Page 162 of High Reward

“You can hand me the gun and wait for the police, or I can shoot you in the head and call it an act of self defense.”

She lets out a sharp laugh and raises her own weapon higher. Before she can do anything with it, glass breaking behind her causes her to drop her hand. I grab her wrist and force her to let go of the gun as Matteo and Luke burst through the door they broke down.

“Great. We’ve been open one day and already we have to replace a window,” I say sarcastically as I tuck Kara’s gun in my waistband and capture both of her wrists behind her back.

“Are the cops on their way?” Luke asks.

I nod. “Should be here any minute now.”

Grace comes running out and looks around. “What the hell happened?”

“Luke broke your door,” I say with a wink as Kara tries to wrestle away from me.

Lili is only a few seconds behind Grace and looks like she’s going to drag her back to safety, which makes me smile.

“Well, that was a hell of a way to end your first day, lover.”

Grace lets out a nervous laugh. “Seriously. How far away are the cops?”

As if on cue, sirens fill the parking lot, and Matteo steps into spokesman mode to explain what went down. Luke has Owen on the phone so that he can tell the officers the evidence we have against Kara.

“Wish all of our cases came with this much evidence,” one of the officers mutters as he secures Kara with handcuffs. He launches into reading her rights and then escorts her out the broken door.

By the time the last officer takes our statements and Matteo finishes arranging for someone to board up the broken door until morning, the adrenaline that’s been running my blood for the better part of an hour has nowhere left to go.

I find Grace and Lili in the back room, sitting on the pallet of unshelved books, Grace’s head on Lili’s shoulder and Lili’s arms wrapped tight around her.

“Hey.” My voice scrapes on the way out.

Grace looks up, and the relief on her face nearly buckles my knees. “She’s really gone? For good?”

“She’s not walking away from this one, sweetheart. Not with a signed confession’s worth of evidence sitting in Owen’s files.”

Grace lets out a shaky breath and buries her face back against Lili’s shoulder. Lili meets my eyes over the top of her head, and she’s carrying the same thing I am. Fear, still working its way out of our systems. Relief chasing right behind it.

“Take us home, Vic,” Lili says quietly. “All of us.”

I don’t argue.

The house is dark and quiet when we get there, and none of us bother with the lights. Grace is the first one to break, spinning to face me the second the door shuts, her hands fisting in my shirt hard enough to stretch the seams.

“I was so fucking scared,” she whispers.

“I know, butterfly.” I cup her face in both hands. “I’ve got you. Both of you.”

Lili steps up behind Grace, pressing a kiss to the back of her neck, and I watch the shudder that runs through Grace’s whole body.

“Bedroom. Now.”

They go without argument. They need this as badly as I do.

By the time I follow them in, Grace already has her dress half off, and Lili’s fingers are working the zipper the rest of the way down her spine. I strip out of my shirt and watch them for a moment, two women I nearly lost tonight in two very different ways, both of them alive, both of them watching me.

“On the bed. Both of you.”

They comply, Grace on her back and Lili beside her, already reaching for each other the way they do when the day has been too much.

I climb over Grace first, kissing a line down her throat, her collarbone, the curve of her breast. “You did so well today,” I murmur against her skin. “My brave, brilliant girl, running her own shop and holding a killer off with nothing but her voice until I got there.”