Western Romance Collection: Rugged Cowboys Part 79

"Not yet, no."

"Okay. I'll communicate it to your people."

"Good. Make sure you communicate that I'm going to leave my firearm on the floor and move away. I'm going to be dis-armed and waiting for them."

"Good. Will-do."

Roy showed up at the apartment flanked on both sides by L.A.P.D. They all huffed over the body on her floor for a minute. She understood the position that she was in. She could have killed someone. On the other hand, it was still her right to defend herself from someone who meant to harm her. That she was a cop also meant that certain things would be understood, and one of them was that she knew what she was doing.

None of that made the body go away, or stopped the blood from staining her kitchen tile.

Roy spoke first. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine. I heard him coming in. The chain latch was shut. He broke it getting in, and I took steps to defend myself."

"Good."

They turned the body over. There was a pistol in a shoulder-holster. She didn't recognize either of the uniforms, but then again she rarely did. They got on the radio and called in a medical team. The guy was sure as h.e.l.l dead, but that didn't mean they could leave him on the floor.

The two of them took their sweet time getting to her, which she didn't mind. Erin's skin was starting to crawl at the feeling of having used her gun. They were as safe as anything, she knew. She'd used them every week at the range. Shooting paper had taught her that they didn't just go off w.i.l.l.y-nilly.

Accidents happened, sure. But they didn't happen when you were careful and smart about what you were doing. Now, though-she had been careful. She might have been smarter, but with a. .38, the odds of blowing straight through and hurting a civilian were slim.

She'd decided to kill the guy, and there he was. Dead on the floor. Roy was saying something to her, but she wasn't listening. The instant she'd pulled the trigger kept playing through her head in slow motion. Maybe she would have been fine. Maybe he was just there to talk. Did she have the right to shoot a man for breaking in, not knowing what he would do?

If she had waited, and she hadn't been safe, wouldn't she have been able to deal with that when the need arose? Maybe not. Erin knew the odds of beating someone in a quick-draw weren't good. Even if you had the gun already in your hands, you still had to worry about aiming in a high-stress situation. It wasn't a situation she would have wanted to put herself in.

But that didn't mean she had the right to kill the guy, not even if he was a murdering son of a b.i.t.c.h.

More than that, though, the only play she'd made, the only information she had outside of what Craig had chosen to give her, was gone now. Ryan something-or-other, suspected in the murder of a young twenty-something with dark hair from Maine under a false name, was the only link that she'd been able to make on her own.

Well, now they weren't going to be able to question him, were they?

She heard the uniform asking her a question and asked him to repeat it. "Is this firearm registered?"

"Yes."

"Good." He ejected the magazine and counted off the ammunition. Five shots left out of seven. She watched him with a detached interest. The mechanical actions made sense to her. It was what she would have done. If a detective were to show up, which they might not waste one on, then the guy would tell him.

The detective probably would believe him, but it wouldn't stop him from checking. The uniform slid the magazine back into the gun and put it back where he'd found it close enough.

"You going to be okay, Detective Russo?"

She nodded absently. Too much was going on. Too many questions that she didn't have answers to, too many things she didn't want to think or worry about.

Roy crouched down in front of her, forced her to look him in the eyes. "Russo. You're fine. We'll pull this guy's prints, and get them going in a database. We'll be able to have his full name before long."

"Good," she said, but she didn't feel up to it. Why were they still talking about this? What in the h.e.l.l was she doing here? Shouldn't they have taken her into the station?

"You'll need to stay in a hotel a few days."

"Okay."

The place exploded with activity as the EMTs arrived. They weren't in any sort of hurry, knowing that the guy was dead and all, but it didn't stop the place from being far too small for six people walking around it.

"You're fine. I know this isn't going to count for much, Erin, but you didn't do anything wrong, okay? If you need to talk to anyone, you have my number. I'll follow you to your hotel, and then I have to get back to work. Don't you hesitate to call if something happens. We still on for tonight?"

She didn't know. She was too tired and too scared to make decisions like that. Her head hurt and all she wanted was to sleep. But she was afraid that going back to sleep would just show her images of what had just happened. She didn't say any of that.

Instead, she nodded.

Roy gave her one last long, uncertain look before he put a hand on her knee and stood up.

"You're going to be alright, Erin. Trust me. You're going to be just fine, okay? Don't worry about anything. We'll look into this guy, and we'll find out who he works for. Who he works for, and any other information we can get ahold of."

"Thank you," she said softly. She wasn't sure it was right to be thanking him for any of this. Was he taking it easy on her because of what had happened between them?

"Don't mention it."

She took a deep breath and let herself sit back a second before getting up to follow him down to her Jeep. She didn't feel up to driving, right now. But sometimes you had to do things you didn't want to do.

She'd learned that a long time ago, and had it hammered home almost every morning for years. Now it was little more than automatic.

Twenty-Four.

Dinner was a quiet affair. The hotel was quiet, too, but dinner was quieter somehow. As if being along had produced its own sort of sound, and now that Erin was together with someone else, unsure of what to say or how to act now that she was a killer, it was gone. All that was left was the feeling of uncertainty.

Was this how her sister had felt, in those final moments? Alone and afraid and like there's nothing in the world that can really touch you any more? Even as the knife went in, did she think that it didn't matter that it hurt any more?

Erin could see the expressions on Roy's face. The uncertainty, the questions that he didn't want to ask. He was worried about her, and she had to admit that maybe he should be. Maybe something was wrong with her. No, she thought. Not maybe. Something was certainly wrong with her.

But she didn't know how to make it go away. She was being used by Craig, and now that had come back to ruin her. It all came back to her sister's death.

What had her sister died for? To send a message? Or had she died for real, and she had just played into Craig's hand? That was the reason she was doing any of this. She needed to get revenge for Becca. But now things were going to far, too fast, and Erin was fighting for any air she could get.

