She fired off a round blindly and ducked behind the corner where he couldn’t see her anymore. In a flash, Luke was at her side. His hands were still bound behind his back, and two trickles of blood covered the right side of his face. “Untie me.” He knelt next to her.
“A little busy,” she muttered as she stared at the hallway. Either the guy was going to come into the main living area firing blindly, or he was going to try to get out of the cottage via the back rooms.
The sound of smashing glass from the bedroom answered that question. “Shit. He’s making a run for it.” Everything in her wanted to chase after the man, but her priority was Luke, and they weren’t exactly alone in the house.
She pushed herself up, passed the small table to the counter and snatched a knife from the counter. She went back to Luke and knelt next to him, eyeing the zip ties that held his wrists. The thing was so tight his hands were purple. No wonder he wanted it off. It had to hurt like a bitch. She cut through the plastic in one quick motion before she pulled him up to stand. “Come on,” she said. “We need to get to a phone.”
Without waiting for him to respond, she pulled him into the bedroom and grabbed the first phone she saw, which was hers. She dialed 911 first, asking for paramedics and alerting them to a suspect running on foot and described his clothes and build. She had a feeling he’d be long gone before the police got out here, even with the quick response time in such a high-income area.
After that, she called Hotchins, who agreed to get in his car immediately to drive out. But it would still be hours before he arrived.
She hung up the phone and looked back to Luke. “Police should be here any minute. We need to talk to the guy who roughed you up before they get here.”
She turned to go back to the kitchen, but Luke’s hand on her arm stopped her. “Evelyn, wait.”
She pulled free of his grasp. “I have a job to do, Luke. The paramedics will be here soon to take a look at your head.” Without waiting for a response, she headed back to the kitchen to look down at the man she’d shot. “Damn it,” she muttered.
The man wasn’t familiar to her. Younger than the one who got away, but still strong. Evelyn bent down and pressed her fingers to his throat, looking for any sign of a pulse. Nothing. She’d hit him three times in the chest, and his death had probably been instant. A cold ice flowed through her veins. “Damn it!” she said again.
“What’s wrong?” asked Luke from behind her.
“What’s wrong? I just killed a man.” She didn’t look back at Luke; instead, she stared at the dead man at her feet. At least his eyes were closed. It was always so much worse when they were open. He only wore a black t-shirt and black jeans, so there wasn’t much room for him to have any identifying information. She felt his pockets and when she felt something hard in one, she pulled out the cell phone.
“He had a gun, Evelyn. There was nothing else you could do.”
She thought back to the moments before she fired. Once Hotchins was here, she’d have to give a full, detailed report of everything that happened. She stood, holding the phone in her fist. “How did they get to you?”
“Snuck up behind me like cowards. Knocked me out with something, and the second I woke up, I called to warn you.”
“Did they say anything? Give any indication of how they knew where we were?” Hotchins was the only one she told, but did that mean he was the traitor? That made no sense. He’d been riding her harder than anyone to bring down the Thirteen Stars.
“As I said, it was bang, then me screaming for you to get out of the house. Which you didn’t do, by the way.”
“My job isn’t to run and hide. It’s to bring down the people who want you dead.” Which she’d failed to do. Horribly. Fuck.
“I’m happy you take your job so seriously, believe me, but I don’t want you putting yourself in danger for me.”
“Trust me, I don’t want that either. I’ve already done too much for you.”
She heard him approach and she steeled herself for his questions.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Evelyn forced herself to go blank. To force out any possibility of a relationship from her mind. “That man never should’ve died.”
“I told you, Evelyn, it was self-defense. He had a gun. Who knew what he was going to do to me? To you?”
“Not that. He could be a link to Longineu. These guys, the ones who do the dirty work, they break easy. If we brought him in, this would all be over. I shouldn’t have killed him.”
“You didn’t have a choice!”