My brows knit.
“Favors seemed to be his specialty, and if you were…” He pauses as if trying to find the right words. “If he wasforcingyou to do things you didn’t want to do… to keep your sister from being taken away, I would understand if that became too much. Especially after your sister came of age. I’d imagine Marshal wouldn’t like being told no after all these years. He may have even become violent, and I would understand if you had to defend yourself.”
My bottom lip falls in horror. Is… is he insinuating that I was fucking Marshal to keep Nix out of the system? And that I finally snapped and killed him? Mortification and repulsion burn in the back of my throat. “No!” I gasp. “No, I didn’t—He wasn’t making me—Oh my God, no!” I shudder, wanting to gag.
“Kira, the timestamp on the CCTV footage would suggest Marshal was meeting you at your house around the time you would typically get home from work. I would understand if, after a grueling shift of being on your feet all night, you’d had enough.”
“No!” I say again, trying not to picture what he’s suggesting.
“Then why is his last known location near your residence?”
“I don’t know,” I lie.
“Why would he be headed to your house at three in the morning?”
“I don’t know,” I say again, suddenly feeling hot.
“Yes, you do.” He leans forward. “What happened to Marshal, Kira?”
“I don’t know!” I shout. “I don’t know! But it wasn’t that!”
“I think it was exactly that!” Layton suddenly pushes to his feet, and gone is the fake compassion and delicacy. Because that’s what it was;fake. He was playing me, pretending to be good cop. He doesn’t give a fuck if Marshal actually forced me to have sex with him, he only wants me to confess to killing him.
“You need to leave.” I pull the blanket off my lap, trying to cool the perspiration that’s broken out on my skin. My chest is tightening, and the beeping from the machine is becoming erratic.
“Not until you tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know what happened,” I rasp, clutching my chest, trying to breathe through the pressure building under my sternum.
“We can go down to the station. Is that what you want? We can—”
The door suddenly opens, and Celeste appears. She takes one look at the sheen of sweat at my hairline and the monitor on my right before she’s at my side.
“You need to leave,” she says flatly, not even looking at Layton. Her hands are on the drawer beneath the monitor, already pulling it open. “Kira, try to breathe. I’m going to give you something to slow your heart.”
But Ican’tbreathe, and Layton won’t move.
Celeste’s head snaps up, her eyes finally cutting to him, and the temperature in the room drops. “You are stressing a cardiac patient with an aortic tear and interfering with patient care,” she says, voice sharp as a scalpel. “She’s not stable for questioning. If you don’t leave right now, I’ll call security and file a complaint with your captain.”
Layton’s jaw works as if he wants to argue. For a second, I think he will, and the thought spikes my panic enough to cause a stutter in my chest. But he finally steps back as Celeste pushes a needle into my IV, forced by the fact that this isn’t his territory. He makes it halfway to the door, then turns, like he can’t resist getting the last word.
“Marshal may have taken favors,” he says, voice cold again, “but he was still a cop. He will have justice, Ms. Noland.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jax
Ileave two empty packs of cigarettes on my passenger seat as I get out of my Hellcat and make my way toward the dark alley. It’s butted up against the PD watering hole—slightly more refined than a place like Bell’s, but not by much—and I smirk as I pull out another cigarette. Leaning against the damp brick, I’m surprised that I can even be amused by the miserable pay cops get when I’m on my third pack of the night.
Kira had an episode with her heart.
Nix called Caleb, who then called me—this grapevine is coming in handy—to tell me that Detective Layton made a hospital visit and sent my pretty little accomplice into sinus tachycardia.
The rage I feel is only tempered by the nicotine, but my chest is all kinds of tight, yet not from the cigarettes. I got Kira the best doctor I could—short of flying someone out. But I would have… if the procedure wasn’t urgent. But now she’s had this episode, and there’s nothing I can do but hope.
I force myself to shake my head and take a long drag, trying, like I have for the last three hours, to convince myself that she’s going to be okay—and that if she isn’t, wondering how long I’ll keep Layton alive while I carve pieces off his body.
I want nothing more than to be at her side right now, but I have a tendency to piss her off with my presence, and I don’t want to send her into another episode. I may love it when she stabs me with those eyes, but I don’t need her heart acting up on my account. I think that would put me in the room next to her at this point.
