Page 4 of Lone Star Witness

“No hospital,” he muttered, and he kept his gaze locked with hers. There was both annoyance and concern in her crystal gray eyes.

Something else, too. Something he couldn’t put his finger on. Sometimes, in an unguarded moment he’d seen heat in those same eyes.

Heat for him.

It’d been mutual since his own eyes hadn’t always been able to shut it down right away. But this time, it was only a flash of heat, followed by those other things.

Annoyance.

Concern.

Something else.

“The knife,” she continued, moving onto the gash on his left forearm. She snapped on a pair of gloves, then removed the bloody gauge bandage so she could examine it.

In the bright light, Slade could see that it, thankfully, wasn’t that bad. Bleeding, yep. It was doing plenty of that. Hurting. Yep, that, too. But it didn’t look that deep. That was something at least.

“The last time I stitched you up, you had to drop your pants,” Marise remarked.

Slade could almost smile about that. Almost. “Shrapnel the shape of an arrowhead on my right ass cheek.”

“I hope it didn’t leave a scar,” she said, and then added, “It missed your weird-looking longhorn tat by this much.” She held up a tiny space between her thumb and her index finger.

He made a sound of agreement. “Weird looking because it was done by a drunk tat artist on my eighteenth birthday. I can thank my brothers, Jericho and Nash, for arranging that.”

And because of said drunkenness, the longhorn looked cartoonish and, yes, weird.

“How are Jericho and Nash?” she went on a moment later.

He nearly asked her why she was going the chit-chat, small talk route, and then he felt the jab of the needle. Shit. It added hurt to the hurt, but he realized she’d been trying to distract him while she gave him something to numb him up.

“Jericho and Nash,” she repeated. “How are they?”

“Good. All three of us still work for Maverick Ops.”

“Three heroes,” Marise concluded.

“Three operatives,” he corrected.

She shrugged in a way to let him know she preferred her own description. “And you’re all doing okay with the death of your other brother, Bodie?”

It was a hard question to answer. Not because it conjured up grief but because Bodie had been a damn waste of space. A cowardly predator who’d tried to murder an eighteen-year-old girl when she’d turned him down.

“Three operatives, one dick in the family,” he supplied. Then, he amended that. “Two dicks. Bodie took after our dad.”

She looked at him, and he could see she remembered the alcohol-fueled conversations they’d had about his sperm donor father. Basically, he was a misogynistic asshole who’d gotten away with murder.

Specifically, the murder of his wife.

Of Slade’s mother.

It’d happened shortly after Slade had left home, which meant he hadn’t been there to stop it. Or to prevent his SOB father from disappearing, probably so he wouldn’t have to face justice.

But that was old baggage he didn’t want on his plate right now so he pushed it aside and got down to the reason he was here.

“What did you want to talk to me about?” he came out and asked while she began clearing the wound.

Marise didn’t jump to answer. In fact, she didn’t answer at all until she was done with the cleaning and had started the stitches.

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