Just as JT burst through the door from the prep room with the shotgun.
CHAPTER NINE
HARTNUP’S TRANSITION ESTATE
“Dez—are you all right?” JT demanded as he rushed to her.
“I…” Dez’s voice faltered on the first word as she saw the gore that was splattered on her legs and gun hand. She saw the squirming larvae and went into a hysterical fit, slapping the stuff off her clothes. “God!”
“Are you hurt?”
“No—help me the fuck up!”
JT hooked a hand under her armpit and pulled her out from under the corpse. Dez’s heels scrabbled at the blood-soaked floor as she backpedaled into JT. He lost his grip on her ten feet from the corpse, and Dez fell hard on her ass and sat there, staring, mouth open, shaking her head. Her gun fell from her hand and she made no move to pick it up; so JT did.
“What happened?”
His question seemed to be coming from another room; it was tinny and distant and Dez wasn’t sure if he was really there. JT came around and squatted down in front of her. His face twisted into a frown of doubt and he snapped his fingers the same way she had done to him—God, was it only a few minutes ago? On some remote level Dez understood that she was in shock, just as she was aware that she was thinking about being in shock. Her mind was fragmented as it tried to crawl away from the precise reality of what just happened.
“I…” Dez began again, but didn’t know where to go with it. She shook her head.
JT rose and helped Dez carefully to her feet, took her by the elbow and guided her across the room to a niche filled with filing cabinets. He still held her Glock in his other hand.
“Dez,” he said softly, “what happened?”
“She attacked me,” gasped Dez.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Listen to me, Dez … the chief and the forensics people are going to be here soon. We need to have a story. We need to tell them something they’re going to believe, so I need you to tell me what really happened. Why did you discharge your weapon? Was it accidental? No,” he corrected himself, “I heard four shots. We can’t sell that as accidental. Dez—did you see the perp? Did he come back? Is that what happened—you saw him and fired?”
Dez kept shaking her head. She pushed a strand of hair from her eyes with trembling fingers.
“Give me something, Dez,” pleaded JT, his eyes clouding with the beginnings of panic. “We have to make sense of—”
“She fucking attacked me!” snarled Dez.
JT took a step backward. He looked at her, his eyes searching hers, then he turned and looked at the woman. When he turned back, his eyes kept meeting hers and darting away.
“Dez…”
“No, goddamn it. That Russian bitch attacked me. ”
“Okay, okay, I hear you. She attacked you. But … how?”
“What do you mean, ‘how’?”
“Come on, Dez … She was dead. She—”
“Of course she wasn’t dead, dumb-ass!”
“Dez, her whole throat was torn open. We both saw it—”
“Then we saw it wrong. ” Dez took a steadying breath. “Look, JT, I did not imagine that woman tackling me, and I sure as hell didn’t put four rounds into her for shits and giggles. She. Came. After. Me. ” She spaced the words, slow and loud.
JT raised his head into an attitude of listening. Dez heard it, too. Sirens. “Look, Dez, you know I have your back, right? That’s unquestioned. I’ll tell any story you want me to tell. Screw the chief and screw everyone else … but you got to give me something to work with. We can’t spin a fairy tale. ”
“JT…”
“They’re going to blood test you,” he said. He dropped the magazine and ejected the round from the chamber, then thumbed the round back into the magazine and slid it back into the receiver. He didn’t return her weapon, however. “What’s your blood alcohol—”