Carter Reed(60)

“He’s my family.”

She got three of my fingers off, but they latched back on. She sighed. “Okay. Okay, Emma. I can see this is going to take longer than I thought. Don’t say anything to him. He’s going to come back any moment—”

“I killed someone.”

My words silenced her. Her arm dropped to her side and she staggered back a step. “Wha—what did you say?”

“I’m protecting her.”

She whirled around to see Carter in the doorway. A grim expression was on his face and he held dry clothes in his arms. Then he walked around me and peered close. “Her eyes are glazed over.”

“She’s in shock. She thinks she killed someone.”

“She did,” he snapped at her and tossed the clothes on the bed. “Leave and I’ll take care of her.”

She snorted. “Yeah, right. You might be buddies with Noah and you might’ve known Emma in a previous life, but I’m not leaving you alone with her. Not one second—”

“Noah.” Carter turned to the doorway.

“What?!” she squeaked as she was lifted in the air. Noah had been waiting in the background. He stepped forward, grabbed Theresa, and left the room with her. Carter called after them, “She can’t leave. Not yet.”

“I know,” Noah’s voice lashed out at him, over his shoulder.

The door was slammed shut a second later, and I turned towards Carter. I was still detached from my body, but he lifted his hand to my face. He cupped the side of it and ran his thumb over my cheek before he murmured, softly, “Come back to me.”

I shook my head. It was safer where I was.

“Come back to me.” He moved closer. His voice was a sensual caress against my skin. “Come back to me.”

I shook my head. It was better not to feel. There was no fear. No one betrayed me when I was like this.

Then he rested his forehead against mine and breathed out, “Please, Emma. I need you with me. I love you.”

I closed my eyes and the hurt seeped back into me. Everything hurt at once. It was too much, but I opened them again and I saw the relief in his. His hand closed around mine, and he tucked some of my hair behind my ear. I couldn’t handle it, not all of it, and I felt myself numbing again. Then I stepped back. I couldn’t do this if he was touching me. And I knew that I needed to hear it all. “Tell me what’s going on.”

He nodded, a look of surrender coming over him. “You’re not going to like some of it.”

“I have to know.”

“Okay.” He waited until I sat and then he started. “I told you before that I had an inside man with Franco, but I stopped hearing from him right before our first attack. He texted me that Ben sold you out so I doubled your guards after that, but I don’t think you noticed. Then when we were attacked, I knew something had happened to him. He would’ve let me know ahead of time.”

“They killed him?”

He nodded. “His body surfaced yesterday. It was delivered to one of the Mauricio houses.”

I sucked in my breath. There was more. I knew there was more. “What else?”

He hesitated, tense, and then asked, “Are you sure you want to hear all of this?”

“I have to.” I had no other choice. “Mallory’s gone, Carter. I’m really hoping that Ben took his money and split with her, but I need to know for sure. That means that I have to know everything. You have to tell me everything. Please.”

He didn’t wait another second. “Your friend Ben went to Franco and told him that you were the killer. He didn’t know about me or what happened with the body, but they’d been looking for Mallory. They knew Jeremy Dunvan had been seeing a regular girlfriend. He knew it was only a matter of time before they found her, so he gave them your name for some money and her safety guaranteed.” A hard look came over him. His wolf eyes turned into ice. “He was stupid. They’re planning to kill him anyways, if they haven’t already.”

“You know this from your inside guy?”

“And we know that Scott Graham told Franco you were at the club. He didn’t know that I’d be there too or that you’d be going home with me. They can’t get to you when you’re in my buildings. It’s why we’ve been attacked twice on the streets. After the first attack, we were going to take Scott to the warehouse for an interrogation.” He stopped for a second. “That’s what we do before someone’s killed.”

They were going to kill Scott, but they didn’t. “What happened?” I never blinked.

“We needed to know more and I figured my guy was dead so we left Scott where he was. He was being kept around to see if he’d be useful to us. His time ran up tonight. Gene came in to take him to the warehouse, but he got free somehow.”

“Why tonight?” My heart sped up.

“Because everything was going to be done tonight.”

“What?”

He started to pace as his hand raked through his hair. His wet shirt had started to dry, but it was lifted up from the movement. It stuck to his skin and remained there. As I watched him go back and forth, his muscles tightened with tension. Suddenly dread started to fill me. Aside from the attack and stampede that Scott’s gun had started, there were other events going on. Events, I was starting to realize, that had been in the making for awhile.