Expired Getaway (Last Chance County #7) - Lisa Phillips Page 0,70

in response, or look remorseful. “Let’s talk in the hall.”

“Good.” Jess grinned. “Cause this guy smells.”

“You gonna tell the next of kin that?”

“Obviously not.”

“Good.”

She opened an evidence bag. “I don’t have to be all empathetic to be a detective, you know.”

Aiden dropped the phone into it. “It probably would help.”

“Nah. That’s what I have you for.”

He wanted to roll his eyes, but she would notice it and give him grief for being dramatic. “No, I don’t need backup.” The last thing he wanted was for Jess to wade in and scare off Bridget. “I’m going to hear her out, and if she lets me, then I’ll state my case.”

“Which will be what?”

“Depends on what she says.”

Jess sighed. “I’m trying to help you, and you’re just gonna roll with it? Say whatever, in response to her?”

An hour later, parked outside Hollis’s diner, he still didn’t have much more of an idea than what he’d told Jess. Just a few possible answers to whatever Bridget might say. Worst case scenarios were what cops worked every single day.

A car door opened across the lot, and he saw Bridget climb out. Aiden made his way over, assessing how she seemed as she moved. He tried to get a read on her body language so he could guestimate how this was going to go.

Stiff. She still seemed like someone in considerable pain, curled in on themselves. Her long hair was pulled up into a messy bun on the back of her head, through the back of a ball cap that shaded her face from him so he couldn’t see her expression.

Car tires screeched. The sound dragged him from his study of her, and he spun to the sound.

The crack of gunfire echoed against the outside of the building as he was simultaneously punched in the chest.

His legs crumpled underneath him, and he fell. Bridget cried out.

Aiden hit the ground, only then realizing what had happened.

He’d been shot.

Twenty-three

Bridget’s world slowed to incremental movements that stretched between breaths. Between each beat of her heart.

Aiden was on the ground. She’d heard the impact of the bullet. She’d heard him hit the pavement with all the force of dead weight. She didn’t want to look—couldn’t chance seeing blood and freaking out again. Not when there was a threat that required her to be alert.

A shooter.

Above them, stars shone between clouds. Streetlights. She scanned the area and saw a pickup careen away from them down the street. She blinked. Where was the shooter? Aiden was dead. She just knew it. The same way she knew that if she kept breathing like this, she would pass out.

This was all her fault.

Black spots blinked at the edges of her vision. Get a hold of yourself. This was the end. She’d destroyed everything good in her life and left Sydney with nothing. The child had no family—Bridget had taken it away from her.

She knew what it was like to have nothing. Now she’d done that to the person in this world she cared about the most. More than anyone, or anything. A person she’d not even had the chance to get to know.

Bridget would always know she’d cost Sydney everything.

“Ow.” Aiden groaned.

Bridget turned so fast her whole body nearly toppled over. Aiden. Her knee hit the asphalt as she half landed on him. She willed herself to look at his wounds. To accept the inevitable mess of his body. She wanted to cover her ears so she didn’t have to accept that his rattling, labored breaths might be his last.

No blood.

She blinked. There was no blood. She shook her head. It didn’t make sense. It should be everywhere. He should have already knocked at death’s door.

Bridget sagged on the ground and leaned more heavily into him, relief flooding her entire being.

Aiden groaned again. He touched her arms and one hand slid around her back. “Whoa. You okay?”

“You were shot.” She gasped in more oxygen so her brain would quit spinning. So she could think. A shooter. “You were dead.”

His arm, the one not around her back, slid to his chest where a bullet was lodged in the front of his shirt. “Ouch.”

Bridget breathed. “You wore your vest.”

He inhaled, coughed and groaned again. “That hurt a lot.”

Bridget whimpered. His uniform and his good sense to wear a protective vest underneath. They’d protected him. Saved his life, Sydney’s father.

“Hey.” He touched her face. “I’m okay.”

“I thought you were dead. I couldn’t look.” She gasped, her head bent forward, she planted her face over his police