“She was alive when I left her!” Heather cried out. “I swear, she was!”
Alive, but sinking beneath the waves of the Gulf of Mexico.
Ramsey wasn’t going to stop. Maisey could see it. And she—she couldn’t shoot him. Odin was too close. So was Jinx. What if she hit one of them?
A wild cry broke from Ramsey as he surged at Heather.
Jinx grabbed him from behind. Shoved into the nearest wall, and when Ramsey came up with his fists flying, Jinx pointed a gun at him. “Don’t.” Low. “I am not your enemy.”
“You are now,” he vowed.
In the distance, a siren shrieked. Either Clay had finally gotten somewhere so he could use a phone or someone had heard the gunshots and reported them to the police. Hell, maybe Jinx had called them.
What she did know…it was almost over. Odin had just pulled cuffs out of a drawer, and he was slapping them around Heather’s wrists. Heather was crying, saying that it was all Steve’s fault. Steve was unconscious, and from the look of things, he’d probably be that way for a while.
Odin glanced up at her. “I can take the gun.”
“That would be great, thank you.” Her fingers were quivering so badly that she was afraid she might accidentally shoot someone.
He took the gun from her trembling grip. “Baby? You okay?”
He’d almost been shot in front of her. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t. Not ever.”
The siren’s call was growing louder. “I love you.”
His eyes flashed. “I fucking love you, too.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Why do you get to be happy?” Ramsey was in the shadows. Away from the cops and the flashing lights and growing throng of reporters.
It was gonna be another big story. Trouble for Hire had captured two killers. Jinx was currently handling the explanations. Smiling his easy grin. Twisting details just the slightest bit so that Ramsey was left out of the story.
Maisey inclined her head as she listened to a cop. He knew she was telling him about Heather’s confession. Hell, Heather was confessing left and right to everyone. She liked to keep telling everyone that they hadn’t actually killed Whitney.
As if that made it better.
“You get to go off into the sunset with your lady. Have the whole picket-fence ending. The kids. Probably a freaking dog. You get all of that…” Ramsey turned toward him. “And I don’t even get Whitney’s body. I can’t even bury her.”
There was fury in Ramsey’s voice. On his face. But there was also pain. It was the pain that got to Odin. “I’d be lost without Maisey.”
Ramsey stiffened.
“I’d be lost and I’d be furious, and I would want to destroy anyone who had ever hurt her.” He motioned toward Ramsey. “We aren’t so different, you and I.”
“Yes, we are.” Ramsey turned away. “You get to sleep with your woman tonight. I’ll never see mine again.” He took two steps forward. Stopped. “Make sure Jinx stays the hell away from me.”
“He was saving you from jail. If you’d killed Heather and Steve, you would have spent the rest of your life behind bars.”
“Maybe. But I would have also felt one hell of a lot better.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
Ramsey looked back at him. “Why do you get to be happy?” he muttered again. Then he shuffled away.
Odin exhaled. He didn’t know why he was lucky that night. He did know that he hadn’t been lying to Ramsey. He would be lost without Maisey. When he’d gone down those stairs and seen Steve with the gun to her head, his whole world had stopped. In that instant, he’d forgotten his training. His plans. He’d been helpless and terrified and willing to do anything in order to get that gun away from her.
Maisey darted away from the cop. Her gaze swept the scene. Odin knew she was searching for him, and he hurriedly stepped from the shadows. Thunder rumbled in the distance. A storm was coming.
When she glimpsed him, relief flooded across her delicate features. She ran toward him. He caught her. Pulled her close. Felt her warmth and softness.
You get to sleep with your woman tonight. I’ll never see mine again.
Ramsey’s words rang through his head. Odin held her tighter. Maisey was alive. Safe. He had her in his arms. He would be sleeping with her that night. That night and every other night that followed.
He had no idea what he’d done to deserve her. He didn’t know why he got a happy ending. But he would never let anyone take that ending from him. He would never let anyone take Maisey.
“I love you,” he said, and the words were natural. Easy. He didn’t stumble. Didn’t screw up and say something stupid. He just told her how he felt.
Maisey was his world. He loved her.
He loved her.
***
There were explanations to give. Statements that had to be taken by the cops. Maisey spent more hours than she could count at the police station. Odin was by her side. Jinx was there, too, in an oddly helpful mood with the cops. Giving smooth replies to everything.
She didn’t mention Ramsey. Neither did Odin or Jinx. Steve hadn’t seen him, as for Heather…
Well, she’d been talking plenty so far. She’d confessed to attacking Whitney and leaving her to drown in the Gulf. She’d admitted that Steve was the one who’d tried to abduct Maisey at the college. That Steve had been the one to shove the storage shelves onto Maisey and Odin.
According to Heather, everything had been Steve’s idea.
Maisey wasn’t so certain of that. Heather was playing the traumatized, terrified victim now, but Maisey remembered how well the other woman had acted in the parking lot of Dunson College. How she’d pretended so effectively to be in a breakup. How she’d acted as a desperate lover at Clay’s house.
Maisey thought that Heather had been fully involved in everything that had gone down. But the cops would be the ones to press the charges. The cops and the DA. The Coast Guard was doing sweeps in the Gulf, over the area where Heather had told them that she’d left Whitney.
Not that those sweeps would do much good. Not at this point…
Not after so long.
We’ll probably never find her body. Maisey knew that, and it broke her heart.
“You should go home. Get some rest.” Jinx stood in front of her. “I can get a cop to drop you off.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Odin and I have to tie up more loose ends, but the detective said you were clear to go.”
Falling into bed seemed like a wonderful idea to Maisey, but she hated to leave Odin. Her gaze automatically searched for him.
“Thank you,” Jinx said.
Her attention jumped to him. “For what?”
“Odin.”
She shook her head, lost.
“You don’t know what he was like after those last few missions. How he pulled away. Shut down. He was hurt badly, and the darkness was pulling him under.”
Maisey rose from the sagging chair. “I saw the scars on him.”
“Those are the ones on the surface. The wounds I’m talking about are on the inside. He saw too much blood. Too much war. And he came far too close to dying.”
He’d come too close to dying just hours ago. When Steve had been taunting him and fired that bullet, her heart had nearly shattered.