The girl had been pretty before someone had taken out a chunk of her head.
Not him. It couldn’t have been him. Scarlett couldn’t believe it. You just don’t want to believe it. Which was fair enough, she supposed. Where was he?
Picking up the flashlight, she ran the beam over the body. Blood had been wiped from the exposed skin of the victim’s midriff, the balled-up and blood-soaked remnant of her torn shirt lying on the ground next to her hip. Someone had attempted first aid.
‘He tried to save you,’ Scarlett murmured aloud.
‘Tried. Failed.’
Her head jerked up. He was here. The man who’d dominated her thoughts, her dreams. For months. The man who once again had called her out of the blue to the scene of a homicide.
Marcus O’Bannion.
The voice she remembered so well had come from behind her, deep in the shadows. Holding her weapon at her side, she rose, turned and aimed the Maglite at the alley wall, illuminating long legs, a broad torso and wide shoulders, all clad in black. He leaned against the brick, shoulder to the wall, arms crossed over his chest. He was looking down, his face obscured by a dark baseball cap.
He lifted his head and her heart stuttered again. His skin was ashen, his expression grim. He didn’t blink at the bright light.
She hadn’t heard him approach, wouldn’t even have known he was there had he not spoken. He’d been quiet in a way that few men could manage. He’d been army at one time, she knew. Now she also knew that whatever he’d done for Uncle Sam, he’d been very well trained.
‘Where did you come from?’ Scarlett managed to ask calmly, despite the fact that her pulse pounded wildly in her throat.
‘The street,’ he said, indicating the way she’d come with a jerk of his head.
‘Why?’
‘I was chasing the guy who did that,’ he said flatly, nodding at the body with another jerking motion.
He hadn’t moved his arms, not once. Scarlett crossed the alley, stopping a foot from where he stood. Now she could see that his shoulders were hunched, his back curved unnaturally. She could also see the little lines bracketing his mouth. He was in pain. ‘Were you hit too?’ she asked.
‘No. Not like her.’
‘What happened?’
He still didn’t blink. Kept his gaze fixed on the broken young body. ‘You got here fast.’
‘I don’t live far.’
He met her gaze then and she drew a breath, instantly riveted. Just like the first time she’d seen him. He’d been on a stretcher that day, his wounds nearly fatal. Wounds he’d received saving the life of a woman he didn’t even know. But his eyes – and his voice – had made everything inside her wake up and take notice. Tonight it was the same.
‘I know,’ he said quietly.
She blinked, surprised. They’d never discussed anything as personal as her home address during their brief conversations in his hospital room all those months ago. ‘What happened, Marcus? Who is she?’
‘I don’t know, exactly. Her name is Tala.’
‘Tala what?’
‘I don’t know. We didn’t get that far.’ He tilted his head, listening as the sound of sirens filled the air. ‘Finally,’ he muttered.
‘You called them?’
‘Five minutes ago. She was still alive then.’ Pushing away from the wall, he straightened carefully, and Scarlett was surprised once again. At five-ten in her bare feet, she rarely had to look up to meet a man’s eyes, but she had to lift her chin to meet his.
She realized that she’d never seen him standing. She’d seen him lying down, first on a stretcher and then in a hospital bed – and then sitting in a wheelchair at his brother’s funeral.
The sirens were getting louder. ‘Quickly,’ she said. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘She asked me to meet her.’
Scarlett’s brows shot up. ‘She asked you to meet her? In the middle of the night? Here?’
His nod was curt. ‘I was surprised too. This isn’t where I’d met her in the past.’
Okay . . . ‘Where had you been meeting her, Marcus?’ she asked softly. Warily.
His eyes narrowed dangerously, his jaw clenching. ‘It wasn’t like that.’
She’d angered him with her insinuation. Too damn bad. He was a grown man meeting a young woman in the dead of night. A young woman who was now dead. ‘Then tell me what it was like.’
‘I’d see her when she walked her dog in the park near my place. She was always crying. I asked her what was wrong – several times – but she never said a single word, even though I could tell she desperately wanted to. Then tonight I got a text, asking me to meet her at the same corner I texted to you. I called you because I thought she might need . . . protection. I knew you would help her.’
She struggled not to let his words affect her. ‘But things obviously went very wrong.’
‘Obviously,’ he said bitterly. ‘She wasn’t at the corner, but I saw her peeking out from this alley, so I followed her here. As soon as she started talking, the first bullet hit her.’
‘The one in her gut.’
‘Yes. I ran to the end of the alley.’ He pointed to the end opposite from where Scarlett had entered. ‘But the shooter was gone. I called 911, then ran back to her and tried to stop the bleeding.’ His jaw clenched harder, a muscle twitching in his cheek. ‘I hoped you’d get here before the cops. I was going to tell you what I knew and then leave her with you.’ He hesitated. ‘I figured everyone would jump to the same conclusion you just did.’
‘Was she a prostitute, Marcus?’ she asked levelly.
He looked her in the eye. ‘I don’t know. I only knew she was in trouble of some kind.’
That was the truth, Scarlett thought. But not the whole truth. He was holding something back. Something important. She wasn’t sure how she knew. She just did. ‘How did she know how to reach you?’
‘I left her my card on the park bench. Stuck it between the wood and the iron frame.’
She frowned. ‘Why did you leave it for her? Why not just give it to her?’
‘Because she never came close enough. Not once. She always stayed at least twenty-five feet away.’ His mouth tightened, his eyes growing dark with fury. ‘And because the last time I saw her, she was limping. She was wearing sunglasses – with big frames. But not big enough to hide the bruise on her cheek.’
Scarlett got the picture. ‘She was being terrorized by someone.’
‘That was my take. The last time I saw her, I didn’t say a word. I just held up my card, then stuck it in the bench and walked away.’
‘When was that?’
‘Yesterday afternoon. Around three.’
‘All right. After she was shot in the stomach, you started first aid. What happened then?’
He looked away. ‘I didn’t hear him. He must have circled around. Came up behind me. I was talking to her, telling her to hold on, not to die. That help was coming. I wasn’t paying attention.’ His throat worked as he swallowed hard. ‘I should have been paying attention. He shot me, then . . . her. In the head.’
Scarlett drew a careful breath. ‘He shot you? Where?’
‘In the back.’ His lower lip curled in disdain that seemed self-targeted. ‘But I’m wearing a vest.’
‘A vest? Why?’ she asked coolly, even as her heart thumped in relief. The size of the exit wound in the victim’s head indicated a very large-caliber weapon fired at close proximity. Had Marcus not been wearing a vest, Scarlett knew she’d have come across a very different scene. ‘Did you expect violence?’
‘No. Not like this. Never like this. But I always wear the vest now.’
‘Why?’ she asked again, watching in wary fascination as twin flags of color stained his cheekbones.
‘My mother made me promise.’
That Scarlett could believe. Marcus’s mother had lost her youngest son nine months before and had very nearly lost Marcus too. Scarlett could understand a mother’s demand for that promise.