Page 31 of Desperate People

I’m already walking.

She follows, and I shoot off a flurry of texts as we move—no delays, no hesitations.

I hit up my best guys. Former Callahan Group. Now under Sigma International.

These men are the ones I’ve had on retainer since I started in the business.

They don’t just work for me. They’re part of my crew.

And yeah, I’ve had them ready ever since I knew she was going to be part of my world.

Even though I tried to fight it, me and Lucy? We’re inevitable.

I want her like no one else on the planet.

And these guys? They're ghosts with weapons. Monsters in human skin. And right now, they’re going to make sure no one gets within a hundred yards of her again without my say so.

But first, they’re going to go over her place closer than any crime scene investigator could.

“I need you to tell me everything you remember about tonight,” I growl, not bothering to soften the edge in my voice.

Not with the adrenaline still burning through me like gasoline.

Not after what I saw in that bedroom.

Lucy swallows hard. She’s standing close to me in the elevator, her arm brushing mine.

I feel her pulse, quick and erratic, and it takes everything in me not to wrap her up and barricade us somewhere until the world burns down around us.

“Nothing, I mean, I was at a video launch party. Then I came home?—”

“Alone?”

“Yes. I always come home alone,” she whispers, but she doesn’t seem to notice my tension, or the way it eases at her admission.

“And?” I prompt.

“It was just there when I got home,” she whispers. “I don’t know who he is or how he got in. Nothing’s broken except for the bedroom stuff.”

“You leave the bathroom? Touch anything?”

She shakes her head quickly. “No. I remembered what you said.”

“Good girl.”

It slips out—low, gravelly, from a place deep inside me that doesn’t believe in boundaries when it comes to her.

She shivers.

And fuck me, I feel it down to my bones.

The elevator dings.

Doors slide open. I step out first, scanning the hallway.

Empty. Too fucking quiet. The useless doorman is nowhere to be seen.

Typical.

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