Page 12 of More Than Nothing
A thousand volts punched Elenie in the sternum as those raven eyes shot to her face and down to her chest, before Martinez dragged them straight back up again, his shadowed, narrow faceinstantly mortified. Elenie shrugged and colored, blood sizzling in her veins like water on a hotplate.
“Not sure you’ll want it back.” His voice was gruff and he didn’t look at her again, but his hands moved gently as he cut through the elastic with a sharp pair of scissors. Dougie blew out a long breath and Elenie tried not to wince as the two ends of her bra fell into the dust. Swiftly and efficiently, the chief peeled away the bloodied socks, sliced a rough, rectangular opening in Dougie’s pants, cleaned and redressed the wound. He bound it neatly with a fresh bandage far better suited for the job than her tatty cotton underwear.
“You’re lucky the blood loss is no worse. The flow’s already slowing.”
“Yeah, feeling really lucky right now.” Dougie, white-lipped and clammy, managed a tight-throated chuckle.
“I’m using the term loosely.” Martinez smiled, and Elenie couldn’t help but notice how it transformed his serious face, lighting the hollows and relaxing his jaw. “You’re lucky it was a BB gun and that your pants took some of the impact.”
“If I was really lucky, it would have missed me,” Dougie groused.
“Either way, it’s time to get you some expert help. We’ll take my car. I’ll get someone to collect yours later.” Martinez climbed to his feet, reaching down to clasp the deputy’s hand. When Dougie’s feet slid on the sandy soil, Elenie stepped forward, and between them they pulled him upright and helped him hobble around to the passenger door. “I can drop you in town and have someone give you a ride home?” he suggested.
She was shaking her head before Martinez had finished. In no scenario whatsoever would she be placing her dust-covered, sweaty backside voluntarily in a police vehicle, no matter how much her internal voice groaned at the thought of the return trek up the hillside. “I’m fine. I can walk. Just go and get him sorted.”
“Yes, I need me some drugs and a pizza the size of my head—not necessarily in that order. It’s been a bitch of a day!” Dougie leaned across to shout through the driver’s window.
Elenie exchanged a look with Martinez; amusement skittered between them like a tentative touching of fingers. Finding it almost impossible to keep her thoughts straight under the focus of his full attention, she stepped back. “I’ll leave him with you then.”
He gave her a brief smile as he wrenched open the door. Elenie tried and failed to look away as his biceps bunched and rippled beneath the short sleeves of his shirt. Muffling a swoony sigh, she lectured herself on the benefits of keeping it real. This skyscraper of masculine perfection had already been exposed to her pathetic excuse for a bra and, undoubtedly, the arrest record of her entire family. On their first meeting, she’d been called scum and covered in vanilla ice cream and chocolate milkshake. For their third, she’d been accused of theft. And now, wearing a sexy mixture of perspiration, blood, and grime, she was ogling his muscles as if she had a fighting chance of ever being able to touch them.
In your dreams, Noodle Arms.
Dougie Taggart shot her a warm and weary grin as they cruised away. He raised his hand and Elenie nodded. She didn’t bother watching until they were out of sight; she had a long walk home and a ton of laundry to do.
Chapter 6
Roman
“I come bearing gifts.” Roman held up takeout coffee and two wrapped Italian subs as Dougie opened the front door of his apartment.
“Thank fuck for that. There’s nothing to eat in the house and I’m starving!” His deputy limped into the open-plan kitchen, pulling himself onto a bar stool in a pool of sunshine which lit him up like an actor onstage.
Sliding one sub over the counter, Roman peeled the paper from the other and took a huge bite. He’d just finished an early shift, missing lunch thanks to an abandoned car which had turned out to have blown a tire. “How’s the leg?”
“Sore but it could be worse. Itches like a bastard now and then—usually when I’m trying to sleep.” Dougie took a long drag of his coffee with a happy sigh. Relaxed and comfortable in cargo shorts and a college tee, he looked in far better shape than when Roman had driven him to the hospital.
After Dougie’s girlfriend, Summer, arrived, sickly green and worried, he’d headed straight to the Renner farm. Thinking he’d come to arrest them—“Believe me, I’m still considering it,” Romantold them with every bit of ferocious gravitas he could summon—the youngsters had broken down immediately.
“We didn’t know he was there!” Thirteen-year-old Sadie’s chin trembled. “I never meant to hit him. My shot clipped the boundary sign by our fence and it went off at an angle!” Her younger brother looked petrified.
Roman lit into them about gun safety, hammering home without mercy exactly how much worse the outcome could have been. He was pretty convinced neither of them would ever pick up a gun again, BB or otherwise. Dougie was declining to press charges but Roman had put the kids on community work for the whole summer with the grateful and remorseful support of their parents—litter picking, graffiti removal, and painting fences. Anything he could think of, basically. They would be his go-to mini-slaves for as long as it took them to learn from the experience.
Chatting as they ate, he and Dougie caught up on the latest news from the station. Despite the best efforts of his other two officers, further inquiries into the torching of Ray Parker’s truck had come to nothing, since proof of an argument was not enough to link Frank Dax to arson.
“And Millie Westlake?” Dougie asked.
“She’s out of hospital but she’s given us nothing on who sold her the pills. Says it wasn’t someone she knew. Her description is vague as hell—sounds like she straight up googled ‘drug dealer’ images for the details. Her parents are protective and she’s far from strong right now, so I’m not inclined to push any harder at this stage. But I’ve circulated the lab reports to see if we get any hits on busts with the same chemical balance.”
“If the drugs came from Dax—or someone like him—anyone around here would be terrified of ratting on him.”
“If the drugs came from him, I’ll find out. He’s been treading a fine line for long enough and I think he’s balancing right on theedge of it. I’m not Chief Roberts. I have no intention of sitting back and letting Dax ruin other people’s lives so that he can trade in for his next new truck.” Finishing his last mouthful, Roman stretched his legs out beneath the breakfast bar and propped an elbow on the counter. “Which leads me to Elenie. Tell me what you know.”
Dougie ran his palm over the light shading of stubble on his cheek. “Um, about something in particular?”
Picking a crumb off the front of his shirt, Roman licked it from his thumb. “Yeah, I want to know when she’s been in the station, what for, and why there are no details of her on file.”
Dougie’s eyebrows lifted. “There must be. Chief Roberts brought her in at least once a month. There was always something going down. Much like the rest of the family. Always in trouble of some sort.”
