Page 28 of Mason

My shoulders tense. “Shelby?—”

“I can’t.”

“Okay, I’ll make the call.”

She goes pale, her head shaking almost instinctively. When her eyes snap to mine, there’s more fear in them now than when she was fighting for her life. Her voice is barely a whisper, but the urgency in it is razor-sharp.

“You can’t do that.”

Something dark and uneasy coils in my gut. “Why the hell not?”

She doesn’t answer right away. She just stares down at her hands, her breathing shallow.

I lean in, my voice low, edged with something sharp as my instincts kick into high gear. “Shelby, why the hell can’t I call the police?”

She swallows hard. I can practically see the war going on inside her—the battle between fear and the truth. Then, finally?—

“Because heisthe police.”

The words slam into me like a freight train, stealing the breath from my lungs. My body locks up, frozen mid-motion, as the blood rushes out of my head in a dizzying wave.

Everything in me freezes as I replay the fight—the face of the man now lying in a pool of blood on her floor. The way he fought. The way he moved.

No.

It can’t be.

I shake my head, my voice tight. “What do you mean?”

Her breath shudders as she looks up at me, her green eyes wide, shining with something raw and fractured.

“That was David,” she whispers. “My ex-husband. He’s a federal agent.”

11

MASON

Shelby Monroe just killed a man.

And the world will not be kind to her for it.

The justice system will not be kind to her. She’s killed one of their own, and regardless of the circumstances, they will lock her up and throw away the key. That’s what happens when you kill an officer of the law, regardless of the circumstances.

I stand over the body, the metallic scent of blood mixing with the crisp evening air. He’s sprawled on the floor like something discarded, the gun that ended his life nearby. I’ve emptied the bullets, in case Shelby gets any more ideas to be happy-snappy with it, and now I’m watching and thinking of the best way to handle the insurmountable weight of the problem that just landed in my lap.

I’m an enforcer. A fixer. Cleaning up messes is what I do best. But taking out a cop? That’s a whole different level of trouble—one even I can’t just make disappear.

David’s dead eyes are wide open, his lips parted in the shape of his last breath. He probably thought he had all the power in the world before those bullets lodged themselves in his back.

Shelby is across the room, pressed against the kitchen counter like she’s trying to fold in on herself. But there’s no undoing this. Her breathing is shallow, her hands gripping the lip of the counter so tightly her knuckles are white.

I should be comforting her. I should be telling her it’s over, that she’s safe, that he’ll never lay another fucking finger on her.

Because there is an upside to this situation.

There’s always an upside.

But that’s not the issue right now.

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