Page 44 of Assassin's Heart
I couldn’t believe I was thinking through the problem of hiding dead bodies.
“We’ve taken care of anything pointing to Brooke’s presence, but, Leah”—he glanced over his shoulder again—“you need to hurry.”
I thought about the shot Ross had taken, the angle, the blood— My heart clenched tight. “Right.”
Sliding out of the SUV, I whispered in Brooke’s ear, “You’re with me, babe, okay? Just keep your eyes closed. Mommy’s got you.” As we walked I said to Eli, “Give me your shirt.”
Like Remi, he wore a button-down over his vest. He stripped it off, and before walking through the door, I threw the shirt over Brooke’s head, murmuring reassurances to her the entire time.
The warehouse was a bloodbath. I tried hard to ignore that as I rushed across to where Remi knelt beside Ross, now laid out on the floor. “Leah.” Ross reached for me as I slid to my knees, taking Remi’s place. Eyes hazy with pain and something I prayed was regret, he reached for Brooke’s leg where it rested at my hip. “I’m sorry.”
You should be.The words were right there on the tip of my tongue, but I held them back. Ross had done something I’d probably never forgive him for, but he wouldn’t be around to live with that knowledge. I couldn’t bear to have him die with it. “I know.”
Ross coughed, spattering blood across his face. “They won’t stop,” he croaked. “Never.”
“I know,” I said again.
He reached for my hand, and I grabbed his, gripped it tight. “I took care…” he said. “Didn’t hurt her. Promise.”
He had. He’d hurt Brooke and me. Tears welled in my eyes. Angry tears. Devastated tears. “Ross—”
“I am…so sorry…Leah.” His head tilted back, and a groan escaped his lips. “So…sorry.”
I watched as he took a final breath, as his grip went slack in mine. I watched and I cried. For what had been. For what would never be.
And then I stood up and took my daughter out of there.
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter Eighteen
Remi —
We were fast, and we were fucking lethal. But as much as I had wanted to wipe every last man in this place off the face of the earth, Leah’s brother had not been marked for death.
He was dead anyway.
I’d seen the look in Leah’s eyes, the blank look survivors have when everything has just been too much and you can’t really register any more. She’d clung to Brooke as hard as Brooke was clinging to her, the only sure thing in a tsunami of events she couldn’t control. It would hit her later, but for now her focus was on the only thing that mattered: her daughter.
I shouldn’t wish I was included, that I was the one holding them both in my arms, keeping the outside world at bay. This wasn’t about me, for fuck’s sake.
I stood from where I knelt beside Ross’s cooling body. I’d retrieved his phone, making sure that nothing else on him or in his pockets pointed to Brooke or her kidnapping. The police would eventually figure out who he and his dead associates were, though probably not why they were all here, in this abandoned warehouse, with bullets in their bodies. The people who were important knew, and that was all that mattered. For now at least.
The back door to the warehouse banged open, and Eli stepped through, dragging the last body in from outside. Levi followed with a five-gallon container of gasoline. Cleanup duty. I walked toward them.
“Leah’s in the SUV,” Eli said, his voice strained as he pulled two hundred pounds of deadweight to the middle of the room.
I stripped off my gloves and added them to the center pile. “I’m taking them home.”
“Home?” Levi set the container on the concrete. Straightening, he pierced me with a look. “Do we need to talk about this, brother?”
About my woman? About what would happen next? “No.” I turned away. “Nothing to talk about.” We all knew this was temporary. Even after what I’d said to Leah this morning, even after calling herlev sheli—a name that told my brothers everything they needed to know about my feelings for her—this had never been anything more than a temporary situation. Leah had her daughter back. She’d watched us cold-bloodedly kill a dozen men. There was no room for a morally questionable assassin in that family unit.
Levi let me go. Outside, I hurried toward the SUV, frustration boiling inside at my inability to see through the darkly tinted glass to the woman I loved. Though it had been no more than twenty minutes since she had walked out of the warehouse, when I opened the driver’s side door, it was to the sight of Leah dozing in the front seat. Adrenaline drop. Brooke lay in her lap, her little girl features grubby from fear and crying, sound asleep.
Leah stirred when I closed my door.
“It’s all right,” I told her, reaching to turn the key in the ignition. “Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you when we get back to the house.”
