I hadn’t thought about him killing me first.
What the fuck had I been thinking?
Chapter 11
Sapphire
* * *
Kayden and I raced around the back of William’s house and up the steps. The back door was old hardwood, heavy and solid, and Bob had thrown the deadbolt.
I pressed my shoulder against the wood and shoved. Nothing. I tried again, driving off my back foot.
Kayden grabbed my arm. “Step aside.”
“I can do it.”
“Sapphire,” he growled.
I stepped aside and drew my weapon.
He squared up and drove his boot into the door just below the bolt. The frame cracked. He kicked again, the bolt gave, and the door swung hard into the wall.
“Stay here.” I raced inside, weapon up, moving fast through the rooms. “Clear,” I called from the back bedroom. I holstered my weapon and headed back to the kitchen.
“Holy fuck. That’s the Henderson brothers,” Kayden called ahead of me.
He must not have seen their faces when I’d identified them earlier. “Yeah.”
The kitchen smelled of blood and bowel, and a faint tangy scent I couldn’t place.
Both bodies were exactly where they’d been when I’d watched through the screen door earlier. Bob hadn’t moved them.
So, what was he doing in here after he shot at us?
“Bloody hell. I can’t believe Bruce and Wayne are dead,” Kayden said. “I hated these guys, but …” Kayden drove his hand through his wild hair.
I crouched beside Bruce and pressed two fingers to the side of his throat. No pulse. Not that I’d expected one. His skin was cool and waxy, his lips dry and cracked. His pupils were fixed and clouded behind half-open lids. The underside of his arm, where it lay against the linoleum, had gone the deep purplish red of settled lividity. He’d been on his side for hours. The muscles were stiff, close to fully set.
Had Bob been here all this time?
The kitchen knife was still buried to the wooden handle in Bruce’s side. It had taken some serious force to do that.
I stood, stepped carefully around the blood pool, and crouched beside Wayne.
No pulse. Same lividity. Same rigor. The dishcloth jammed in his mouth was crusted and dark. The rope around his neck had bitten deep into the skin, the flesh swollen and discolored around it. The veins in both eyes had burst red.
He’d strangled himself fighting the rope. Or Bob had pulled it tight.
I shuddered, staying crouched for a moment, looking at them.
Two big, stupid, brutal men who’d spent their lives throwing their weight around this district. If Lyle was right, they’d come here to get Frank. They’d known what they were walking into, and yet they hadn’t walked out.
I sat back on my heels and looked around the kitchen. A length of chain was on the floor in the corner. Glass everywhere from a smashed rum bottle. One cupboard door was half hanging from its hinge.
A fight had occurred in this kitchen.
Three kitchen knives were lined up on the floor beside the back door like someone had planned to use them. The knife block on the bench was missing five. One was in Bruce. I couldn’t see the other one.
