“I recognize two very suspicious people,” she says, immediately falling back down on my chart. Like… come on, did she have to fall so quickly? She could have at least tried a little to stay in my good graces. Or is she just too shy to admit that she wants to see Jackson in all his glory?
“Are you a shy woman, Detective Patel?”
“Does it look like I am?” she asks. “Let’s step outside and have a word.”
“Just one? If I get to pick, it’s going to be ‘run.’”
“‘Bye’ definitely would have been a better pick. Kind of details the same action but said in a much less suspicious way,” Jackson says.
“Fuck. This is why you’re the smart one.”
Patel oddly ignores all of that. It’s not like I thought she should give Jackson a trophy, but a pat on the back wouldn’t have killed her. “I want a breakdown of what happened. Second by second.”
I hold up my hands, knowing that while Jackson’s got the brains, I have the best ability to recall events. “I got this. So, there we were pulling into the parking spot, my sweet husband blindfolded and completely at my mercy.”
“Why was he blindfolded?” she asks.
“None of this pertains to these events,” Jackson says. “I’m going to skip ahead. We were in the room and smashing things when the door opened. I think we both thought it was an employee until Leland saw him drawing a gun and he disarmed him.”
“Tell her how,” I prompt, proud of myself.
“The second he saw the man pulling a gun, he grabbed a plate and threw it at the man’s hand, hitting him just right and causing the gun to go flying back into the hallway,” Jackson says.
“Sure did. I taught that fucker to never draw a gun again when a man has a plate,” I announce.
“I’m confident you’re the only one who could have pulled that off,” Jackson tells me.
“You’re the only one who could pull off hanging from a fence and stealing my breath with one little look,” I say.
Patel, the heartless being she is, sighs. “Please stay on track.”
“Well, they attacked us, I kicked them back. Jackson did this extremely sexy move where he hit a VHS tape at them. If you have time, when you go through the footage, can you get me a copy of that?”
“On. Track.”
“Right. Right. I went for his gun so he couldn’t grab it and it ended up in the hallway where even more assailants were. They rammed me against the door on the other side of the hallway, and I think the people inside thought someone was knocking or something. With this music playing, it’s difficult to hear much.
“Police showed up, the officer got shot, I disarmed the guy, we knocked the rest down and collected the guns for her. I handed her the empty guns, but I did slide the ammo into my pocket just to make sure no one could grab it since she was down and I didn’t want them attacking her for the ammunition. Let me get it for you,” I say as I pull it out and hand it to her.
“Are the cameras going to be down just like every other place you’ve wandered into?” she asks.
“That’s because Jackson’s so sexy that the security systems can’t handle it. They break the moment he steps into a room,” I inform her.
“Who are these people?”
I stare over at the handcuffed people being shuffled out of the building. It’s a question I also have. I have to assume they’re working together, which tells me that the Barlow family sent them after me. But why?
How would they even know we were involved?
Or am I wrong and they’re working for someone else?
“I can see you thinking,” Patel says.
“I’m always thinking. Just… what you were saying about the people who took Cam. You said the Barlows, right? We… looked into them a bit after that. It doesn’t seem like they’re very good people… What if they saw us pick up Cam and tracked us down? What if Raul Barlow got wind of what happened with Cam and is coming after us because of it? Detective, did you by any chance mention our names to any of them?”
“Of course not. I’m not that sloppy.”
“I think I want to check on Sophia, so we should probably head out,” I say.
