Page 22 of Out of Control

“I’m fine. In shock maybe?” I added to cover for my late response.

“Good. You!” he shouted to one of the uniformed cops who rounded the car. He pulled his badge out of his pocket, identifying himself. “The shots came from the direction of that building. We need it checked out. And we need a bullet-proof vest for her. She is the intended target, and we are not leaving from this spot until we know she will be safe when we do.”

I shuddered. There was that weird feeling of safety again, that with this man here next to me, nothing could go wrong. Blakehadthis. He had control of the situation, and he’d do what needed to be done up to and including covering me with the whole of his body to take a bullet for me. I was protected.

I met his eyes again.

“Don’t worry. We aren’t moving an inch until I know you will be safe.”

My heart beat hard against my chest. I might have been two inches from death for the second time this week, but I never felt safer in my entire life than this moment, when he held me tight in his arms.

nine

Lucas

Once the shooter’s building was finally cleared, I got a bulletproof vest on Athena and put a hand on the small of her back to guide her to my car. We needed to converge on a safe location.

“You ready to come to the station and talk now?”

“I’ll go to the station, but I don’t have anything else to say to you about your case. I’m not involved in anything.”

Yeah right.

Athena Kane may have finally agreed to let me protect her—from the Morellis or just Leo Lombardi didn’t matter—but I was more convinced than ever that she knew a shit ton more than she was letting on and probably wasn’t even a simple victim like I’d originally thought. She was into something shady.

“If some cop made a mistake and misplaced evidence, that’s not on me.”

Was she the reason Lombardi got out in the first place? But why would he want to kill her if she somehow helped him? Maybe he didn’t know Athena was the one who got his charges dismissed before he decided to take her out?

Was I making something out of nothing? We’d been assuming it was dirty cop Theo Gates who took the evidence before he disappeared. Athena wasn’t the only suspect. I had no idea if she was Lombardi’s lawyer or if she ever set foot in the police precinct before today.

“Whatever you say, Ms. Kane. Watch your head,” I said, hand going to the back of her head like I did with all the other criminals when I brought them in. The only difference with Athena was that she wasn’t handcuffed, and I led her to the front seat. Her glare told me she understood what I was doing and was none too pleased with the standard perp-head-guide. Good. Let her see how bad it could get if she didn’t start behaving. “Buckle up. It’s the law.”

But it was clear to me that I’d been too lenient in the case so far. I was trying (and albeit failing) to keep my distance from Athena, but I needed to bemoreinvolved,morevigilant. My CI died because I let him try to end things with the Morellis on his own terms before I pulled him. My witnesses Will and Claire were almost captured at the airport because I didn’t know enough about who Morelli had on the inside before it was too late.

I would be damned if I was going to let a potential suspect like Athena out from under my control until I knew for sure that she wasn’t in cahoots with the Morellis. Sure, she wasn’t some femme fatale foreign spy, but she could kick some seriousass; it was possible that the lawyer career was just a front, and she was a home-grown mercenary or even another enforcer like Leo Lombardi. She was intent that it wasn’t the Morellis that wanted to kill her, just Lombardi. Maybe he wanted her dead because they were rivals.

I looked over at Athena when I stopped at a red light. All of this was possible, but unlikely. It didn’t help my case to base my actions off of wild conjectures or far-out theories, and I usually never did.

But these were special circumstances.

I would do anything to close this case. I needed to qualify for the Crimes Against Children and Human Trafficking unit. I’d be glued to her side during every waking hour until I figured out what she knew. Whether she liked it or not, I wouldn’t be leaving Athena’s side. Someone was desperate to see her dead, so that meant she was important. I just had to flip her so she could be the key to solving this case.

We sat across the table from each other.

Athena wasn’t saying shit, and I wasn’t asking anything. It felt like a demented game of chicken, neither one of us wanting to give in first.

I glanced at my watch. It had been seven minutes.

She leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, staring at a space on the wall just past my left shoulder. I stared at her.

I told myself it wasn’t weird or creepy to look her over so thoroughly. She was a person of interest andI needed to understand her body language if I was going to get any information out of her. I needed to understand what it meant when she tilted her chin up defiantly; was it a moment of rebellion against the establishment, or a tell when she was hiding something? When she so adamantly refused to meet my eyes was it because she hated not being in charge, or was she just trying to piss me off?

I needed to know why she did the things she was doing.

And looking at someone easy on the eyes wasn’t exactly a chore.

Mark Rosenberg came storming into the conference room I’d commandeered, breaking up my staring contest.

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