Still Waters (Greenstone Security 1)

She screwed up her nose, looking around the sterile room. “Well, not here exactly because hospitals creep me out, no matter how many hot nurses there are. Gray’s Anatomy was serious false advertising. But yeah. Watch out, City of Angels. The Devil has arrived,” she declared with a wink.

I grinned.

Then thought of Luke. The new one.

The Devil indeed.

“Okay, so you’re not leaving.” I said it more for my benefit than hers.

“Nope. Not too far, at least. I’ll be back, I promise. See you never.”

I smiled again. “Love you always.”

Then she was gone. But not for good. Because I wouldn’t let that happen.

Neither would Luke.

But that was a story for another day.

When I didn’t have a Keltan haunted by my ghost, or a sobbing sister, mother and brooding father at my bedside.

It was hard. Recovering from a stab wound.

And painful. The movies didn’t tell you about that. About the stiches and the scar and the fact you couldn’t reach over for a glass of wine from the sofa without excruciating pain.

Pain I became very good at masking considering the mirroring of that pain on Keltan’s face every time I took a swift intake of breath doing such things.

It was safe to say me getting stabbed and almost dying in front of him ramped up the protectiveness about… 1,000 percent.

Luckily I didn’t have a trial to testify for now. Considering the man I was going to testify against was murdered while in transit to the US.

Almost around the same time I was getting stabbed on the sidewalk in LA.

Convenient, or inconvenient, considering two death orders had been made about the same time, at least only one was successful.

Kismet.

Keltan didn’t say much about it to me, muttering something about “plausible deniability,” when I asked. And then when I continued to ask, because that was my job and hell no would I not get an explanation—his eyes had gone hard and he’d given me his best measured badass look.

“I told you, babe. I’ll become anything to keep you safe. Do anything to keep you safe. I did what needed to be done. Not gonna lose a wink of sleep over it, considering I’ve got you, warm, alive, breathing in my arms while I do so.” He paused. “And I’m not givin’ that shit a moment more of my oxygen because it’s already taken enough.”

That, coupled with the ghosts of demons flickering in his eyes made me pause.

So, I said nothing more.

I healed. And I breathed. And I lived.

Two months after our wedding, my baby sister, the hurricane, also got married.

To a man she’d known three weeks.

And because she was a hurricane, she did change her mind at my, Rosie’s, Keltan’s or Mom’s gentle suggestions that marrying a man who hadn’t even experienced you with PMS was not a good idea.

You couldn’t reason with a hurricane after all.

Though another hurricane, an undoubtedly more dangerous and fatal one was not happy about the nuptials.

At all.

Heath barely spoke at all during the period leading up to the marriage. And after.

Then he disappeared, “on assignment,” apparently. Or doing some running so he wouldn’t end up behind bars for murdering the man who was married to the woman he had some feelings for.

Serious feelings.

“What kind of a stupid ass name is Craig?” Rosie hissed, looking over the background check I’d asked Keltan to do.

I’d asked him, and he’d replied, “Already on it, babe.”

I rose my brow in question.

“Was on it the second she came hurtling into our place with a ring and a man who I didn’t rightly like the look of,” he explained. “She’s my family now. Because she’s yours. And no way in fuck am I letting my family get hurt.”

Yeah, I loved him.

I squinted at the paper, that was sparse and didn’t show anything about skeletons in Craig’s closet. I didn’t doubt Keltan had looked in every corner. He was the best. So, the lack of skeletons bothered me, as did Craig’s relatively unremarkable life.

Everyone had skeletons.

“It’s the name of the man my sister is marrying in one week,” I replied.

She narrowed her eyes. “Dumb fucking name.”

I nodded in agreement, giving my friend a sideways glance.

She looked, walked, and talked like my best friend. But she was different. Different like the dark version of Luke who haunted these halls with his bulky form that had become bigger and less soft around the edges than it had been before.

The eyes that watched Rosie retreat every single time they shared air.

I’d compared them to a powder keg. This one was moments away from explosion. But moments were hard to measure.

It was coming though, the explosion.

We all could only brace.

The wedding came, despite everyone’s reservations. Polly did what Polly wanted. So, Polly got married in the small rooftop on her loft apartment—of which I was vaguely worried was home to a cult—and wore a simple white lace dress with daisies in her hair, no shoes, and hardly any makeup.