“Just for fun,” he said. “Just to let you sweat a little bit and to let you see the show.”
“Well, I saw it,” he snapped. “Can’t say I’m terribly impressed. Anybody can throw a loser out of a window.”
“Yep,” he said, “but it takes a little bit more skill to throw the loser out while you’re watching.”
And he hung up.
Chapter 4
Izzie’s heart stopped, as the body hit the cement and bounced ever-so-lightly. Not enough to show any proof of life but more like a melon that had been thrown on hard ground. More likely the percussion had raised it once again. She continued to stare, even as she felt Quinn grab her shoulder to tuck her face against him. Just so much shock ran through her system that she didn’t know what to think. She had finally come to terms with the fact that the slimy bastard she had just seen was some weird reincarnation of the guy she had known two years ago.
What had happened to him to bring him down so low? And then to have been thrown out of the apartment window, murdered for something he’d done? She couldn’t believe it; she felt the bile rising at the back of her throat, as she averted her gaze. She knew Ryland had run out of the vehicle to check on him.
Quinn was on his phone now, even as he spoke to somebody. She felt the shakes racking through her system, but when Quinn pocketed his phone, he wrapped his arms around her tight and held her even closer. He whispered, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
She shook her head. “How can it be okay?” she asked fiercely. “Dracon was just launched out the window.”
“I know, and it’s all related to Bullard’s disappearance,” he muttered.
She twisted ever-so-slightly and looked up at him.
He nodded. “Yes, unfortunately. And Dracon had enemies of his own.”
“He was a loser,” she said, “but even a loser doesn’t deserve that.”
“I’d have thrown him out the window myself,” he said, “for what he did to you.”
She shook her head. “It was also my fault.”
“Bullshit,” he said, his voice angry. She spun and looked at him as he glared at her. “Any woman who says that needs to have her head reexamined and her reality shifted through another perspective.”
She shrugged. “I shouldn’t have stayed with him.”
“No, but you did,” he said. “And you sure as hell don’t get beaten up over it! The fact that you stayed was one completely different issue. No matter what, you didn’t deserve to get locked up, held captive, and beaten.”
She felt the heat drifting away from her face, and her gaze shuttered.
“Look,” he said, gripping her shoulders and giving her a good shake. “I get that it happened. I get that you didn’t want to see Dracon again, yet you definitely needed to see him again to give you a reality check here. And I get that this is now likely another pretty horrific scenario for you to recover from. But the fact of the matter is, you are not to blame.” He shook her again. “Do you get it?”
She opened her eyes and blazed a hardened gaze at him. “I get it,” she snapped out. “You want to stop shaking me?”
He glared at her and then threw up his hands and went as if to shake her again, only this time he pulled her into his arms and rocked her gently. “I’m not trying to be mean or to be rough with you,” he said, “but nothing pisses me off more than to see a woman accept a beating as if it were her fault and as if she deserved it.”
She burrowed deeper against him, wondering if she was just being stupid yet again, wondering if Quinn was no different from any other man. She didn’t want to think that of him. Yet she reminded herself how he was one of Bullard’s men. Had to be a good guy. He was one of Izzie’s extended family—or more like her only family in many ways. Already something sparked between them that she couldn’t understand because she’d been away from these men all this time.
Yet, despite her questions, her doubts, nothing about him scared her, even with that temper of his; it wasn’t uncontrolled, like Dracon’s drug-induced fits. Everything about Quinn was controlled. And that was really odd.
She took a long slow deep breath and said, “I was just turning over in my mind, before he went out the window, what I ever saw in him and what had happened to him that made him became this slimy guy. He wasn’t like this before.”
“He probably was,” he said. “He was just better at hiding it.”
“Maybe, but it’s like he’s had a year of hell.”
“And that’s one year we’ll now tear apart,” he said, “because we need to know who just got him thrown out the window.”
“You don’t know?” she asked.
“No, I don’t, but it’s something I intend to learn very quickly.”
She got, from the hard tone of his voice, that she understood just how he felt too. “I guess you’re feeling responsible now, aren’t you?”
“For his death? Hell no,” he said. “For bringing you here and for you seeing that? Hell yes.”
She was once again surprised at his answer and just stared at him blankly.
“Of course you didn’t need to see that,” he said. “And then, after all you’ve already been through, that’ll just multiply it all.”
“I’m not so delicate,” she muttered.
He wrapped his arms around her and tucked her close and just held her. “No,” he said, “you’re not. You survived some of the worst experiences anybody can, and that’s the thing to remember—you survived.”
“Exactly, and, seeing him now, it was like he was a mere fraction of the old self he was.”
“And something has obviously changed in his world,” he said. “And that’s important too. We need to figure it out.”
“Does it really make any difference?”
“I would think so,” he said. “If you think about it, everything that happened to him to make him become this person is likely important. What if somebody threatened him in the first place? We already knew somebody beat him because you escaped.”
“I don’t understand that. Something about me needing to be there.”
“They could have needed you to blackmail Bullard, to get him to do what they wanted. Thank God, you got away. And since Dracon lost the leverage these guys were looking for, this big job they had, don’t you think they would have punished Dracon pretty badly and set him on this course?”
“I guess,” she said, staring back down at the body in the alley. “I just never considered it.”
“Well, consider it now,” he said, “because these people want to bring Bullard down any way they can. So we need all the information we can get.”
*
Quinn didn’t want to be a hard-ass, but neither did he want this to hold back anything that they needed to get done. The fact that she appeared to be handling it was good news; he just didn’t know how much of it was something she was trying to hide. He could see the shock, particularly since the guy that she had seen today wasn’t the same person she’d seen years ago. Obviously Quinn wanted to believe that she hadn’t been with somebody who was such a lowlife and so wanted to know what had brought him down. It was a good question. And one he was hoping to get to bottom of, but, in reality, it could be just as simple as the fact that Dracon had failed to do his big job as he had been hired to do.