envelope before pulling her knees up against her body once more.

“We’re going to cover you with some blankets, okay?” She just stared at me, and I turned to the officer, saying, “Get some from the next room.”

He left and came back, and between the two of us, we settled the blankets over her head.

The room faced the parking lot on the first floor, and the CSI van was parked mere feet away. The officer and I rolled the cart to it, lifting it into the back, and I followed it inside. No way was I leaving her. No way I’d let an eyewitness out of my sight, regardless of her age.

I looked out at the officer from the back of the van, eyeing his nametag for the first time. “Officer Ramirez, we need someone to take us to the station immediately.”

He went to radio it in, and I stopped him. “No. Not over the scanner.”

He stared at me for a second and then headed off.

It was barely two minutes later before he returned, climbing into the driver’s seat and pulling us out of the lot. News vans were parked across the street, and a horde of bystanders stood gaping just beyond the yellow crime-scene tape. I tried to reassure myself that there was no way any of them could have seen the child. No way for them to suspect we were hiding a little girl inside.

As we drove, I talked to her, even though I couldn’t see her. I kept reassuring her she was safe, reassuring her that whatever had happened, she was going to be okay. Words I shouldn’t have been promising, but couldn’t stop myself from offering.

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