Page 52 of Arrogant Bastard

“I got Betty to back trace surveillance in the streets around the club. There’s footage of her around the time you mentioned. She wasn’t trying to evade the cameras.” He stares at the picture on the screen and shakes his head. “Although, fuck me, what the hell is she wearing?”

I join him at the desk and stare at the familiar figure on the monitor. “Yeah, she turned up looking like a bag lady. I think she gets a kick out of it.”

He relaxes in his seat. “You didn’t happen to keep the number she called you on, did you?”

I shake my head. “Nope, there was no caller ID. And since I didn’t want her to reach me in the first place, I didn’t ask for her number. I even disposed of my phone and bought another one the next day to make it more difficult for her.” A wasted effort, it turned out. My eyes narrow. “Are you thinking of contacting her?”

He shrugs. “I don’t want to waste time on her if she’s not pertinent to what’s happening now.”

“But…you think she is.” It’s not a question.

Another shrug. “I have a feeling we’ll find out soon enough.”

Chapter Fifteen

B/Faith

We stare at the monitor for another few seconds, and then my gaze shifts to the one on the far left. There’s a picture of Paul Galveston on one side of the screen, and an image-recognition software program running on the other. Behind the images, lines of code race up in dizzying motion.

Poor Betty is working her digital fingers to the bone.

My gaze darts to Galveston, and I can’t stop the shiver that races through me. Killian’s fingers trace down my lower arm to circle my wrist.

“Hey, we’re going to get through this shit. Okay?”

Although I nod, I can’t look away from the screen. The memory of aiming my weapon, and squeezing the trigger, rises up like an unstoppable nightmare before my eyes. I should’ve gone for a head shot, the way I’d been trained to. Why the hell didn’t I?

Because when it came to it, I wasn’t a killer? I silently shake my head.

From the first moment I stepped into the gunroom at the Fallhurst Institute, I felt at home. Cradling my first gun turned me on. The power. The danger. I’ve blocked it all out. But now the stinging memory returns. “Am I a horrible person, Killian?”

He jerks in surprise. “What?”

I wrap my arms around my middle and move away to the window. My unsettled gaze bounces over the skyline before I turn back to him. He’s swiveled around in his chair and is watching me. “I shot him, and I didn’t even feel bad.”

His beautiful eyes turn to ice chips. “Why the fuck should you feel bad for defending yourself against an asshole who was coming at you with the intention of doing you harm? Who ended up doing you harm?”

I shake my head. “But I shot him. In the chest. I watched him bleeding out. We were in the middle of a fucking desert. How is he still alive?” I know my questions are irrational, but I can’t help myself.

“The motherfucker stabbed you. You’d lost a lot of blood and were struggling to stay conscious. Your aim was probably off. You can’t blame yourself.”

My gaze veers away but I still feel his slowly trace down my body. A minute passes.

“Show me the scar,” he says thickly.

I freeze, and my heart starts hammering. “What?”

“At the hospital, they said they were having a hard time stopping the bleeding because your wound was deep. It was why you slipped into the coma. I’ve never seen it. Will you show it to me?”

I shake my head. “It’s not very pretty.” And it’s intensely personal. More than he will ever know.

“I have some not very pretty ones too. Let’s compare,” he tosses out jokingly. Except I know it’s not a joke. The look in his eyes is deadly serious.

This is my cue to leave. Return to the safety of my bedroom. “You first,” I murmur.

He immediately pulls his T-shirt off, leans forward, and points to the inch-wide raised scar on his lower back.

“I know that one,” I say. A shallow knife wound sustained in a back-alley fight in Croatia on his second assignment. I have caressed it many times while I explored his body. Kissed it while he slept.

---