Page 67 of Looking Grimm

Holland sighed loudly. “Preston, I can take this from here.”

“You sure you don’t want me to protect you from the big scary criminal?” The ambassador postured, seeming to swell inside his suit. It was starched stiff and predictably navy with a red tie and a new flag pin on the jacket lapel.

Holland plucked the remote from his grasp, then tossed it onto the tray table. “I think I can manage,” she said.

Preston cast another glance at me. I definitely didn’t look like a killer now, shackled to a bed smelling of smoke and crusted with my own blood. Disconcerting as it was to know they’d changed my clothes while I was unconscious, it would have been worse if they’d bathed me, too.

The ambassador gave Holland a parting kiss on the cheek. His lingering eye contact with me sent a message of possessiveness that I was half-inclined to respond to. But telling him I preferred to take dick than give it to Holland or anyone else would only fuel his masculine rage, so I kept my thoughts to myself.

His exit left a void in the room.

Holland remained in place, fidgeting with the silk tie on her blouse until I asked, “You still gonna marry that asshole?” The question was superfluous considering the diamond solitaire glistening on her left hand.

She rolled her eyes toward me. “He doesn’t care for you, Fitch. That doesn’t make him an asshole. It makes him discerning.”

I sniffed.

Quiet resumed.

My awareness of the room trickled in gradually. It was a familiar scene, including Holland’s presence. She’d kept vigil after Jax’s interrogation room attack when I was hooked up to the same IV tree and blood bags that now hung overhead. The monitors beeped, and clear tubing ferried plasma and saline and a half dozen other things to the needle jutting out of my arm. A pulse monitor was clipped to a finger on my left hand, communicating a steady heartbeat.

I looked beyond the medical equipment to the rest of the room. The blinds were drawn over the lone window, and a watercolor painting hung on the wall beside it. A tiny television was mounted in the corner, dark and lifeless. Returning to Holland, I found her standing with her shoulders uncharacteristically slumped. She looked miserable, and not just because her fiancé was a Grade A douchebag.

“You could do better,” I told her.

“Why do you care?” She pinned me with a scathing glare, then held up her hand. “Don’t answer that. In fact, don’t say anything at all.” Shaking her head caused her paper-white locks to swish across her shoulders. She moved away from the bedside and began a slow circle of the room, seeming to feel as trapped as I was.

While she walked, my brain played catchup.

Nash turned me in. He called the Capitol to save my life or, more accurately, to delay my death. I couldn’t fault him, just like I couldn’t shake the look of desperation I’d seen on his face moments before I blacked out.

He was a good man, and I still couldn’t fathom his affection for me. I was, undeniably, the furthest thing from boyfriend material. I was allergic to commitment andweighed down by a mountain of baggage that came in the form of Wanted posters and would-be assassins.

Not that any of that mattered since the next time I’d see him would be from my knees on the Capitol stage, waiting for the guillotine blade to drop.

“I don’t enjoy this.” Holland had stopped at the foot of the bed to stand framed between my sheet-covered feet.

My brows furrowed. “You think I do?”

She gripped the beige plastic footboard, twisting her hands around it in a worrying motion. She was taking too long to get to the point, wasting time. Though, with me arrested, I imagined her schedule was looking mighty clear.

I was about to ask what she was really doing here—she certainly hadn’t come out of concern for my wellbeing—when she spoke again.

“The man who called us, Nicholas Nash, who is he to you?”

A loaded question, and I had options for answers.

My whole world? My reason for living? The only good thing left in this shitty town?

No, I couldn’t say any of that. Being caught with me was enough to put Nash in hot water. Giving me a place to stay and providing me with anything more than friendly customer service could make him accessory to my crimes. The less the Capitol thought of our relationship, the better.

“He’s just a bartender,” I replied. It hurt to reduce him to that. “And I have a drinking problem.”

Holland hummed a low note. She looked unconvinced. “We brought him in for questioning. He had a lot to say about you.”

Keeping my expression neutral became more challengingas Holland carried on. “He said you were with him when the Capitol was attacked. And that he’s willing to testify to the fact.”

But I hadn’t been with Nash. I was at Ripley’s, which made any testimony Nash might give an opportunity for the opposing counsel to rake him over the coals for my sake.

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