and I’ll be all right.” She clung to his solid strength and breathed him in. “It was kinda scary,” she admitted, glancing toward the two criminals who’d held her captive. “Even if they did seem more dopey than lethal.”
“Trust me. Both those guys could be plenty lethal. It’s their job, and they’d shoot somebody with no more qualms than if they were running any other errand for their bosses.”
“Speaking of… I wonder if those guys got away.”
As if in answer to her thought, another gunshot rang out, making Ames jump and grab on to Nick even tighter. “Oh God.” She pictured Jake or Bobby sprawled on the ground—still and bleeding.
A moment later, Jake rounded the corner, pale and retching. He wiped his sleeve across his face. Ames and Nick broke apart and hurried toward him.
“What happened?”
“They were digging around in the woods. Bobby shot one guy, but the other one ran off. Bobby went after him.”
“Which guy got shot?” Nick asked, and Ames remembered that he’d once been buddies with Bert Esposito.
“He’s dead.” Jake continued to scrub at his cheek with his jacket sleeve, smearing red down his jaw. “His head exploded. Right on me. I’ve never seen anybody die before, except my grandpa, but that was, you know, in a hospital bed.”
Ames put an arm around him, and Nick helped Jake stagger over to the front porch and lowered him down. “I’ll get you some water.” He disappeared into the house, while Ames urged Jake to put his head between his knees and breathe.
“What’s going on?” Marty joined them. “Did Bobby get the bastards?”
“One of them,” Ames answered. She looked over to Gopher and Dennis, who were driving their trussed-up prisoners toward the vehicles. Citizen’s arrest. She had to suppress a giddy laugh at the crazy sight of the locals herding the thugs along like cattle. There was nothing funny about any of this, she reminded herself.
Nick returned with several bottles of water, which he passed around. Ames hadn’t even thought about being thirsty, but she gulped the bottle down until the cheap plastic crumpled. Immediately, she started to feel better.
Footsteps crunched on the gravel, and Officer Bobby emerged from the darkness. His face was as pale as Jake’s, but his hands were steady as he holstered his gun.
“Gopher and Dennis took the other guys to your squad car,” Marty announced.
“Good.” Bobby nodded. He turned to Nick. “One of the perps got away. You want to come and identify the other? If you can.” Bobby pulled in a deep breath but recovered fast. “And then I’m going to have some questions for both you and Ames.”
The wail of an approaching siren and red lights flashing through the trees heralded the arrival of an ambulance and another squad car.
Then things got pretty official fast, even if the Back Porch patrons stayed and milled around. Yellow crime tape was strung around the yard, the other two cops in town walked around taking notes, and the EMTs carted off the dead body of Mobster Number One, which meant Bert was still at large.
Ames and Nick were ushered into the backseat of one of the other squad cars. Ames felt completely disoriented and fragmented, not to mention exhausted. So much had happened in so little time. This morning was surreal, and she thought about the customers who’d be stopping by the Back Porch expecting their breakfasts and finding no one there to serve them.
As they waited alone in the back of the cop car, she inched closer to Nick and rested her head on his chest. He mumbled something.
“What?”
“Clusterfuck,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Ames.”
“No, no. You kept your promise. I’m fine.”
“Most of Arnesdale did that, not me.” He stroked her hair back from her face. “And thank God for Arnesdale. If Elliot came back here, he’d be safer here than anywhere else. I can’t imagine the Espositos will come back here in any big fat hurry.” He chuckled. “I wish you could have seen Bert’s face when he looked out the window and saw the crowd of people coming over the hill.”
She sighed and snuggled in closer, soothed by the thump of his heartbeat, slow and steady. The danger had passed for now, but… “Will he keep coming after you?”
Nick absently twirled one of her curls around his thumb. “He got what he came for—most of it, anyway. I told him we don’t know a thing about Elliot, and he believes me.”
“Why do you think he believes you?”
His hand on her hair