Page 120 of Eyes in the Shadows

In spite of the slight sting in my cheek, I grin. “Tell me you love me again and it’s a deal,” I say, not letting her get a single word out as I cover her mouth with mine.

She clutches medesperately, and the blood pounds in my veins for her—I’m so fucking happy to have her in my arms again, it makes me want to bend her over Rossi’s dead body. Maybe we’ll leave thefucking in front of corpsesthing for another day…

“I hate when they monologue and try to get the last word,” Dimitri mutters, looking down at the bodies with his lip curled.

“‘You’re the wrong side, Jay,’ and ‘I never needed you anyway,’” Wes mimics. “What a pair of muppets.”

Eleanor breaks away and laughs at Wes’s terrible impression, and it’s a wet noise. She sniffles, wipes under her eyes and I pull her close to drop a kiss on the top of her head.

“The Feds are coming?” I ask.

Wes nods. “Whenever they get off their arses and dispatch someone to check the tip. My guess is sometime tomorrow morning.”

“We could just leave them for the Feds,” Dimitri—all practicality—shrugs. “They shot each other. Maybe we take these two.” I watch him toe the body of the man I shot in the back of the head and point at the other.

A Federal CSI tech would definitely be able to determine that the trajectory the bullet took through the body and way the body landed means a shot from behind. And I’ll be long gone and so will every trace of me, but the point is to remain off the radar. And a highly-accurate sniper going after civilians tends to get you on the radar.

“I’m going to go get my gear. You have your SUV, you can grab these two, right?”

Dimitri sighs and rolls his eyes. “Yes, fine, go. We will clean up.”

“We?” Wes repeats, full of false outrage. “Oh, I just remembered I… don’t want to do that.”

“Doing things you do not want to do builds character,” Dimitri argues, bending down and lifting the torso of the first man into a sitting position.

“Are you saying I’m not enough of a character already? I thought I was just somepenis from the mountains. That insult is my new favorite, by the way. Even better than when you call us goattesticles.”

As they continue to quip back and forth—well, Wes quips and Dimitri meets each sarcastic comment at face value—I grab Eleanor’s hand and pull her after me. I want to have her closer than this. I’d try to carry her, if I thought she’d let me, but I’ll settle for this small contact. For now.

“Are you okay, darlin’? How’s your head?”

“It stings, but the pounding is mostly gone. I don’t think I’m concussed or anything, I feel okay. Well, mostly…”

“You sure? You’re shaking and your heart is racing.”

“No,” she says, and it’s so raw and honest that it makes me grimace. “I never want to do anything like that. Ever. Never again.”

“So, not the career change you were looking for, I take it?”

She shivers, but smiles a little at me. It’s watery, but it’s a start. “I think I’ll stick totorchguns andchefknives being my only weapons.”

I chuckle.

We reach the spot where my gear is still spread out on the ground. I was in a hurry when I set it up, so it’s not meticulous. It does make cleanup easier, though. I start unscrewing parts and laying them in my cases. She stands, watching me, trying to figure out if there’s some way she can help but finding none.

“What about whoever Rossi sold those guns to originally?” she asks. “The one who you stole the weapons from? Won’t they be, like, mad and try to come find them?”

I smile because she’s got good instincts, asks good questions. “That’s why we tipped off the Feds. No one will come looking, they’ll be in evidence lockup.”

“And they won’t find anything else? I feel like in shows, they always find hair or blood at the scene of the crime and that’s how they catch who did it. Except we’re not the bad guys in this scenario… or are we? My moral compass is way out of whack.”

When I stand, I catch her chin in my hand and scan her face. I seethe, seeing the red-purple mark on her temple that has a thin line of dried blood in the middle. “I wish I could have shot him how I planned.” I tap my ear to reconnect the line and tell Wes and Big D, “Make sure you clean Rossi’s gun. He broke the skin.”

“Already handled.”

“How were you going to do it?” she asks lightly, tiltingup her chin.

I raise an eyebrow. “You really want to know?”

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