Drop Dead Gorgeous

“Blake?”

The relief I see in her eyes guts me. I don’t want her to ever consider for a second that I wouldn’t come for her. No matter what. No matter what dragon she’s slaying, or what superstition she’s fighting, I’m here for it. Here for her.

“Come on, we need to get you out of here.”

She takes two steps and then a loud bang makes us all instinctively duck for cover.

“Shit!” I growl. I rush forward, wrapping my arm around Zoey, who in turn keeps Yvette at her side, and I usher them behind the car, pushing them down to the ground. Carefully, I peek out from behind the taillight as another loud bang echoes through the night.

I hear Alver call out, “Clear.”

Barnes yells out, “Zoey?”

“She’s here,” I answer. “Behind the car.”

Barnes runs around the car, skidding to a stop in front of us. “You good? Injured?” he barks at Zoey.

She seems surprised at his intensity but stammers, “Yeah, but we need to get Yvette to the hospital.”

“Shit,” he snaps, but without missing a beat, Barnes picks up Yvette from the ground, one arm under her knees and one behind her back. I’m impressed by his strength, especially when he covers the ground with wide strides toward his car.

I try to pick up Zoey too, but she shoos me off. “I’ve got it.”

“Zo, you’re limping,” I plead, every wince she makes stabbing me in the heart.

“I’m fine, Blake.”

Fuck, that tone. She’s right beside me, but her voice might as well be echoing from how far away from me she really is, back in her fortress behind defensive walls.

“Lean on me at least.”

She does take that option, though she stubbornly hops toward Barnes’s car. I help her sit down in the back seat with Yvette, wanting to crawl in after her so I can hold her. I’m not ready to let her go yet. Not when she’s mad.

Not when she’s not mine.

Barnes orders Alver, “Get the crew out here and start your paperwork. Good shot, old man. And call the State for their coroner.”

Coroner?

Good shot?

I look back to the field to see the other officer standing guard over a deadly still Sebastian. He’s got his gun out like he thinks Sebastian might be faking it, but there’s a pool of blood growing larger beneath him in the pale grass.

I guess Alver protected Zoey after all, taking the shot to save her. I give him an appreciative look. He might not be Zoey’s biggest fan, and I’m still not his, but he was instrumental in getting us here tonight, just in time to help.

Zoey tries to climb back out of the car. “I can do it.”

But Barnes stops her with a hard look, his jaw popping. “Zoey Walker, you know good and goddamned well you cannot handle the crime scene of a crime you were involved in, and you can’t process the body of the man who kidnapped you.”

Barnes is thunderously angry, honestly sounding like the father of a teenager who’s pushing some known boundaries, but Zoey doesn’t back down. Like the grown ass adult and professional she is. “Fine. But I want to see every document. And I want to observe the autopsy.”

Barnes dips his chin in agreement, so she pushes one step further. “And I want every test known to man run on Sebastian. I want to know every single potentially toxic thing he’s touched in his entire lifetime.”

“Why?” I question, fear blooming fresh. “Did he give you something?”

“Not me. Yvette,” Zoey answers, looking into the car at the sobbing woman. She drops her voice, kindly adding quietly, “He was poisoning them both for the money. It was all Sebastian, not Yvette. He was manipulating her, playing on her confusion from the metals.”

With that, she sinks into the car, pulling Yvette into her arms and pressing her cheek to the woman’s blonde hair. Barnes shuts the back door, climbing into the front seat, but I can’t . . . not yet.

“Zoey?” I plead.

She sighs. “Not now, Mr. Hale.”

A hot knife slips into my gut, spilling my blood at her feet. Are we back to this, so far gone that she won’t even call me by my name anymore?

If so, I will fucking work to get her back the way I worked to get her the first time, step by step, brick by brick, taking down those walls until I’m back inside her. Because she’s it for me. Zoey Walker is my love, my life, my till death do us part, even if some stupid curse I don’t believe in means my death is imminent.

If it is, I’ll haunt her fucking ass until she joins me in the afterlife because I’m not nearly close to done with her. Her eyes cut my way, and I see the barest sparkle there, the tiniest lift of her lips, and I realize . . . she’s fucking messing with me.