Guarding His Witness. Lisa Childs

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СКАЧАТЬ was he waiting for?

      The trial was due to start soon. She wasn’t the only witness, though. If she had been, the prosecutor wouldn’t have even brought the case against Mills. Eyewitness testimony was too often discounted as unreliable.

      Rosie would never forget what she’d seen, how her brother had been gunned down in cold blood right in front of her. Even as she’d screamed and dropped to her knees next to his bleeding body, she’d braced herself for the bullets she’d been certain would be fired into her body as well.

      Instead of killing her, Luther had leaned close and whispered into her ear, “You have Clint Quarters to thank for this...”

      Thank him? She’d wanted to kill him—just like she’d wanted to kill Luther. Like the drug lord had said, Quarters was almost as responsible as if he’d pulled the trigger himself. He’d certainly been the one who’d put the target on Javier. Yet there were no repercussions for him.

      He hadn’t lost anything—while Rosie had lost everything. She had nothing else to lose now but her life.

      She shivered again.

      Where had that officer gone?

      Had he been injured?

      As a nurse, it was her duty to try to treat him if he was. The peephole offered only a limited view of the hallway, with its dirty beige walls and dim lights. Maybe the officer was lying on the worn vinyl floor, bleeding out just like Javier had. Despite her training as an ER nurse, she hadn’t been able to save her brother. He had died in her arms.

      She blinked against another rush of tears. The last thing Javier had done before he’d died was reach up and wipe away her tears. “Don’t cry for me, Rosie,” he’d told her.

      But that wasn’t all he’d said.

      She couldn’t think about the rest of it, though—not without getting furious. He’d wasted his dying breath on Clint Quarters. She hated the man for that almost as much as she hated him for causing her brother’s death.

      Despite her efforts, that fury rushed back, and the sheer force of it quashed her fears. She was not going to cower in her apartment while someone might be hurt and in need of her help. Her hand trembled slightly as she fumbled with the row of dead bolts on her battered door, but she managed to turn them all. Then she grasped the knob and pulled open the door.

      And she gasped as she stared up into the unfairly good-looking face of the man she hated most—even more than she hated Luther Mills. Was she just imagining him there? Surely after she’d thrown him out of her brother’s funeral he wouldn’t have had the guts to seek her out again.

      Would he?

      The man certainly looked like Clint Quarters with his golden-blond hair and square jaw with stubble a few shades darker than his hair. He stared down at her with those deep green eyes of his.

      And she trembled with the fury rushing through her body. That was all it was. After what he’d done to Javier, she couldn’t feel anything else for him but anger and hatred. Her first instinct was to slam the door in his face, but before she could swing it shut he caught it and no matter how much she struggled, she couldn’t move the door or him. Maybe he was made of granite.

      She’d thought that before—that he couldn’t be human. That he had no heart. No soul.

      * * *

      This is a bad idea. Clint had told Parker that the minute he’d given him this assignment. But yet he hadn’t turned down his boss. Clint knew no one else would protect Rosie Mendez like he would. The only thing he’d been worried about was that she would refuse to let him protect her.

      He hadn’t been worried about himself. But maybe he should have been, since she was trying really hard to slam the door in his face.

      Then she shoved at his chest, trying to push him back from her door. But he didn’t budge. And it wasn’t just because he had an assignment to carry out.

      He’d made her brother a promise a long time ago. And if anything happened to her, he would be breaking that promise. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the first promise he’d broken that he’d made to Javier.

      “Go away!” she screamed at him, and her curly brown hair tangled around her flushed face. “Get the hell out of here!”

      He shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere,” he told her. “Not without you...”

      “Have you lost your mind?” she asked, her brown eyes wide with shock. “I am not going anywhere with you. Ever!”

      “You’re going to die if you don’t,” he warned her.

      “Are you threatening me?” She stepped out of her apartment and looked around him, calling out, “Officer! Officer!”

      The hallway was empty but for him. The building felt empty—which only confirmed what Clint had heard.

      “What did you do with him?” she demanded to know. “Where is he?”

      “Who?” he asked.

      “The police officer who brought me home from the hospital,” she replied. She was wearing her scrubs still. They were a deep blue that complemented her naturally tan skin. But hell, Rosie Mendez would look beautiful in anything. She had—even in the somber black dress she’d worn for her brother’s funeral.

      “Where is he?” she asked again.

      Clint shrugged. But he felt a niggling sensation between his shoulder blades. Had something happened to the police officer? Or had Luther Mills gotten to him, paying him off to look the other way or worse?

      Parker had warned Clint and the other members of their team that they could trust no one but one another. The River City PD and the DA’s office had been compromised. Because they weren’t sure who the moles were, they couldn’t place confidence in anyone.

      That wasn’t hard. Clint trusted few people. The hard part would be getting Rosie to trust him. Hell, that wouldn’t just be hard; it would probably prove impossible.

      But he wouldn’t let that stop him from keeping his last promise to her brother. The buzz on the street and from the jail was that something was going down tonight to get rid of the witness.

      Javier hadn’t been Clint’s only informant. But he’d been his best.

      “We need to get out of here,” Clint said, and he reached for her arm.

      She jerked back. “Don’t touch me!” she said, her voice shaky with fury or maybe fear.

      He would never hurt her. At least, not physically. He couldn’t help how he’d already hurt her. It was too late to change that, though.

      Javier was gone.

      She would not be next.

      “Come on,” he said, his patience with her wearing thin.

      She had to know that she was in danger, especially since her police detail had mysteriously disappeared.

      “We СКАЧАТЬ