The Love Scam - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,82

only been gone a minute before Kovac had calmly instructed Small to “grab her and I’ll cut her face—oh, wait, all that ‘not the face’ stuff is his thing. Well, it’ll be ironic.” To her: “No offense, but it’ll be easier to believe you if we hurt you and your story doesn’t change.”

No offense? Really? Delaney wasted no time hurling a book—not for nothing had she been using the bookcase for back support—straight at Small’s face. All she hoped for was a hit, a distraction that would let her follow up with something painful and immediate. To her immense satisfaction, the thing caught him square in the face and everyone heard the raw carrot–snapping sound that heralded a broken nose.

“Are you kidding me?” Kovac cried. The bad news: The idiot had a gun. The good news: He didn’t make much use of it, as evidenced by how long it took him to snatch the thing up and fumble with the safety. Delaney had plenty of time to slap his wrist, hard, which sent the barrel pointing at the floor. There was the dull boom of a bullet plowing through the carpet, and Kovac was so startled by the recoil, he almost dropped it. Delaney stuck her finger through the trigger guard, preventing him from firing, and while it hurt like hell as he mashed the trigger in frantic attempts to shoot, it was a lot better than a .38 exploring her lower abdomen. Also …

“A thirty-eight? Really?”

Kovac ignored her firearm critique in favor of shouting, “Don, get that kid and Tarbell the fuck back here now!”

“I don’t think he can hear you.” Delaney slapped his other hand away as he tried to smack her, then snapped his pinkie for good measure. The shriek was indecently satisfying.

The office door burst open

(let’s hope Tall is as easily incapacitated; three versus one is a little much)

and Tall fell in. He hit facedown, revealing an irritated Rake behind him brandishing—oooh, was that the Guardian twenty-eight inch? Nice.

Even nicer to see him smack Small with it, further compounding the damage to his face. “Should’ve stayed down,” Rake growled. Then: “Delaney, is it sexist if I offer to help you beat Kovac to death? And before you answer, please don’t think I’m implying you’d need help beating someone to death.”

“Thank you. And no, it’s not sexist. Or necessary.” This because after she’d broken his finger, Kovac was more interested in getting away than escalating.

“This is fucking ridiculous!” he yelped.

“Tell me. Just let go of the gun! That’s why you can’t get away.”

“I’m trying.”

“You are truly terrible at this. At all of this. I can’t believe you managed to have Donna killed.”

“I didn’t!” Kovac freed himself with one more yank, staggered, caught his balance with his bad hand, let out another shriek, and fell flat on his ass on the carpet. She could see his eyes watering with tears of pain as she trained the gun-barrel site on his forehead. “But she sure as shit deserved it! She was going to ruin me!”

“No. She. Wasn’t.” She knew she should hand the gun over; it was getting harder to resist the impulse to empty the rest of the clip into the bridge of his nose. “She wasn’t running from you. She was just running. She wasn’t going to expose you, she just wanted to keep her kid safe. The flash drive was just to protect herself. It was a reflex, like how it hurts when someone pokes a bruise.”

“Wait.” Rake was still holding the baton—Delaney could see his knuckles were white—and looked ready to bust more heads, but he paused. Which seemed safe enough; Kovac was whimpering and cradling his bad hand, and Tall and Small were semiconscious at best. “You’re saying you didn’t have someone run over Donna on purpose?”

“What, you need a narrator? Fuck off.”

“So when she disappeared, you assumed she was about to blow up your life, so you acted accordingly.” To Delaney: “And you assumed that he killed Donna over the flash drive and acted accordingly. That’s all this is? A misunderstanding?”

“An epic, gross, violent misunderstanding,” Delaney agreed. And that was the worst part. Donna died running from her past, but not the way Delaney assumed. It was one of those laugh or cry moments, if laugh meant succumb to hysterics, and cry meant the same.

“Aw, dammit.” This from a new voice, and everyone looked. Ellen/Elena was framed in the doorway, and Teresa was behind her, holding Lillith. “How did I know you weren’t