Page 113 of Charity's Redemption

He wilted under his own weight, his eyes rolling into the back of his head as he tipped backward.

My chest heaved as I glanced up at Charity. She’d dismounted the nearly unrecognizable senator with ropes of blood crisscrossing her chest and face as though someone took a paintbrush and flicked it on her.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I nodded, adjusting my cufflinks as the knife she’d held in her hand flew past my face with a whirring wind.

My breath hitched in my lungs as I turned.

The large bodyguard had risen with his gun half drawn, a knife sticking out from his throat. He wrapped his hand around the knife, stumbled back with a gurgle, and fell to the ground with a crash… dead, just like that.

I exhaled.

It was over. She’d done it. Although I’m not sure how we’d get away from this mess without our prints being everywhere. But that was the topic for a moment later.

“Are you okay?”

Charity nodded with a smile on her face, her eyes large and dilated.

I glanced around at the bodies before me when my heart dropped into my stomach.

Zoe raced into the living room towards Charity with her arm raised above her head. A large stainless steel butcher knife gleaned in the light as she barreled towards her, crying out moments before sinking it into Charity’s back.

My heart stopped as she collided with the hard floor.

I bent down and grabbed the gun from the unconscious man, aimed at Zoe’s chest as she came down on top of Charity’s back, ready to stab her again, then pulled the trigger.

Her body jerked, and the knife fell from her hands, landing beside Charity’s upturned face, burning with horror and surprise.

“No,” Charity cried as she scrambled to her feet, wincing with pain. “You stupid, stupid girl.”

Zoe lay on her back, her body jerking but alive—her eyes wide with fear.

Charity stood, holding one arm, her gaze frantically looking around at the scene before us.

“Is he dead?” she pointed to the guard before me.

“No.” I dipped down and touched my fingers to his pulse beating in his throat. “Unconscious.”

She nodded, then held out her hand. “Whose gun is that?”

“His.” I pointed to the unconscious man.

She walked around me to the man with the knife sticking out from his neck.

“What are you doing?”

“Setting the stage.”

My mind kicked into overdrive as I thought of all the legal processes CSI followed in order to gather evidence. The fingerprints, the blood splatter, the minute details I couldn’t conjure in my heightened state.

“How are you going to do that?”

She bent over the dead man and removed his gun from his holster, then hurried over to the woman on the ground, still gasping for air.

Charity kneeled beside her and whispered something in her ear as tears fell from Zoe’s eyes, soaking her cheeks and hair.

A somber moment passed between them, one that tugged on my heart strings, even just a little.

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