"It's not fine," he said, rubbing her back gently. "It's not okay that somebody broke into your home. And don't attempt to dismiss me again, missy," he teased. "Because while I have a decade's experience of taking orders for my job, I don't take kindly to them in my personal life. Also, if you were thinking straight, you would have realized that the police will probably want to speak to the guy who put a bullet in the leg of one of your assailants."
They stood silently for a moment as Louisa focused on breathing deeply. She gripped Six's waist tightly. She supposed it should be awkward, but it wasn't. It was comforting. She could feel the strength of him, and she knew he wouldn't let anything happen to her.
Louisa tilted her head back to look at him. "Do I want to know why you have a gun when San Diego pretty much prohibits concealed carry?"
Thankfully he didn't let go of her. In fact, he pulled her closer and leaned back against the kitchen island, placing his legs on either side of hers. "Well, you can thank Sheriff Pike in Alabama for that."
His proximity was confusing her. Her body was still on high alert as her hand shook and her body tried to figure out what to do with the chemical instruction to flee. But then another part of her was highly aware of the way they lined up against each other. And how the fact that he'd slouched a little meant they'd lined up in a way that was too intimate. She needed to focus on their conversation and not the way his inner thigh felt so warm against the side of her leg.
"What does Sheriff Pike have to do with it?"
"Ever heard of the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act?" Six asked, and Louisa shook her head. "It's a federal law that's over a decade old that allows law enforcement people to carry concealed firearms in any jurisdiction in the United States. So I got Sheriff Pike to deputize me-even got the gold star to prove it. And now I carry a gun."
"That sounds like a technicality to me."
Six smiled. "It kind of is. Now that you've got a little more color in your face, and you've stopped shaking, you want to tell me who those men were, or what they wanted?"
Louisa smoothed her hands down the front of his chest to fix his rumpled hoodie and then straightened the hem. Six grabbed her hands in his and stilled them. His hands were the size of baseball mitts compared to hers.
"I don't know for sure. They beat you in here by a minute or two at most. They told me that they wanted me to go with them, and that was about it. I don't want to think this has something to do with the missing sample."
Thoughts crowded in almost too quickly to process them all. Things like this didn't happen to her. It went against the rules. Her rules that said she would spend her life doing research away from all the horrid stuff that went on in the world. And shit like this certainly didn't happen in Mission Hills. She wondered if it was smart to keep the fact that she'd swapped the two samples and disposed of the one they seemed to be after five days earlier from the police when they finally arrived. But this was a golden opportunity to find out where the police were with the theft in the lab. Obviously Six had saved her life, but she didn't want him to get into trouble for shooting one of the men. She wasn't even sure how that would work. It wasn't like he was defending his home. He was defending hers with a gun he'd brought with him which she wasn't sure was even legal. Crap.
"It's all such a mess," she whispered against Six's shoulder.
"I know. But I'm right here with you," he said softly.
Her heart pounded again and her head felt groggy, like mud, as though she was hungover. What she really needed was some silence. She tried to pull away from Six, but he wouldn't let her move. "Let me go," she said, blowing her bangs out of her face.
Six shook his head slowly. "I don't know what's going on, but you'll walk the police through it step by step, and I'll tell them what I know. Then we'll figure out how to make you safe tonight. Then in the morning, I'll help you figure out what you can do to remain safe while this gets sorted out."
What if they came back? Oh, God. She hadn't thought that far ahead. She could go to her mother's home, but that might lead the people that were after her to her family. Damn. Why had she already decided it was about the sample when it could have been an abduction attempt or an armed robbery, which didn't make her feel less vulnerable but did quash all the conspiracy theories in her head? What if she was excluding options that were important? She was the daughter of a very wealthy widow. Ransom could be a possibility.