Page 68 of Memphis

“Bo, I got this. You need to rest. Stop worrying about me.”

He nodded again, and when I pressed my lips to his, he moaned, his hand on the back of my head. My body tingled like it always did at his touch. It was a fucking shame how much I loved this man.

“I’ll be back,” I said. “Your family is outside. Do you want to see them?”

He slowly shook his head and said, “Hell no. Just you.”

I didn’t bother speaking to the Pierces when I left. I informed the nurses that they weren’t to see him, and that was that. I didn’t have time to argue with them.

“I could’ve driven myself,”I said, my eyes on the windshield as Ray drove us to my house.

“Nah, you’re fucked up, as you should be. I got it,” Ray replied.

“Well, thanks for helping me.”

“Aw, hell. Yeah, I made the right decision. If you being nice to me and shit, you definitely don’t need to be driving.”

“If my sister and nieces didn’t love you, I’d shoot you right now.”

He chuckled. “There she is…therealMemphis King.”

“Mm-hmm.”

His phone rang, and he answered it through the car’s stereo system with, “Hola! What you got for me, Bruno?”

“We found the guys in the house across from the crime scene. Dead. One shot to the head each,” came the heavily accented voice.

“Shit,” I muttered. “How many did they find?” I asked Ray.

“¿Cuantos cuerpos?” Ray questioned the man.

“Dos,” Bruno quickly replied.

Bells and whistles went off in my head as he ended the call. “Should’ve been three,” I said more to myself than him. “All three were on duty last night. Either the third guy got away, or…”

“Or the third guy is the shooter,” Ray finished.

“Yeah.”

39

“All these fucking reporters, and is that Umber’s truck?” Ray asked as he pulled into my driveway. I’d been so far up in my head that I didn’t even notice her truck. Then again, the reporters and their vans were a valid reason to have missed it. I hated this shit. The issue wasthat this was a quiet neighborhood in the suburbs. Nothing ever happened here…until it did.

“Of course it is. Who else do we know with a dusty-ass pickup truck?” I replied.

Ray laughed. “Leave Umber alone. If we ever need to survive in the wilderness and shit, we got us an expert.”

I shook my head. “I really don’t have time to pretend I’m not a killer right now. She shouldn’t be here.”

“I know, but she’s probably just worried about you. Damn, am I really the voice of reason right now?”

“It would seem so because it ain’t shit reasonable about what I wanna do right now.”

“I feel you.”

He’d barely put his vehicle in park before I hopped out of it, making quick strides to my front door while ignoring the shouted voices of the reporters.

“Mem! Wait!” Umber called, her voice ringing loud as she climbed out of her truck and trotted toward me.

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