Page 76 of Nightcrawler

“I’m fine, Miguel,” I groaned, holding my side. “Go!” I waved him away and he stood, looking down at me as he hesitated. “Go!” He turned and ran, disappearing from sight a second later.

MIGUEL

Fury filled my veins with fire as I began running away from the man I’d practically thrown to the ground…the person I’d come to care about most in this world. He was hurt and that fucker had nearly killed him. I was in a blood-filled rage as I tore through the crowd. Howell had disappeared from sight and the shooting had stopped. All I could hear in my earwig was grunting as the others ran after him. There was only one way out of this place, and I headed for it, knowing the others would reach him before I could.

“I’ve got him!” Jarrett shouted. “He’s comin’ my way.”

“Jarrett! Don’t!” Thayne cried out as I heard a scuffle.

“Oof!Fuck! You’re a big motherfucker, ain’t ya? Try that again.” A shot rang out and for a second, I was paralyzed with fear as I worried that Jarrett or Thayne—who’d obviously intercepted Howell—had been shot.

“LAPD, Howell!” Cassidy shouted.

“FBI! Drop your gun!” Mac yelled. A series of shots rang out and I caught sight of Howell, just in time to see him falling backward. His gun flew out of his hand as Mac, Cassidy, and Mike stood twenty feet from him, all with smoking gun barrels. By the time I ran up, Howell was lying bloodied and veryverydead on the ground in front of me.

I couldn’t believe it. Several emotions hit me all at once. I’d wanted to protect innocent lives just like I’d done overseas. I’d wanted to bring him in alive and claim the bounty on his head. But most of all, I’d wanted to kill the man who’d nearly killed Raven and my other friends myself. I assessed the sight of the man bleeding out in the dirt for only a second before turning to go back to Raven. When I saw him limping toward me, holding his side, and very very much alive, I ran to him, enveloping him in my arms, and breathing in his scent as I buried my face in his hair.

“I love you, Raven,” I gasped. “I love you…love you…love you.”

He hugged me back. “I’m okay, baby. I swear it. I’m okay,” he assured me. “Just a little banged up. I swear I’m fine. Look at me.” He pushed me back, forcing me to break my hold on him. “Look.” He lifted his shirt and twirled around to show that the bandages were in place and looked good. He dropped the shirt and pulled me back into his arms as he hugged me tightly. “I loveyou too, Miguel. I love you.” The words were the best thing I’d ever heard in my life.

I breathed a sigh of relief. It was over. It was all over.

RAVEN

The Oxnard police on-site had worked with Cassidy and Mike, and reinforcements were called in for crowd control. When they’d first arrived on scene, they hadn’t been happy but that had changed when they learned the identity of the man who’d been killed. When they found out that Cassidy and Mike had been responsible for bringing down a freaked out, fugitive meth head who’d shot through a crowd of innocent people on the fairgrounds, with the help of an off-duty FBI agent, they’d extended every professional courtesy. Plus, it was clear to me that there were other levels of police clearance and coordination going on that we didn’t know about.

Miguel and I had spent the better part of the day at the Oxnard police station, recounting the events leading up to the killing of Howell, and by the time we left later that afternoon, we were all starving. We’d brushed off dusty clothes, congratulated each other on a job well done, and headed out to a nearby seafood place to eat.

“How are you feeling, Sunshine…really?” Miguel asked, taking my hand the second we were both sitting in the cab of my Dodge Ram back at the fairgrounds where we’d left the vehicle.

I smiled, squeezing his hand. “I feel fine. I got the wind knocked out of me. I think my injuries are survivable, Miguel.” When he said nothing, I turned to look at him, remembering the confession he’d blurted out there on the fairgrounds. “I love you,” I said, repeating my own.

He beamed at me. “Me too, Sunshine. Me too.”

I paused, keeping my eyes on traffic as I got on the freeway, not wanting to bring up the obvious…that Howell hadn’t been brought in as a fugitive. Instead, the fucker had been taken down by law enforcement, negating Miguel’s claim on the 60,000-dollar bounty he would have had a huge share in. Still, if I didn’t bring it up, it’d remain between us like an elephant in the room.

“They’re not going to pay the bounty, are they?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him shake his head.

“No, they ain’t,” he said, tiredly. He was quiet a minute and I turned to see him staring out the side window before dragging my eyes back to the road. “Jamie’s gonna fire me. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

I took a deep breath and gave voice to the thought which had been in my head for quite a while. “What do you say we go into business together?” I looked over at him as I felt all the air being sucked out of the truck. He was staring at me with wide eyes.

“What?”

I looked back at the road. “Why can’t I leave GMS Insurance and strike out on my own? We can be partners.”

He laughed. “Because that kind of thing takes money, Raven, and if you haven’t already noticed, I’m flat broke.” When I flicked a glance at him, his head was turned toward the window again. “Hell, I’m fucking homeless.”

I squeezed his hand hard, staring out the windshield as I drove. “You’re not homeless. You love me and I love you. You can move in with me. You have a home and as far as the work stuff…the partnership stuff…we’ll work that out.”

“I don’t know, Raven. I swear. It’s not because I don’t love you. I do. It’s because—”

I looked over when he stopped abruptly. The pain and uncertainty in his eyes was disconcerting. “What?”

“I don’t want to be dependent on you. I’ve never been dependent on anyone in my life, Raven. And trust me, Sunshine, this is no way to start a life together.”

“I want you in my life…all the way in my life,” I confessed, knowing it was all true. “I want you in my bed every night and I want to wake up and go to work at our own place, surrounded by our own people. My assistant, Judy, will come with us and run the front office. She hates our boss at GMS. She’s been trying to get me to leave with her and find a different insurance company to work with for years.”