“Yeah, it’s me,” she said quietly.
“Kassidy, get back. I don’t want you getting hurt,” I told her, and I heard her shuffle backwards a few steps. Once she stopped moving, I addressed the man in front of me again. “Let’s talk this out. There’s no need for anyone to get hurt,” I told him firmly. “Just put your gun down.”
“There’s nothing to talk about!” the man shouted, and I saw his gaze dart behind me and linger. As I expected, this man was there for Kassidy.
“Damn it, Kassidy. Please get behind something.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice shaking, and I heard her shuffling back a few more steps.
“Are you William?” I asked the shooter once Kassidy was quiet again. I was hoping to reason with the man now that I was pretty sure of his identity, but as soon as I said his name, his eyes widened in fear. Suddenly, he was pointing the gun at himself instead of me.
“Lower the gun, William,” I said again. “We can work this out.”
“It’s too late for that. They’re going to know,” the man said, sounding close to tears. “This is all her fault.”
“It’s not too late,” I replied. “I can help you, if you’ll just put the gun down. Please let me help.”
“They’ll kill me anyways, for letting her find proof of what we’ve been doing. She tricked me,” the man said. “I’m a dead man no matter what.”
“Wait—,” I started to say, but suddenly, William pulled the trigger, and I watched as his head exploded, blood and brain matter covering every nearby surface.
9
KASSIDY
I heard Evan curse under his breath as he walked over to William and kicked the gun away, then checked his pulse. He shook his head at me, letting me know that William was dead, and then he was walking towards me.
“Are you okay?” he asked as he studied me.
“Mentally or physically?” I asked him, trying to keep my voice calm, while inside I was anything but.
“Both,” Evan answered.
“I scratched my hands up,” I answered, holding them out to him, palms up, “and I feel a little sick. But otherwise I’m okay.”
“You should’ve stayed at the coffee shop like I said,” he lectured softly, taking my hands in his larger ones and gently brushing his thumbs over the scrapes. He tried to take a breath at that moment, but he winced, and I suddenly remembered the gunshots in front of the coffee shop. I began to look him over, and I noticed that the bulletproof vest he was wearing over his clothes had a hole in it, which definitely hadn’t been there before.
“I’m the one who should be asking if you’re okay,” I said with a sudden burst of panic, trying and failing to keep the fear from my voice. I almost got Evan killed, I thought to myself. I had to ask the question, even though I already knew the answer. “Did you get shot?”
“Yeah. In the vest,” he answered, clearly hating having to admit that to me.
“When you fell? After you pushed me out of the way?” I asked him, and I could tell that my voice had gone up at least an octave, the question coming out as barely a squeak. When he didn’t answer, I knew I was right. “Why did you do that? William wanted me, not you!”
“Well, I had a vest on, so I was more protected,” Evan said with a small shrug.
“What if he’d shot you in the head!” I yelled “You shouldn’t have done that! You could’ve died!”
“I didn’t die, though. I’m fine,” he reassured me, but he was clearly in pain as he spoke to me. He wasn’t okay at all.
“You shouldn’t have protected me like that. Don’t do it again,” I said firmly, yanking my hands out of his grasp.
Evan scoffed at my demand. “You aren’t my boss or my mother, so you don’t get to tell me what to do. And I will do it again. As many times as I need to.”
I looked into his handsome face, and I was so angry at him. Why did he take a bullet for me? He was an idiot. I wanted to scream at him, shake some sense into him, anything, and I stood up again so I could do just that.
“You shouldn’t have risked your life for me!” I yelled at him. “You should’ve let him shoot me.”
“I would never stand by and watch you get hurt if I could help it,” he responded calmly, and my frustration, my fear, hit a boiling point.
I’d never felt terror like this, but the thought of Evan dying, after I’d just found him again, was the worst thing I could imagine. This was my mission, and I hadn’t meant to drag anyone along with me, or put anyone else in danger. And if this man—this protective, sweet man, who was an amazing person, who people depended on, and whose friends and family actually loved him—had died because of me, because of all the mistakes I’d made, and the people I’d already let down, I never would’ve recovered. I would rather die a hundred different ways than have him hurt. He was too good, and meant too much to too many people, including me.
“You could’ve died!” I said again, and with that, the tears began in earnest, my entire body trembling.
I felt like I was going to hyperventilate, my lungs struggling to take in air as my hands began to shake. Then, my legs were starting to give out as well, so I sat down on the pavement. I wrapped my arms tightly around my knees, closing my eyes and resting my head against my legs. I was trying to shut everything out, doing my best to fight down the panic that was bubbling up inside of me.
“Kassidy?” I heard Evan ask, worry clear in his voice, but he sounded far away. Then, I sensed him sitting down next to me, rubbing circles on my back as he whispered in my ear, reminding me to breathe. It took a few minutes, but I finally started to calm down, my breath coming easier.
“I’m okay. Everything’s okay,” he said soothingly, his hand coming around my shoulders, pulling gently until I rested against him. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so comforted, or felt so at peace.
I didn’t deserve it.
10
EVAN
As I sat in the alley, hugging Kassidy against me as a dead body lay nearby, I had a lot of questions. First of all, why was she so upset that I’d kept her safe? This wasn’t the first time the topic of my protection had come up, and it also wasn’t the first time she’d argued against it, which just left me confused. I was an FBI agent, and it was my responsibility to protect others. I’d never met anyone who didn’t want me to do my job. Should I have stood by and watched while that bullet tore through her? Because that was never going to happen.
The fact that my need to protect her went far beyond my duties as a law enforcement officer was irrelevant.
My second question was, why had she been willing to date a psychopath to save people she’d never met? For that matter, why did she value trafficking victims’ lives above her own? That was obviously how she felt, since she willingly put herself in the kind of danger that led to her being shot at a few minutes ago. All to save people who were strangers to her.