Roy asked something that she didn't quite hear.

"What?"

"Is your food good?"

She looked down at a steak she hadn't realized she had already eaten half of. The whole thing had been too mechanical, too mindless. She was stuck inside her head, stuck with the thoughts and doubts that she wanted nothing more than to be rid of.

"Yeah, I guess."

"Erin, are you okay?"

She thought for a moment about telling Roy all about what she had been thinking, about what she was so upset about. But that wouldn't have helped. She needed rea.s.surance, but she needed it from the outside. From someone who wasn't just telling her what she wanted to hear. More than that, she needed something real that wasn't going to be over as soon as the trail dried up or her sister's murderer was caught.

She dropped her fork unintentionally, her unsteady fingers just unable to keep closed around the neck of it. She grabbed it again, too hard, staring as if her vision could melt the steel in her hands if she wanted it badly enough.

Craig's hand on hers came out of nowhere.

"Erin, I need you to talk to me."

"What's the point?"

"The point of what?"

"Of anything. This. Why are we at this dinner?"

"You have to eat some time, don't you?"

"Why me? There are girls in Virginia, aren't there?"

Roy shrugged. "Why anyone? I don't have a good reason. There are girls in Virginia. Probably even cops, unless the other agents are all pulling a big prank on me by stuffing their bras."

She looked at him flatly, ignoring the joke. "So why me? You're just going to leave, and I'm going to be left here. With nothing. Just another job. Only family left in the world is my father, and he-"

Erin stopped herself. It never helped to talk about Dad. It made situations uglier. It made things worse. Made her worse. Talking about him was the absolute last thing that she wanted to do, but there she'd almost gone off and opened that can of worms.

"What happened, Erin?"

"It was a long time ago, and I don't want to talk about it."

"It seems like you're still pretty upset by it, though. Are you sure it wouldn't help to talk about it?"

"No. I don't want to talk about it and I'm not going to. Drop it, okay?"

Roy's look was almost disappointed, but he nodded. "Consider it dropped."

"Good."

Erin took another bite of the steak. It was good, now that she was paying attention. It wasn't as hot as it had been when it came out of the kitchen, but it still had plenty of warmth, so it didn't taste like she was biting into day-old shoe leather.

"Do you want to do anything after dinner? Catch a movie? Anything like that?"

Erin didn't particularly want to do much of anything, but it wasn't anywhere near time that she could go to sleep. She shrugged instead.

"Anything you wanted to see in particular?"

She didn't answer. He must have been noticing by now, the way she'd been acting. But she couldn't stop herself. She was making a spectacle of herself, acting like a child, but she couldn't stop herself in spite of knowing what she was doing was absurd and wrong.

"Erin, hey. We don't have to if you don't want to."

"No, it's fine. I just-"

"If you don't want to talk about it here, I understand. We can talk about it in the car, if it would help."

"Sure." She wasn't sure that she wanted to talk about anything, no matter where it was. She wasn't sure that she wanted an F.B.I. agent involved in her life, and she sure as h.e.l.l wasn't sure she wanted to cozy up to a guy who lived two thousand miles away, in a completely different life.

He said they were both cops, and they were. But that was where the similarities ended. She worked the local scene. There were usual suspects. She had a long string of partners that went by in a blur, where he didn't seem to have one. Not one of her partners had put in the work to keep up with her. She might as well have been alone. But that wasn't a choice, so they just kept moving her over as people kept drumming out.

She took a breath and another bite of steak. Another mouthful of water. By the time she slipped into the pa.s.senger seat of the government car that Roy was driving around, she almost felt human again.

"You want to tell me what's got you so upset?"

She looked at Roy for a minute, considering whether or not she wanted to have this conversation. Ever. She didn't, but she wasn't in her right mind. Maybe she would feel better after. Anything that would get rid of the quiet inside her head.

"I don't know what I'm doing any more."

"What's that supposed to mean? Babe?"

"I just don't know. What if I'm just doing what they want me to? And what if I don't hear it coming next time? What if they sneak right into wherever I'm at, a pillow over my face, and bang-dead?

"What if I do hear it again? Every time they send another goon in to get me, I wake up in time, I get ready, and there's another body on my floor? What if it stops hurting when I have to shoot someone?"

They sat in silence for a long time. Roy's hands twisted on the steering wheel, the leather making a soft straining noise as he squeezed it.

"Then you'll keep doing what you have to do."

"I don't know if that's good enough."

"I do. I've seen how tough you are. You've made your best effort to make sure that I know every bit of it, and I'm not an idiot. But you're kind, too. Soft inside. What you're telling me now is, you took it personal. It's not your failure, is what I'm telling you, okay? It's nothing you did wrong."

Erin didn't believe him, and the realization made her eyes sting. Before she knew what was happening, Roy had drawn her up in his arms and she was crying again. She'd promised herself she wasn't going to, not after Dad left.

So much for that.

Twenty-Five.

Erin knew she shouldn't be doing this, but when she closed the hotel room door with Roy still inside she already knew she was too far gone. She wanted it, but she wanted it to mean more than it was going to. She wanted it to mean he'd stay. He'd stay, or take her with him, or something. Anything. But she wasn't going to ask him to, and she didn't expect him to follow through if he offered it.

She wanted her fun, and she would have her fun, and it would mean something in the morning if it meant anything at all. Right now it meant not having to feel wrong, and that was enough.

He was tentative in taking her lips. She couldn't have that, no sir. She pushed him back onto the bed and was on him an instant later, her teeth biting and her hands working the b.u.t.tons on the s.h.i.+rt he was still wearing from work earlier that day. Erin wanted more. Always more. More than she could possibly dream of.