Down Fall (Fallen Duet 2)

“Just this,” he said, bringing up some footage and rewinding it. “I can’t get a good look at the face, only the back of him and the way he walks. But he’s definitely holding a gun, and the time stamp matches up with the statements of when the gunshot was heard.”

I nodded, pushing closer to the screen. “Rewind that again.” I narrowed my eyes, looking for any kind of trait I knew, but all he had was a slight limp. There was nothing significant about the grainy image, and that just meant we were trying to find a needle in a haystack.

“Keep searching,” I told him. “You find anything, you forward it to me.” I pulled out my card, handed it to him, and walked out of the room. This wasn’t good. It was really fuckin' bad.

“What do you think?” Jord asked, darting his attention left and right to make sure no one was around.

“I don’t know.” I huffed out a breath. “The only people who Quinn was involved with were Hut and the crew. Ted is dead, Ford is away at the academy, Jace is missing, and Hut is dead.”

Jord frowned, staring down at the floor. “What about that Carson guy?”

“Possible,” I replied. “Especially after what happened with Lola. He could be looking to take them all out, but it’s not his style. If he were going to do it, he wouldn’t take the time to carve traitor into his chest.”

“True.”

“Call Ford’s training officer. Make sure he’s still out of state and doing what he’s meant to be doing. Put him on alert just in case. He’s the last member of the crew, which means he’s a potential target.”

“On it,” Jord said, pulling his cell out and walking away.

The day had started out better than any other, but it had gone to complete shit in a matter of hours.

Chapter Seventeen

LOLA

I’d always been waiting for the bad to take me down right after the good had made an appearance. I was so used to it being that way, that just living in the moment was hard to do. It was getting easier, though.

Having Brody at the ultrasound with me was something I wasn’t sure would happen, but we were in a place of peace, a place where we were both happy. Now all I needed to do was tell him I would move in with him and take that final step. It was a step I was scared to take, but nothing ever came if you didn’t take risks, and Brody was a risk I was willing to bet on.

Working at the diner and pulling doubles was getting harder and harder to do the further along I got, but at least I wasn’t running for the bathroom several times a day now. Instead, tiredness would slam into me when I least expected it, and my feet would swell to ridiculous sizes after being on them for six hours. I was thankful Brody was picking me up when my shift finished because the thought of walking home didn’t appeal to me at all.

I grabbed my notepad and moved over to a booth four women had just sat down in, smiling up a storm even though it felt like hard work to do so.

“Can I take your order?” I placed my small pencil against the paper and glanced up, the smile dropping off my face as soon as I did.

“I see the whore is still working here,” Moira sneered, flipping her perfectly styled hair over her shoulder. “Sal really needs to background check his staff.”

I hadn’t seen Moira since the day she’d confronted me, and that had been nearly three months ago. A lot had happened in that time. A lot had changed. Mainly me.

The woman sitting opposite her clutched her necklace, her eyes narrowing on me as she looked me up and down. “You can practically smell the Cresthill scum on her.” Her nose wrinkled, and I pulled in a calming breath. I would not let these women get to me. I would not— “Do they even have running water?”

“I’ll come back when you’ve taken a look at the menu.”

I started to turn, but halted when Moira screeched, “Are you refusing to serve us?” Fuck. Me.

“No,” I said carefully, turning back to face the table. This was not their usual scene, that much was clear. They were all wearing clothes more suited to a country club, so I could only guess they’d come here for me and not the food. “Are you ready to order?”

“Did we say we were ready?” the woman opposite her asked, an

d I was starting to realize these two were the more vocal of the foursome.

“If you’re not, then I can come back—”

“We’re ready,” the woman closest to me with auburn hair said. “I’ll take the omelet and salad.”

I wrote it down, and thankfully, they all reeled off what they wanted in turn, letting me make a hasty exit away from them. I’d been to hell and back—quite literally—so I wouldn’t allow a gaggle of bitchy women to get to me, but I could take the verbal shit from her. I understood she was hurting, and that her husband had done the unimaginable. I hadn’t known who he was, but I did now, and for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to regret it.

I waited for the minutes to tick down. Only ten left until Brody would be pulling up outside and my shift would end. Hopefully, their order wouldn’t be ready until then and—