Page 21 of The Woman with the Wallet

It was the kind of voice that could make anything he said sound sexy.

I was pretty sure if he told me the barometric pressure was at 30, I would slip out of my panties.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” I asked, turning and moving back into the apartment, dropping down onto the chair I’d just abandoned, the brass band playing in my head making it impossible to do anything but try to rub the pain away.

Miko followed behind, bringing his scent with him. It was warm and rich—whiskey and tobacco. It made me immediately imagine walking into some speakeasy in the 1920s. Oddly enough, he would fit right in there, providing contraband booze, no doubt.

He closed and locked the door behind him but didn’t come to sit across from me at the table. Instead, he leaned against the counter in the kitchen.

I could feel his gaze on me. But I was too distracted, wallowing in my misery, to wonder what he was thinking.

“If you’re going to shoot me, can you just get it over with? It would be a mercy at this rate,” I added, cradling my head.

“Did you take anything yet?”

All I managed in response was a head shake.

“Okay,” he said, and I heard his footsteps moving through the wrecked apartment. The guy had done a surprisingly thorough job tossing the place in a short amount of time.

I wanted to get it cleaned up before Megs and Nicole got home. But I was pretty sure I’d throw up all over the place if I tried to move right then.

So I stayed exactly where I was.

Eventually, I heard Miko coming back. The fridge opened and closed. So did some cabinets.

And then, something clinked down in front of me.

“Water. Meds. You don’t have the good stuff, but this should help.”

I wasn’t even going to question him on that. I reached for the pills, throwing them back and swallowing a few sips of the water before going back to my rocking and cradling.

To his credit, Miko didn’t shoot me. Or, worse yet, pepper me with a million questions while I was trying to just get through the next moment.

It wasn’t until a solid half hour later that the meds started to take the sharp edges off the headache, and I sat back in the chair to suck in a greedy breath that he said anything.

“Little better?”

“Yeah,” I said with a deep sigh.

“I’m not here to shoot you,” he said as my gaze lifted.

“I dunno. I might shoot me if I were you. With, what, half to three-quarters of a million in the wind?”

To that, he exhaled, nodding. “Sometimes life fucks you in the ass, sugar. Not much we can do about it in the moment.”

“If I’d just gotten to my knife…”

“You’d have pissed him off more. And you probably wouldn’t be breathing. This sucks,” he said, waving toward my face. “But you’ll survive it. Though, three women living alone? What fucking reason could you have for not having a gun?”

“My roommate is a pacifist,” I admitted.

“Defending yourself is a fuckuva lot different than gunning someone down on the street.”

Honestly, I agreed. I’d debated getting one without telling Megs many times. It was my fault she didn’t see things the same way I did. I was the one who’d put those rose-colored glasses on her face. I couldn’t be mad that she saw the world differently because of it.

Hell, she might even agree to it once she got a look at me.

Though, rationally, I knew what she would say. That I needed to get out of dangerous work. That I had to stop lifting wallets.

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