Standing in the Shadows (59 page)

His pale eyes went wide. Black-red arterial blood gushed out over spotless white linen. The gun dropped from his hand. His arms encircled her as he fell forward. His blood had a meaty, metallic smell.

He was taking her down with him, into the steaming pits of hell.

She heard another gun blast, then another, but they came from very far away. The table caught the back of her head as she fell, but it was some other person who suffered that awful pain. She was falling into the vortex that had always waited for her. Fading into the dark.

"Erin? Goddamn it, Erin, wake up! Talk to me!"

Connor's voice sounded terrified. She wanted to comfort him, but she'd lost contact with the part of herself that knew speech. Everything was so far away. She was so small. Lost in a huge, echoing void.

"She's covered with blood." Connor's voice shook. Rough hands wrenched her blouse open. "I can't tell if—"

"Not hers," said Tamara's voice. "It's his. Relax."

Erin's eyes fluttered open. Staggering pain rilled her head. She struggled to focus. "Connor?"

"Erin? Are you OK?"

"Don't know. Am I?"

His hands slid over her body, searching for injuries. He let out a long, unsteady sigh of relief when he found none. He slipped his arm behind her shoulder and pulled her up. "God, you scared me."

"My head." Erin tried to lift her hand up to her head, but her arm was made of lead. Connor's long, gentle fingers slid into her hair and explored. She hissed in pain.

"You've got a bump, but it didn't break the skin," he said. "We'll have it checked out."

"Novak?" she asked.

He jerked his chin to the left of them. She glanced, and looked quickly away from the still, blood-drenched thing next to them. Her gorge rose. She squeezed her eyes shut. "He's really dead this time?"

"Very dead," Tamara said. "Thanks to you."

She looked up, startled. Tamara was crouched next to her. "Me?"

"You took him out with the neck wound." Her approval was clear. "It would have taken a minute, but it was a sure thing. You hit an artery, girl. Blood's all over the wall. Looks like a slaughterhouse in here."

Erin closed her eyes before she could see the gore-spattered walls. "I heard all those gunshots," she said.

"We were just making dead sure," Tamara said. "Connor said you were an Amazon. He was right. I'm impressed." Tamara was pressing hard on her upper arm, her fingers wet with blood.

"You're wounded," Connor said to her. "Let me see."

"Tonia grazed me," she said. "The bitch always did have lousy aim. No big deal. I've taken worse than this and then gone out dancing."

The world widened into vast, echoing emptiness again. Erin heard their voices, but she could not take in what they were saying. Connor's hand was warm against her face. "Erin? Babe? Anybody home?"

"I'm not dead," was all that came out. What she wanted to say was too complicated, a million desperate things all struggling for precedence. "I'm not dead," she repeated stupidly.

"No, you're not, sweetheart. Thank God."

Connor's head dropped onto her blood-soaked shoulder. She smelled his warm, tangled hair against her face. He loved her, but he couldn't follow her to that frozen wasteland. No one could. She didn't know the way back to where he waited, warm and gentle, and needing something from her that she was too destroyed to give.

"It's all chaos," she whispered. "That's it. That's all there ever was. Anything else is just a lie. Just a mask."

Connor smoothed her hair back, frowning. "I think you've got a concussion, baby."

"I think she's telling you something important," Tamara said. She tilted Erin's chin up gently with a blood-streaked hand. "You know what? You've got the makings of an excellent professional bad girl."

That was so bizarre, it actually penetrated the haze and pulled her back to the room. She focused on Tamara, blinking. "Really?"

Tamara smiled. "Sure. You've got all the prerequisites. The looks, the brains, the nerve, the flexible attitude. You need a little help with the style, but that's no biggie."

Connor pulled her back against the warmth of his chest. "That's very kind of you, but it's not her scene."

"Let Erin speak for herself," Tamara mocked. "Today's a big day. Her first kill. It's all chaos, right? I've known that all along, you see. It's made me what I am today."

Connor's body was rigid. "Hey. Forget it. Erin isn't a—"

"I owe you one, beautiful," Tamara told her. "If you ever need help with something scary, leave me a message at the
Honey Pot sex toy shop down in Pioneer Square. Scary things are my specialty."

"Scary like this?" Connor asked harshly. "Jesus. That's kinky."

"This situation was pretty much my outer limit," she admitted. "I plan to be very mellow for a while. Unless Erin needs me, of course."

Connor's arms tightened jealously. "Thanks, but I can help her with anything scary that comes up."

Tamara stroked Erin's cheek with a long red fingernail. There was a guttering silver lightning bolt appliquéd onto it. "Men may come and men may go, but sisters look out for each other," she murmured.

Erin let out a bitter laugh. "Like Tonia?"

Tamara dismissed Tonia with a flick of her bloodstained hand. "Tonia is trash," she said. "What you lost in her, you gained in me… and then some." She leaned forward and kissed Erin's mouth. Her lips were soft and lingering. "Keep that in mind, girlfriend."

Connor made a rumbling sound in his chest. "Hey. I appreciate your help, and this eternal sisterhood stuff is touching, but it's been a tough day. You can stop fucking with my head anytime now. Anytime."

Tamara laughed in his face and poked him with her lightning bolt fingernail. "Toughen up, McCloud," she said. "You're such an easy mark." She rose and hiked up her skirt to holster her gun. "This place is going to be full of cops in a while, so I'll just be on my way. Cops make me itch. Except for you, of course, big boy."

