Page 122 of A Smile Full of Lies
“Stay with me, Ros,” I said, voice low and steady even as my heart jackhammered. “Don’t you fucking die on me.”
My phone buzzed against my hip — Hale calling, probably following up on the wire. I silenced it and kept pressure steady, watching the slow, ragged rise and fall of her chest.
“You did good,” I whispered. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now.”
But the floor was still slick with blood, and I didn’t know if safe would be enough.
The EMTs pushed through the door the same second Hale stepped into the apartment, his boots crunching glass and debrisas his gaze swept the scene. He clocked the body first — Thayer, crumpled near the kitchen, blood blooming across his chest from the two holes I’d put in it, not to mention the halo of red around his head.
Then he saw Ros.
“Jesus,” Hale muttered, already pulling gloves on. “Talk to me.”
“She’s stable — for now,” I said, not bothering to sugarcoat it. “One slash wound to the abdomen, one stab wound to the chest. Knife’s still in his hand.” I nodded toward the blood-slick blade. “He was going in for a third strike when I put him down.”
One of the medics was already working on gauze and fluids. The other called for backup transport.
“She was wired,” I continued. “I’ve got the flash drive in my cruiser and an audio backup running on my phone. He confessed to the Stonewood Slaughter — said they weren’t supposed to be home, he panicked when the trip got canceled and Henry came out of his home office waving a gun at the crew who was there to rob the place. The asshole even bragged about keeping the shell casings as trophies in a safe.”
Hale’s face went hard, his eyes flaring with something sharp and personal.
“You sure?”
“Got it all. Name, motive, location of physical evidence. It’s ironclad.”
“And the safe?”
“Fingerprint lock, most likely. We’ll need a warrant.”
“You’ll have it.” His jaw flexed. “And the confession?”
“Clear as day. He even laughed when he said it.” My stomach twisted. “Said he was smarter than everyone else. Smarter than Knox.”
Hale glanced at the body, then back to Ros as the EMTs lifted her onto the stretcher.
“Go with her,” he said. “I’ll secure the scene, get the warrant moving. If those shell casings are where he said, this whole case just cracked wide open.”
I gave him a grim nod and followed the stretcher out the door, my badge clipped tight and my heart hammering harder than I’d ever admit.
We had our suspect. Now we just had to make sure the girl he’d hurt lived long enough to see him buried.
Soon, the sirens howled through the darkness, painting the quiet streets of Stonewood in pulses of red and white. It was well past dusk now — long shadows swallowed by night, the streetlamps casting gold halos across narrow roads and shuttered storefronts. Most of downtown was closed. The bakery. The hardware store. Even the barbershop Knox’s dad used to take him to as a kid. I knew far too much about that family.
Everything felt too still, except the inside of this ambulance.
Ros lay on the stretcher between two EMTs, her breathing shallow, the bandage over her abdomen already half-soaked with blood, and the one on her chest soaked even darker with blood. One of them was pressing hard against the wound, trying to slow the bleeding. The other was adjusting the IV line, checking vitals.
“BP’s dropping. 82 over 54.”
“Keep that pressure steady. She’s going hypovolemic.”
My stomach twisted. I gripped the support bar tighter.
Ros looked small under all those wires. Frail in a way that made my skin itch. Her lips were pale, and she was drenched in sweat, jaw slack, lashes fluttering like she was trapped somewhere between here and wherever you went when you were too damn close to bleeding out.
“You stay with me,” I said quietly, leaning in. “You don’t get to tap out now, Coop. Not after everything.”
She stirred — barely. A twitch of her fingers. A hitch in her breath.
