Blood Flame (Flame 1)

“No. Those are mine.” She lowered her voice. “I just don’t want you getting killed because our prick-of-a-boss has taken some kind of pay-off. But that’s all I’m going to say.”

Iris smiled and Connor could feel some of the tension leave her body. “You’re the best, Faith. Later.”

Tonopah Bridge.

The moment she ended the call, Connor dropped down in the nearest chair. Their enemy was bringing them back full circle in a way, to one of the crimes that had wrecked him as a man. He hadn’t been out to Tonopah Bridge in a long time.

Iris moved close. “What’s going on?”

“That bastard is fucking with me. He knows too damn much about my life.”

Iris pulled a chair close. “Is Tonopah where that pregnant woman died? The one with a gun strapped to her wrist?”

“Yes.”

Connor leaned forward, clasping his hands between his knees, his forearms on his thighs. He didn’t want to talk about it again. But the memory rose up like a dragon, blasting him once more. He would never forget her lovely green eyes, watching him as he approached. They’d been panicked at first, then resolution had come over her face.

Iris spoke quietly. “Tell me what happened.”

He decided to launch in. “About nine, nine-and-a-half years ago, I’d been on the job awhile, but it had been a hellish night. Two of the officers I worked with had been shot and killed. We’d had so many runners out, so many gun battles, that when I took this call about a runner not far from Tonopah Bridge, I was in a bad way. One of the men we lost was a good friend.

“When I saw the runner, I was pissed. She was heading up the wash, loaded with drugs. Worse, I could see she had a gun in her hand. I yelled for her to stop or I’d shoot. She did stop and sat in the dirt waiting. She looked resigned, then she said to me, ‘The baby stopped moving.’

“I saw then she was pregnant. The next thing I knew she was lifting her arm and the pistol flashed in front of me. On instinct, I fired, shot her in the chest.”

“Did she get a shot off? Were you hurt?”

He shook his head. “She couldn’t. It wasn’t a real gun and they’d taped it to her wrist.”

“Oh, God. She’d wanted to die.”

He nodded. “She was so thin.” He touched his neck. “She had the blood flame rash on her neck. She was emaciated, strung out, bruised all to hell. She was un-altered, one of the reasons she was so weak. She’d been badly used.”

“And she was sure her baby had died.”

“Yes.”

He hadn’t spoken of the incident in years. The pain came rushing back, the horror that he’d killed a woman enslaved in his world through no fault of her own.

“Did you ever find out who she was?”

He shook his head. “I did what investigating I could, but it always ended a level or two up the food chain, then got canned. I knew not to push. Besides, this woman was one of thousands I’d seen from the time I started working Border Patrol. But she was the only one I killed because of a set-up and a death wish.”

Iris had gotten very quiet. He glanced up at her. “What?”

“All the flame drugs are hard on fetuses.”

Back in his human life, he remembered the fuss women would pay to either expectant mothers or infants. It seemed to hurt Iris deeply that the woman had lost her child in utero. But then, he’d come to know Iris as a sensitive, caring woman.

When his phone rang, he wasn’t surprised. He reached across the table and drew it close. It was the station.

He kept it on speaker. “Connor.”

“You in one piece?” Lily’s voice again.

“I am, but let me spare you. Easton needs me out at Tonopah Bridge, right?