"I'm not a cop anymore," he said.

Tamara's eyebrows lifted. "Once a cop, always a cop. I'm out of here." She smiled at Erin. "
Ciao
, beautiful. It's been intense."

"Any other goons to worry about?" Connor demanded.

She shook her head. "He was keeping a very low profile. The only ones in the house were Silvio and Nigel. They probably bolted when they heard the gunshots. The rest are scattered around the city. They'll evaporate soon." She dug her toe into Tonia's buttock as she passed. "Stop sniveling, you stupid cow. You won't bleed to death. Apply direct pressure with the heel of your hand and shut up."

"Tamara?" Erin called.

Tamara turned at the door.

"Thank you," Erin said. "I owe you one, too. You know how to find me if you need me."

Tamara's brilliant smile flashed. "Till later, then."

She vanished into the dark. The two of them huddled together in the dim room between two blood-soaked corpses. Tonia's miserable whimpering grated on her raw nerves. Connor was saying something. Repeating it. She wrenched her mind into focus.

"… still got that cell phone on you someplace, sweetheart?"

"In my purse." Her teeth chattered. "Around here somewhere."

"I'll find it," he said.

She started to shiver uncontrollably when he took his warmth away to search for it. She heard his voice, getting further and further away. "Hey. Nick. It's me… yeah. Shut up and let me talk. I need an ambulance. I've got Novak and Luksch… come see for yourself. They're dead. You can ID them at your leisure, and then you can arrest me, if you still want to. There's a woman down with a gunshot wound to the thigh, one of Novak's… hell, I don't know. I was unconscious when they brought me here. Hold on." He crouched down in front of Erin, and patted her face. "Baby, what's the address of this place?"

She gasped it out through chattering teeth. Connor repeated it to Nick. "Hurry," he said into the phone. "Erin's going into shock."

He tossed the phone aside and peeled off her blood-drenched blouse. He took off his own shirt, wrapped her in it, and pulled her onto his lap, hunching his warm body around hers.

She felt the fear in his fierce, tight embrace. Part of her longed to comfort him, to tell him how sorry she was for not believing him. How grateful that he'd come to save her anyway, against all hope. He was heroic and beautiful, and she loved him.

She couldn't say it She was shaking apart. She vibrated in his arms, teeth rattling. All the horrors that could have happened coexisted in her mind, an explosion of dreadful time lines radiating out from one crushing blow like the cracks in a shattered windshield.

Something inside her was screaming, and could not stop.

That was how Connor's two brothers and his friend Seth found them. They glided like silent shadows into the room and looked around, speechless at the carnage. They pried Connor's arms away from her and draped her in a man's leather jacket, still radiating heat. Connor pulled her into his arms again. She huddled there with her eyes shut.

The lights came on, the room filled with people, noise, a hum of activity. She could've cared less. Connor carried her out of the place.

She was turning inward, coiling up tight in total silence. Bright lights, the sting of a needle. A wailing siren. Then nothing.

Connor parked the car, killed the engine, and sat there aching for a cigarette. There was no good reason not to just go buy himself some tobacco and some rolling papers. He'd given them up to please Erin, but he wasn't her boyfriend or her husband, or even her bodyguard, so what the hell? He wasn't her anything. Damn. That called for a smoke.

But he couldn't, as if that promise were the last tenuous bond he had left with her. Lighting up a cigarette would be admitting that he was never going to have her. He couldn't face that. Not quite yet.

Erin hadn't made a move toward him since the bloodbath, over a week ago. She'd dumped him very definitively before that, so he figured the ball was in her court. But he wasn't going to be able to wait much longer. Carrying an engagement ring around was wearing down his nerves. He felt like he had a bomb ticking in his pants pocket.

He got out of the car, rubbing the muscle in his thigh that cramped whenever he was stressed, which was pretty much all the time these days. He gazed up at the grim bulk of the state prison. The place made him tense, in much the same way that hospitals did. He guessed that was probably the whole point.

It was a long, tedious wait. He'd stuck a few scraps of paper into his pocket to fold into origami animals, a vain effort to keep his mind too busy to dwell on the dumb-ass thing he was doing. How much false, useless hope he might be pinning on it.

Finally his name was called. He had a sickly, nervous feeling in his stomach, almost like he was going to see a doctor or a dentist.

He met Ed Riggs's dark eyes through the heavy panes of glass. He was limping more than usual. He forced himself to walk more smoothly.

Erin had gotten her wide-set brown eyes from him. Weird, to see those eyes, so similar and yet so different on Ed's stone-hard face. Riggs picked up his phone and waited.

Connor picked up on his side. "Hi, Riggs."

Riggs's gaze was grim. "McCloud."

There were many ways to approach it. All of them sounded stupid.

Riggs grunted impatiently. "They don't give you much time, so if you've got something to say to me, spit it out."

He took a deep breath. "I'm going to ask Erin to marry me."

Riggs's eyes went blank. He stared through the glass at the younger man. "Why are you telling me this?" he asked slowly.

There it was. The million-dollar question. He'd been trying to answer it for himself for days, ever since the marching orders to go talk to Riggs had come over him. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "To clear the air, I guess. You're her father. I wanted you to hear it from me."

Riggs let out a bark of bitter laughter. "Man to man, huh? Are you here to ask for my permission?"

Anger twisted and burned, the sour, familiar pain of betrayal corroding his gut. He breathed it out and let it go. "I don't need your goddamn permission," he said. "And neither does she."