Page 24 of A Love Most Fatal

First, I see Vanessa twist her attacker’s arm, dislodging his gun, which she quietly fires twice before I can even hear the man grunt. I only know it fired because of the light and the way the other man standing over me hiccups back and falls to the ground, releasing the weight from my chest as he does.

Did she just?—

I scoot away and push myself to standing, my breath still ragged. I want to help Vanessa somehow, but she’s handlingherself just fine. She expertly fights the man that’s at least double her size. In a flurry of moves I barely see, she’s brought him to the ground beneath her and shot another two rounds into his head. My stomach lurches, but I keep the bile down.

Red is spattered on her neck and face and my suit coat.

“Are you okay?” I ask even though, despite a split lip and splatter, she’s looking mostly calm, just a quiet rage simmering.

Vanessa spits blood onto the back of the man’s head and nods.

“Did he hurt you?” she asks.

I shake my head.

She steps past me to survey the other man, the one who was holding me, and lands a hard kick to his side. Mind you, she’s done all this wearing her very tall heels. When he doesn’t move, she spits on him too and retreats to where her purse had fallen off in the fray.

“I’ll call the police,” I say, already digging in my pocket for my phone.

“Not yet,” she says.

I pause, my finger hovering over the call button, and my hand is shaking. She comes close and looks me over, her fingers trailing over my face for a moment before she takes my phone and locks it.

“It’s okay,” she says. “We’re okay.”

I watch as Vanessa pulls out her own phone and taps the screen before pulling it to her ear.

“Get Tony over here,” she says after a moment. “Two of them. . . We’re good. Yeah, he’s good. See you soon.”

After hanging up the phone, she slips it back into her purse. My whole body is shaking now, and I haven’t made myself look at the dead men because I’ve never really looked at a dead person before, and the thought of seeingtwonow up close horrifies me.

“Are you in pain?” she asks, and her voice is so gentle.

“No,” I say, and my voice is so loud I try again, quieter, “No.”

“I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“What is happening?”

Her lips press together into a thin line. The red of her lipstick has smudged a bit around her mouth from our kissing, and I imagine it’s smeared across my lips as well.

“Business,” she says. “I can’t explain here, but I’m going to handle it. I need your help moving them further into the alley.” She nods at the dead men, and I still don’t let myself look at them. Just the fact that their bodies are next to me, dead and unmoving, feels like a weight on my chest, like a monster beneath my bed I’m afraid to look at.

“We’ll start with this one. You can get his feet. Okay?”

“Vanessa, we need to call the police, we can’t move them, we?—”

“Nate, you need to trust me right now. I need you to say ‘okay.’”

I take a shaky breath and squeeze my eyes shut. I am pretty sure when I open them this will all still be happening, but I let myself hope that it won’t.

When I open my eyes, she’s still in front of me wearing my suit coat, a small trail of blood on her chin. I swipe it lightly with my thumb and she barely winces.

“Okay,” I say, and do what she tells me.

9

VANESSA