Page 44 of Blood Stone
She swallowed. “They hauled Finka Zupan’s body out of a drainage culvert yesterday. I saw it on TV.”
Neither man reacted. They just stared at her.
“You were going to talk to her,” Winter accused them. “Justtalk!”
Sebastian glanced at Nial.
The glance did it. The glance was too much confirmation for her. Winter clapped her hand over her mouth as genuine nausea enveloped her and rushed for the bathroom. There was no time to adjust her body chemistry and she knew she deserved this at the very least.
She staggered to the toilet, crumpled in front of it and was violently, massively sick. It wrenched at her body and muscles long after her stomach was empty, and it was worse for the fact that in her life Winter had only ever been genuinely sick once. She normally adjusted her physiology to avoid this horrible experience. Now she was paying twice over for that privilege because being sick and vomiting was such a new experience.
Cool hands soothed her back as the spasms eased. Something cold and damp pressed against her neck.
Winter turned her head into the shoulder she knew would be there waiting for her and let the tears take her. They were few, but each one felt as hard as a bullet and hurt as it rolled down her cheek.
She was picked up and carried into one of the bedrooms and laid on the bed. Her wig was carefully lifted away and her hair loosened, along with her clothes. She was cradled against one body and another, warmer one fitted itself against her back. That was Sebastian.
Winter let herself be soothed. If she refused Nial and Sebastian’s comfort, who else was there to offer such warmth to her? She was weak and pathetic, but she wanted to be held and reassured right now, even if the men doing it were the ones who had caused her misery in the first place.
The hypocrisy prickled softly, until she could no longer ignore it. She sat up.
“I suppose I should give you the benefit of doubt.” She wiped her cheeks dry with her hand. “Did you do it?”
Nial lifted himself up with one of his powerful, cat-like movements, so he was resting against the bedhead. “Does it matter?”
Sebastian folded his long legs so he was sitting cross-legged, and rested his hands loosely on top of them where they crossed over. He wasn’t contributing just yet, but she could see he was with Nial on this one by the expression in his green eyes.
Winter pressed her hands together. “Of course it matters. To me.”
“Why?” Sebastian asked, his tone reasonable.
She tried to find a few words to encompass an entire conversation her answer would take if she was thorough, and sighed. “If you have to ask, Sebastian, it’s not worth me answering.”
“You value Finka’s life above your own?” Nial asked.
“Yes!” Winter replied.
“Really?” he pressed. “I have a gun at Finka’s head, and you would say ‘shoot me, not her,’?”
She bit her lip. “You can’t go around just...killing for convenience’s sake.”
“We didn’t,” Sebastian replied.
Relief touched her, until Winter realized she had handed Sebastian a way to lie to her and tell her what she needed to hear at the same time. Her relief congealed. “Then if not for convenience, why did you kill her?” she asked.
“We didn’t kill Finka.” Nial tugged at her arm, bringing her toward him. She let herself be pulled into his arms. “She was already dead when we reached her.”
“Someone else killed her?” Winter asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We didn’t want to bother you with it. You’re busy,” Sebastian replied.
“Too busy to know something as important as the fact that someone else wanted to kill Finka?”
“It was a simple mugging gone wrong. She was a stranger here,” Nial said. “Her motel was in an area where I wouldn’t want to travel alone at night. We found her outside the back of her room. Someone had taken all her possessions and ID. It was only your description that told us it was Finka. We left the body where it was. Someone moved it afterwards.”
Winter let her aching head rest against his shoulder. “You would lie to stop me worrying about this, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course I would. You are worth more to me than a dozen Finkas. Alive or dead.”
