Page 125 of Things We Hide from the Light
“Are you gonna back up or just stand here and crowd me all night?” she hissed, doing her best to stand defiantly in front of me and still shrink away from making any physical contact. That killed me.
Her jeans were torn on one knee. There was dirt all over her sweater and jacket. And I thought I caught a hint of a limp. But it was her face that sent my blood pressure skyrocketing.
“He do this?” I demanded, gripping her chin and tilting her head so I could see the bruising. Anger was a living thing under my skin. It ate at me and took every ounce of control not to unleash.
She reached up and gripped the wrist of the hand that held her face, but I didn’t let go. “The only thing he’s guilty of besides hacking into state databases is having pointy elbows.”
“Why are you bringing in an FTA?”
She rolled her eyes insolently. “Can we skip over the part where you pretend to care so I can be on my way? I’ve had a long day.”
“Don’t listen to her! I didn’t skip out on bail! I was innocently walking home from reading to shelter dogs when she tackled me in an alley and threatened me,” her passenger whined.
“Shut up, Melvin,” Lina and I said in unison.
I pulled her around the trunk of her car and took inventory of her in my headlights. “Are you hurt anywhere else?” The bruising under her cheek was ugly and swollen. I hated it with every fiber of my being.
She batted my hands away. “Is this part of all traffic stops now?”
Having her this close wasn’t just frying my circuits. It was destroying them.
The anger that bubbled up inside wanted to claw its way out of my throat and let itself loose on the world. I wasn’t cold now. I wasn’t empty now. I was a volcano about to erupt.
“It was an accident.” Lina’s tone was calm, almost bored. Her voice was a beautiful poison in my veins.
“You said you recovered assets, not hunted down people,” I reminded her.
“I do. So before you call me a liar again, someone called in a favor. Not that it’s any of your business.”
She kept saying things like that. Things that were technically true.
But despite the fact that I was furious with her, that I’d insisted I was done with her, I needed to know she was okay. I needed to know what had happened. I needed to fucking take care of it.
She was my business and I wasn’t done with her. I was just getting started. I accepted the truth, pretending that I had a choice.
“Who called in a favor? Who asked you to do this?”
“Jesus, Nash. Relax. No laws were broken and your sister-in-law and friend—despite being drunken pains in the ass who refused to follow orders—are safe. Knox picked them up and drove them home.”
“I realize that.” The fact that my brother thought it wise to leave Lina alone to handle a criminal on her own was another issue that was going to have to be raised. Most likely with fists.
Fuck.
The emotions she raised in me were dangerous. Gone was the even-keeled lawman with a badge. Gone was the empty shell of a man. In his place was a fire-breathing dragon that wanted to lay waste to everything.
I wondered if this was how Knox felt most of the time.
I reached out and cupped her chin again, angling her beautiful face so I could examine the bruising. Touching her, even just like this, lit something inside me.
“You need ice.”
“I’d get to it faster if you weren’t holding me up.”
I blew out a bad-tempered breath. “Get him out of the car.”
“What?”
“Get him out of the car,” I said, enunciating slowly.
