Page 51 of Gifts

“I need to get home, Asa.” Her voice is sharp and steady. “My kids will get there any minute. I don’t want them to be scared when I’m not there.”

I climb up into the back of the rig and slam the door behind me. Sitting on the bench across from her, I start to unbutton my shirt. “My friend’s wife is at your house with one of our trainees. Trust me, they’ll be safe.” I look to the medic sitting next to Keelie and ask, “What happened?”

“She was grazed.” His eyes come to me as he keeps explaining. “She wouldn’t let me transport her and insisted I stitch her up here. Trust me, I tried.” He raises a brow. “But she did grill me about my qualifications first.”

I try to even my tone as I yank my shirt down my arms, leaving me bare chested. “Keelie, you need to be seen by a doctor.”

She shakes her head and looks away from me to her shoulder being stitched. “No. I need to get home and he said it wasn’t deep.” When her eyes come back to me, she adds, “He was a Marine and did this all the time in the field. He knows what he’s doing.”

I shake my head as I peel her blood-soaked silk shirt down her arm and toss it to the floor of the rig. Seeing her in a pale bra that’s almost the color of her skin with her tits swelling out the top while she’s getting stitches from an ex-Marine was not the way I planned on getting her shirt off of her for the first time.

“What are you doing?” she asks, not at all shy about sitting in front of two men while only wearing her bra.

I hold out my deep blue flannel for her. “Covering you up. You’re not gonna want to wear a bloody shirt home to see your kids.”

At the mention of her kids her eyes fall and her back slumps slightly. She holds out her good arm and I slip my shirt up as I swing a leg over the cot to straddle it. The shirt swallows her, especially when I cover her chest. “Lean into me.”

At first, she hesitates, but I hold her good shoulder to my chest, and she surrenders whatever steely emotion she was holding onto.

With my arm wrapped around her front, making sure she stays covered by my shirt, I look over her head at the medic. “You deaden that?”

He shakes his head. “She was in a hurry.”

I sigh. “Fuck, Keelie.”

She presses into me, her tone turning desperate. “I need to get home, Asa.”

I shake my head and instruct, “Hurry up—but do a good job. I don’t want her to scar.”

He nods and starts working again.

These stitches leaving a scar should be the least of my worries right now. But the thought of her owning a mark on her body because of me fuels my rage.

Emma, Levi, Keelie, and her kids. They’re all I can think about.

Besides revenge.

All of a sudden, I’m desperate for it.

Chapter 13

Slow Motion

Asa

As soon as Keelie was stitched up, she was hell-bent to get home. I put her and Emma in my truck and promised we’d leave soon. Emma was shaken and became a mute when the police wanted to question them. With no fucking idea what to do with her, I arranged for detectives to come to Keelie’s later so I could at least get them out of here.

I did find out while holding Keelie as she tensed under the needle and thread, that she saw handguns pointing out the windows of a blue sedan. It couldn’t have been too high of a caliber. No way would they have lived through that barrage of gunfire otherwise, even inside the van.

After taking a quick look at my house where the front rooms were shot to fucking shit, I instructed Levi to get all the computers and tablets and pack what he needed for at least the weekend. I went to Emma’s room and stuffed a bag full of whatever I thought she might want for the next few days and did the same for myself. That’s when I came back down the stairs to find Crew in my office, boxing up anything and everything that has to do with our work.

He looks up from the box he’s throwing shit into. “Have you talked to Carson yet?”

I toss three huge duffels by the front door. “I haven’t had a chance. I didn’t want to call him in front of Keelie. Has he pulled the video?” I have cameras all around my house and I’m anxious to see the footage.

“Yeah. It should be in your email. Call me after you watch it. We have a make and model—no plates. They were wearing masks, so no facial recognition. It was sloppy and elementary, but you never know. It could be blowback on us, but my gut’s telling me it’s not. They had no aim, shot high, and didn’t know what the fuck they were doing if their goal was to kill someone. This screams street thugs, not cartel or terrorists.”

Either way, the need to avenge my daughter and Keelie from attempted murder while sitting in front of my house has lit a fuse I’m having a hard time quenching.

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