Page 22 of Marked For Revenge

During the drive, Theo had used his hands-free to try to get some updates of his own, but he wasn’t having any better luck than Ava was. He’d had a fellow Ranger dig into Marnie’s background, to see if she was the kind of woman who would lie about Aaron’s alibis. Or if she was a woman who could really kill, but the only indication of that was Marnie’s devotion to her sister.

Maybe extreme devotion.

That info had come up when Harley had questioned the Bulverde cop, Sergeant Gideon Gonzales, who’d been in charge of the investigation into Christina’s death. According to Gonzales, Marnie had been beyond distraught over her sister’s death. Marnie had been hysterical and sobbing in the first interviews he’d done with her, and then when he’d gone out to her house to tell her that Christina’s death had been ruled an accidental overdose, Marnie had demanded that he arrest someone, that her sister’s death wouldn’t go unpunished.

Wouldn’t go unpunished was something that definitely stuck in Harley’s head, and it made him wonder if Aaron was right about the woman being capable of committing three murders. Especially if those murders got pinned on Aaron, the man Marnie might blame for losing her beloved sister.

“This part of the house is clear,” Ava called out to him.

Like before, she’d taken the main living area, and since the bedrooms were clear as well, Harley made his way back to her. His main objective was to get her something to eat and then try to talk her into resting, but Ava had already poured herself a large glass of milk.

“There’s sandwich stuff in the fridge,” she offered.

He took her up on that, grabbing the items to make not one but two sandwiches so that Ava could eat as well. It was impossible to make himself stop worrying about her and the baby, though he doubted Ava wanted any TLC from him.

But Harley rethought that when she turned to him.

Their gazes met and he saw not only the fatigue but something else. Something he couldn’t quite decipher until she spelled it out for him.

“Thank you for being here,” she said. “I know we have our differences, but I really don’t want to be alone in the house right now.”

Yeah, he got that. Even though she was a good cop, she was still a mother-to-be, and that played into this. She could lay down her life for the badge, it was something good cops did, but she hated the risk to their child.

Harley was right there on the same page with her.

He set aside the sandwich stuff, went to her and took hold of her shoulders. He’d hoped to come up with just the right thing to say to ease some of the tension he could feel in her muscles. But her breath broke and Ava went into his arms as if she belonged there.

There’d been a time not that long ago when she would have hugged him, and more, but he could tell this particular embrace was costing her. Because this wasn’t out of lust, wasn’t the start of some hot foreplay that would lead them straight to bed. This was her leaning on him, and part of her would see that as a weakness.

It wasn’t.

Because part of him was leaning on her, too. He needed this; the contact that gave him assurance that the baby and she were alive. Now it was up to both of them to make sure things stayed that way.

Harley didn’t dare speak for fear it would cause her to move away from him. He just held her and hoped it would give her as much comfort as it was giving him.

Unfortunately, having her body pressed against his was also giving him some flashbacks of the times they’d had sex. Definitely not images he wanted in his head right now, but no matter how much he tried to fight them off, they came anyway. Still, he didn’t move other than to try to give her a reassuring rub on her back.

After several long moments, Ava finally leaned away from him. Not far though. Their bodies were still touching when she looked at him.

“It’s wrong for me to lean on you like this,” she said, sighing. And she broke the contact for real then by stepping away.

“It’s not wrong,” he assured her. “You’ve had a really bad day. Added to that, you met your son and had to interview your ex. I think that means you’ve earned all the leaning you want.”

The corner of her mouth lifted in the briefest of smiles, but she didn’t move back toward him. Instead, she picked up her glass of milk and continued to drink. That’s when he noticed her hands were trembling a little. It was barely any movement, but for Ava, it might as well have been an earthquake of a reaction.

Hell.

All of this was tearing her apart. Harley would have gone to her to try to do something about that, but her phone rang.

She groaned when she looked at the screen. “It’s my father.”

Great. Just what she didn’t need on top of everything else. “You want me to talk to him?” Harley offered. Verbally blasting Edgar might help burn off some of this restless energy he’d gotten from the hug.

“No, but thanks,” she answered. Ava took the call and put it on speaker.

“I’ve been in committee meetings all day, and I get out to learn that someone tried to kill my daughter,” Edgar immediately snarled. “Any reason I didn’t hear about it from you?”

“I’ve been busy,” she informed him. In contrast to Edgar’s fiery tone, hers was low level. Probably because she was too tired to work up a snit as her father had.

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