Eat Crow (Cheap Thrills 6)

Shaking myself out of it, I went to my desk, only picking up on the atmosphere once I’d put my coffee down. I’d come in wearing my uniform, so I didn’t have to lose time with Bexley coming in ten minutes early to get changed, so maybe they were wondering about that?

“Richards,” DB barked from the door to his office. “In, now.”

Racking my brains while moved, I tried to remember if I’d done anything to get in shit for recently. Honestly, I don’t think I had?

Fuck, was it Grandpa?

Closing the door behind me, I sat in the seat he was staring at. When he didn’t immediately start talking and just tensed the muscle in his jaw, I shifted awkwardly.

Finally, unable to take it much longer, I threw my hands up in the air and slapped them on my thighs. “What did he do this time?”

When DB raised his eyes, I swear my ass tightened to proportions it’d never done it to before.

“Diego Mantoya, aka Jordy Watts, was found dead this morning. Four bullets to the head, execution style.”

“Where?”

“On the borderline with Palmerstown, half of it in each town.”

Shoving my hand through my hair angrily, I clipped, “Fuck.”

“It gets worse.”

Unable to sit still, I stood up and started pacing. “How can it get worse? The only man who can confirm our theories about the Kirkwoods is dead. Four fucking bullets in the brain dead.”

“The girl we questioned, Cinder Murphy, was also found near him. She’s had a bullet removed from inside her skull through the night and is now in a coma.”

It felt like all of the power left me as I stumbled back over and dropped back down in the chair again, working over what he’d just told me in my head.

“She was shot in the head?” When he just nodded, I continued, “And she’s survived it?”

His response made it hit home. “So far.”

The initial breaking of the news had left me feeling numb, as always trying to understand how someone could do something like that to another human being. Four bullets was pretty final, but the poor woman had also been shot, just for hanging around with someone like Diego Mantoya. And so far, she’d survived it.

“What’s the outlook?”

Shrugging a shoulder, he tapped his finger on the top of his desk. “It’s a bullet to the head, who knows? So far, they’ve removed it, and through some grace of God, it didn’t hit anything vital and lodged itself somewhere—fuck if I know where—that didn’t end up killing her. They’ve removed it and have her on life support with something that monitors the swelling inside here,” he spun his hand around the top of his head, his frustration coming through clearly. “So it’s an unknown for now.”

“Jesus,” I growled. “God fucking damn it. She didn’t do jack shit, DB. She got herself tied up with a dickhead of epic proportions, sure, but she just—” I licked my lips, then realized I couldn’t look at him, so I tipped my head back to stare at the ceiling while I got myself together.

“Look,” he sighed, and I heard his chair creak like he was leaning forward in it. “I get it. I hate what’s happened as much as you do, but we need to do Cinder justice and find out who did it.”

“And why.”

He cleared his throat, and I lowered my head again, knowing I was going to hate what he had to say next.

“She was holding a gun in her left hand, so initially it looked like she’d killed him then turned it on herself—”

The door opened behind me, cutting him off as Alex walked into the room holding a file in his hand.

“Sorry I’m late. I just got the gunshot residue results back, but it’ll take a while to hear from ballistics.”

“You’re working this case,” I confirmed. “Was there residue on her hand?”

Dropping the file in front of me, he shook his head. “Some, but the lab in Palmerstown feel it wasn’t enough for five shots from the gun.”

Something about what DB had said was bugging me. I was mentally running through when we interviewed her and how she’d kept fidgeting with her hands. Then it switched to her agitated gestures, running her hand through her hair, rubbing her nose, itching her eyebrow…