“Are you expecting anyone out here?” he asked.
Eve shook her head.
“I wasn’t even expecting us to be out here until late last night.”
She heard a button click as his hand moved within the jacket’s folds.
“And no one knows you’re out here?” Darius added. “What about Mitchell? You said you told him about this place once.”
She shook her head again. The sound of metal moving rattled from the direction they were staring. Someone had gone through the gate.
“No one knows I’m out here,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper. Darius had turned, and with the movement he pulled his service weapon from his shoulder holster. He kept it down as she grabbed at the elbow of his other arm.
Eve realized a few beats too late what he had said.
The need to correct him rose with an anxiousness that made her stomach grow cold.
“And it was Scott I told about this place by accident, not Mitchell.”
Footsteps could be heard crunching over some of the leaves that had been brave and quick enough to fall and change with the burst of cold weather. Soon whoever was coming would be in their field of vision.
However, Darius turned to her so fast that Eve nearly yelled in surprise.
When he spoke, his voice was so deep that the rumble felt like it went right through the fabric of his jacket and into the cold of her fingers.
“You’re after Scott, not Mitchell.”
Another truth, though there were some nuances missing. Now she could hear the footfalls. Still, it felt important to correct him once more.
“We’re both after him,” she clarified. “It’s the only way we can take him down.”
“Why?”
Relief flooded out with Eve’s next truth. Finally, she could tell someone else.
“Because all Scott Keys is is a monster in a suit.”
Darius’s eyes didn’t widen. He didn’t look shocked or mad or concerned. He didn’t look like the boy next door, and he didn’t look like the only detective in town.
He was just a man standing in front of a woman, looking as calm as could be wrapped up in a jacket and denim.
So before the gunshot went through them both, Eve couldn’t help but feel a sense of contentedness.
No matter why she was back in Seven Roads, it just felt nice to be standing on a front porch with a good man like Darius Williams.
HE KILLED THEman behind Eve in the time it took to blink. The hunting rifle in his hands hit the ground as his head tipped backward.
Darius didn’t have time to watch the unknown man’s body fall.
There was still the person approaching from the gate.
Darius used his free arm to swoop behind Eve to keep her upright and spun around enough to get his own gun aimed and ready.
The person who had been so noisy was already there with her own gun raised high. Darius’s body acted on an instinct that was much faster than any bullet would be. He threw himself and Eve back into the residence hall door with enough power that the old wood splintered at the bolt.
A gunshot cut through the air as the door gave way.
Where he should have had the time to find his balance, and Eve along with him, the world just kept turning.
