I yelped and fell against the door, going down to the soft rug inside and coming up fast. Wincing at the pain in my hip, I threw my head back and put my shoulders against the wall.
Then I just stopped thinking as my brain tried to interpret too much information at once.
Tessa stood near the head of a bloody and beaten body, a silver gun in her hand and her eyes wild. At the feet of the unmoving guy stood my pseudo-boyfriend, Aiden Devlin, a man I hadn’t seen in two weeks. His beard rivaled that of the bailiff’s earlier, but his piercing blue eyes were in a category of their own.
A hard shoulder shoved me, and then Detective Grant Pierce was between me and everybody else, his gun out and pointed at my sister. “Drop the gun.”
Tessa, her face whiter than any ghost, gently set the gun down.
I gulped and peered around Pierce to see the body. “Please tell me that isn’t Danny Pucci,” I whispered, my voice shaking. But I didn’t need an answer.
The bloody guy on the floor was definitely Danny Pucci. I looked closer, trying not to vomit. Danny stared back at me, his green eyes unblinking, a hole through the center of his forehead. It took me a second to realize why. It really did.
Danny was dead.
Chapter 2
Tessa’s stricken green gaze met mine, and I automatically tried to step toward my older sister.
Detective Pierce pivoted and put me back into the wall with his right hand on my chest, his left hand pointing the gun between Tessa and Aiden. “Both of you turn around and lace your fingers behind your heads,” he barked. The sound had me jumping.
I stayed in place. Detective Pierce was almost a foot taller than me with a tough and lanky form, dark blond hair, and an overall cranky disposition. He was probably in his early forties, but it was possible late thirties with just a ton of baggage in his hard cop eyes. His hand against my upper chest was firm, and I wasn’t going anywhere.
Tessa immediately turned around and hesitated before lacing her fingers behind her thick reddish-blonde hair. The blonde streaks were new. Her legs in white capris visibly shook, and she looked defenseless in her Baby Yoda t-shirt with the girly cut.
Aiden ignored the detective as two patrol officers strolled into the room, guns out. His gaze raked me head to toe.
I shivered.
Then he slowly, deliberately, turned around and expertly laced his long-tapered fingers against his thick black hair. He’d obviously done so before, and his knuckles were bruised and bloody. He was at least an inch taller than Pierce, and not a thing about him was lanky. He was broad and muscled with a dangerous grace that reminded me of those panthers on television.
The uniformed cops instantly stepped up and each handcuffed Tess and Aiden, turning them toward the door and away from the body.
“Anna?” Tessa whispered, the slightest hint of our mother’s Irish brogue in her shaking voice.
“I’m coming,” I breathed, barely able to get the words out. What had happened? If Tessa had killed Danny, it had definitely been in self-defense. Why was Aiden there? And why was he wearing bloody boots, ripped jeans, and a Lordes T-shirt? He had belonged to the motorcycle club, but it had been disbanded, with most of the members arrested for running drugs. “Let me go, Pierce.”
“No.” He holstered his weapon with one hand, keeping the other on me.
I grabbed his wrist. “Tess? Don’t say a word until I get there. Ask for an attorney right away. Not one word,” I said in a rush of energy, my entire body heating.
The officer ushered my sister out of the apartment.
Aiden stopped cold near the door, forcing the cop pushing him to halt, his blue eyes lightening to glacier cold. “Get your fuckin’ hand off her.” While Pierce had barked his order, Aiden’s was said in a dangerously quiet voice that lowered the temperature in the entire room.
If anything, Pierce pushed me harder against the wall. “Get him out of here.”
The uniformed officer struggled, but then Aiden let himself be pushed out the door. There was no doubt in my mind that Aiden allowed it to happen; otherwise there’d be a fight right now.
Pierce took a deep breath, released me, and turned on me. “What are you doing here?” His breath was hot and his eyes even more so.
I blinked but was already against the wall and couldn’t step away. “I was bringing my sister dinner.” Then my gaze strayed to the dead body, and the smell of coppery blood began to permeate the fog in my head. A sofa pillow sat a distance away with a hole burned through it. It was a pillow my Nonna had stitched with the word ‘family’ carefully embroidered across it. Now it had a hole in the middle. “I wanted to tell her that Danny was back in town.”
Pierce stiffened. “I take it the deceased is named Danny?”
Numbly, I nodded.
“How do you and your sister know the deceased?” Pierce asked as crime techs began to filter into the room, already wearing protective gear and booties.
