Page 85 of Sinful Promise
Her face is ghostly white, her eyes, wide like saucers. But she moves quickly and stands to face her enemy.
It’s who she is. Brave to the point of stupidity.
“Fletch,” she starts carefully. “You need to—”
“So you don’t deny it?” Calm. Collected. He reaches into his pocket and takes out the knife she used to pierce Fentone’s heart. I’m not sure she realizes what he has until he flicks the blade free and the steel shimmers in the midday sunlight.
“Oh shit,” she breathes. “Fletch. You need to—”
“Youneed to stop talking.” Incensed, he stalks forward, so for the first time in my life, I see my best friend as my enemy. A direct threat.
Charlie Fletcher is the best man I know, but right now, he carries a blade and walks toward the woman I would kill for.
The woman Ihavekilled for.
“It was you all along.” Snap the knife closed. Flick it open. Closed. Open. “Dowel was your first.” He stops six feet from us and looks down into Minka’s eyes. “You were new to town. And fuck, wouldn’t you have it that we were the assholes who caught the case?”
“Fletch—” she tries to step forward. But I hook my arm around her stomach and yank her back. “Archer! You need to—”
“You need to give a man his space.” I place her behind me and turn back to face my partner. My brother. “Calm the fuck down.”
“I don’t need to calm down, Archer!” He takes a step to the right and looks around me at Minka. “New to Copeland, and we have our first Vigilante killing.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“Don’t fucking lie to me!”
Venom bubbles in my blood, because brotherhood only stretches so far. Our friendship goes a ways back, but no one disrespects Minka and lives to tell the tale.
“You killed Tribble right in front of me.” His face is hard. His jaw taut, and his nose wrinkled with disgust. “You killed the dude like it meant nothing to you. But we labeled it self-defense and let you keep walking the streets.”
“Itwasself-defense.” She steps around me again, her hands lifted, and her chest heaving as she works to catch her breath. “Fletcher, Brantley Tribble was going to kill me. So I chose me over him.”
“But you did it so easily,” he snarls. “In the department, when we kill someone in the line, we’re forced into psych and put on leave until we’re straightened out. But you…” The knife opens. The knife closes. “You just went back to work like you’d done it a thousand times before.”
“I work with the dead.” She steps around me and meets my partner in no man’s land.
But fuck if I’ll let her stand there alone. So I snag the loop of her jeans and tug her back till it’s me and Fletch. Brother to brother. Cop to cop.
“You need to back up and take a fuckin’ breath,” I warn him. Slowly, his honeycomb eyes swing my way and look me up and down. “Whatever you think you know, you need to really think it through.”
“Don’t.” He slams his palm to my chest, square over the top of my still-healing bullet wound so the impact burns hotter than a thousand suns, and shoves me back until I crash into Minka. “Don’t look me in the fuckin’ eye and bullshit me, asshole. To lie to me about what she did is one thing. But to stand there and tell me to question my instincts is another.”
“You’re reaching!” I boom. “And you don’t get to accuse her—”
“I killed Fentone.”
My heart drops into my asshole as Minka steps around me and looks up at Fletch.
“I did it.”
“Minka!”
“You killed Dowel too.” His words are breathy and bordering on a growl. “Didn’t you?”
I throw my hand across to cup her mouth, but still, she nods her head. Peeling my hand off, she stands up to her fate and meets Fletch’s steely glare. “I took care of men who needed to be taken care of. Monsters like Dowel and Fentone.”
“You committed murder. Cold-blooded, and without first giving them a chance at trial.”
