Page 104 of Bourbon and Secrets

“Look at me,” Lincoln pleads, eyes wild and full of panic. His hands cupping my face, he pulls my body toward him, and I collapse against him in a momentary state of shock. “Look at me, baby. Are you hurt?” He looks around my body, but it’s not me that’s—Oh god.

“Maggie!”

Chapter 37

Lincoln

“Maggie!”Faye shouts frantically. “Lincoln—Oh fuck. There’s so much blood.”

I pull off my jacket and shove it along her back. Faye does the same with her shirt, pressing it along her side. Sirens blare and the red and blue lights swing in chaotic patterns along every inch of the back-alley entrance of Midnight Proof in the next few seconds.

Cortez rushes over, taking inventory of the shitshow that’s just transpired: Maggie unconscious, being hoisted onto a gurney and put into the back of an ambulance. Faye doing her best to hold herself together right now. My right hand and forearm blanketed in red.

Faye grips onto the front of my shirt, full-fisted and wordlessly begging to feel safe, grounded, anything other than what seeing her sister being rushed away is doing to her right now.

Cortez scans her quickly, from top to bottom. “Faye, are you hurt?”

“Yeah, she’s fucking hurt. She’s leaning to the side because that fucking animal punched her. That’s just the physical shit, Cortez,” I bark back. “This should have never gotten this out of hand, and you know it.”

He looks at me and then down at Waz slumped over, his own blood pooled around him. “Who did it?”

Faye’s hand squeezes my shirt tighter, her hold and breaths trembling and so unlike her. But we both keep our mouths closed without so much as a look at the other. “Maggie should have had back-up. Or some kind of surveillance, Cortez. You’re walking into a crime scene because it was self-defense against a fucking lunatic who has been loose in this town for far too long. Everyone knows it.”

The cop in full uniform comes over with crime tape and speaks to Cortez, “We have a DOA and a weapon.” He looks at both Faye and me pointedly before he says, “Are we?—”

Cortez canvasses Faye, and then focuses on her hand holding on to me. I don’t know what he’s trying to understand here, but he eventually clears his throat and says, “No arrests are necessary. I’ll need you to come down and give your statements. Go make sure Maggie will be okay.”

Faye nods, already stepping forward without letting me go.

With another look at the body, he adds, “The way it looks to me is that this was self-defense. You’re going to need to corroborate that, but based on what I heard on the phone call from Maggie, and what I see here, it’ll be written up as such.”

I give him a nod and fire off a text to Grant. He’ll be able to understand what comes next here. What, if any, repercussions I’ll see after all is said and done. Every muscle in my body is still wound tight, adrenaline coursing through me. The momentI saw Waz holding my girl’s face like that, I knew I would do whatever was necessary.I won’t lose anyone else.

“Faye,” Del calls out from his dark Crowne Vic and waves us over. “Get in. I’ll take you to the hospital.”

We shift into the back of the car, and as soon as the door closes, he floors it, practically catching up with the ambulance on the main road riding its siren.

“Faye, honey, I never wanted you in this position. I knew shit wasn’t stacking up right. Had a gut feeling that Maggie wasn’t just going to take a beating like that and keep working for them. When I saw you meeting with Cortez, and then the way Blackstone had been murdered...I know this wasn’t what you signed up for.”

She leans forward and holds his shoulder. He pats her hand. “Del, if you hadn’t called me, I don’t know what would have happened here.”

When we arrive at the hospital, it’s a whirlwind trying to find out anything right away. But now we sit and wait for Maggie to come out of this, detecting the faintest smell of cloves in the hallway near Maggie’s room as the doctors assess the state she’s in.

Faye’s arms wrap around my shoulders, and I’ve never wanted to hold on to anything so tightly in my life. We sit quietly together for what feels like hours. Dried blood on my shoes and flecks of it on my forearm are the only lingering hints that I just killed a man. It would guarantee me more rounds of therapy, but there’s no remorse in any part of me for having done what I did. What matters is that Faye’s safe.

“Thank you,” she says in a quiet voice. This isn’t how anyone expected this to go. She nuzzles into me and brushes her lips against my neck. “I’ve been trying to save other people for so long—” Her voice cracks, and she sits back. “I didn’t know what it felt like to have someone look out for me. Not like this.Lincoln, I’m so sorry I involved you in all of this. This was never your mess?—”

I wipe the tears pouring down her cheeks with my thumbs. “Look at me.”

She lets out an exhale as her eyes flit to mine.So beautiful.

“Hi,” I tell her softly with a smile.

It does what I want. She smiles back, and her body relaxes. “Hi.”

“Listen to me. I’mnot...going to say I love you while you’re covered in blood and in a hospital.”

Her hands find the hem of my shirt again as she plays with the material.

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