He didn’t look happy, and that particular flat, furious look was one of his scariest. “What makes you think we can trust this lawyer?” he said softly, stepping back and drawing me with him. “He might be the one who killed Carl. He might have orchestrated all of this to leave you alone and defenseless.”
I nodded. “Already thought of that, oh suspicious one, but … my gut is telling me that we can trust Wells. Fate landed him in my lap. We shouldn’t go against fate.”
Beck shook his head, but he didn’t argue any further. When we were standing on the street, cool wind whipping across us, sending my coat billowing out, he drew my gaze away from the body visible through the front windscreen.
“Wait here for a second,” Beck said. “I’m going to wipe our prints from the car.”
Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? I mean, unlike Beck I didn’t end up in life or death situations on the regular, but I was a huge aficionado of CSI.
Beck pulled a white cloth and small spray bottle from his pocket … why the fuck was he carrying around a cloth and spray for removing fingerprints? I probably didn’t want the answer to that.
For the first time he shot me a slow smile. “I had a feeling.”
When Beck was just about done wiping the car down, I wandered a little closer to the sidewalk. The few street lights above us were out, which was in a way ominous. Had Beck done that? Or the killer?
And was the killer around here somewhere still.
My eyes darted about, trying to take it all in, but it was so fucking dark that visibility was almost nil…
Wait.
A shadow across the front windshield caught my eye, and I stumbled closer, careful not to fall down the gutter. It took my eyes a few minutes to adjust, and when they did, I somehow managed not to scream, pressing a hand tightly over my mouth.
Black rose.
A single black rose was tucked into the wipers. I fumbled with my phone again, raising it so there was a very low light across the car. My hands trembled at the red running in lines down from the thorns.Carl’s blood.I knew it was Carl’s blood, just like I knew the killer was leaving me a message.
You’re next.
12
Sometime later, could have been minutes … or hours, Beck appeared at my side.
“Butterfly?” he said, barely a whisper of my name.
“Windshield,” I choked out.
He turned away from me, and I could have sworn that the heat he always threw off rose a few more degrees.
He wrapped an arm around me and practically lifted me from the sidewalk, taking us out of the cool wind and into the Wells building. The security guard rushed over to offer assistance, but Beck waved him off, leading me to the elevators and putting his phone to his ear. He was right beside me, but an incessant ringing in my head was making it hard to focus on what he was saying.
I heard the wordsroseandblood,probably because those two words were already running around my head, filling me with fear and anger.
If Catherine was doing this, I was going to fucking kill her. Jail was too good for her, she needed to die. More voices were talking around me, and it wasn’t until Beck sat and pulled me into his lap that I snapped out of whatever shock had taken hold of me. He had his arms wrapped around me, and I pressed my face into his wool coat.
“The guys are on their way,” Beck said softly, and I lifted my head to meet his eyes. Needing the reassurance I often found in his gaze. Of course, the storminess of them should have scared me, but I was way past that with Beck. I was safe with him.
“Ms. Deboise,” Jarred Wells said, drawing my attention to him. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
Steeling myself, I nodded, trying to get my head on straight again. Thankfully the disorienting shock in my body started to fade as the adrenaline died down. “I went out to the car and my driver was dead,” I started before quickly filling him in on everything else that happened.
“Delta can’t know we’re here,” was Beck’s only contribution to the conversation, his body tense under mine, that heat still pouring off him.
He was pissed. Mega pissed. I couldn’t really blame him either. I’d stood my ground and demanded independence, coming into the city on my own, and my fucking driver had been killed. I was sure Beck was thinking how easily it could have been me. Alone, defenseless in New York city, with a killer clearly after me.
We were one step from him telling me “I told you fucking so,” and he would have had every right.
The fine skin around Jarred Wells eyes tightened, the only sign he was at all concerned. “We must work quickly so that Delta doesn’t find out. I have a friend on the police force, a rather high up detective, who hates your company as much as I do. He can help us out in this situation.”
