Save Me, page 27
Emboldened, he slipped his hands down to her backside and in one swift motion, lifted her onto his lap so she was straddling him.
She moaned as he pulled her firmly against him.
Her breasts swelled against his chest, and he imagined what it would feel like to strip her of her top and take each round bud into his mouth. His erection swelled.
Alexis broke off the kiss and met his gaze, lust swimming in her eyes. “Take me to bed.”
Her words hit him like a cold shower.
He grasped her wrists gently and eased her back. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”
Confusion mixed with the lust in her eyes. “Why not?” she said, nearly breathless from his kiss.
Why not? It was a good question, one he suspected she wouldn’t like his answer for.
“I’m supposed to be protecting you. Not taking advantage of you.”
“You’re not taking advantage. I want this, and I think you do, too.”
She leaned forward, but he held her firmly. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from making love to her if he let her kiss him again. “Alexis, I can’t. I can’t do that to Mark.”
She eased off his lap. “What does Mark have to do with you and me being together?”
“You’re his sister and, even though we were on the outs when he died, I still considered him my friend. My best friend. I can’t do that to him. And I’m not the kind of guy you should be with anyway.”
Alexis shook her head, a humorless laugh falling from her lips. “And you know the kind of guy I should be with?”
“Yes,” he said, exasperated. “Someone who can give you everything you deserve. A home. Marriage. Children. I can’t do any of that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.” The words burst out of him now. “Because I fell in love my first year in the military. Her name was Lyssa, and I thought I’d spend my life with her. I wanted to give all of those things, but then she died and I just can’t take the chance of losing someone I love again.” His breaths came out in heavy puffs.
“I’m sorry you lost someone you loved, but I’m sure she wouldn’t want you to cut yourself off from the possibility of ever finding someone to spend your life with. Not if she loved you as much as I can see you loved her.”
On some level, he knew what Alexis said made sense, but the pain and the grief were just too deep. “I’m sorry, Alexis. I just can’t.”
The sorrow in her eyes mingled with pity. “I’m going to my room,” she said, avoiding looking at him. “I don’t think lunch is such a good idea. I’ve lost my appetite.”
* * *
AS MUCH AS he’d wanted to be with Alexis, TJ knew he’d made the right decision in stopping where they’d been headed. She deserved more than a quick roll in the hay, and he wasn’t the kind of man who did relationships. The best thing he could do for her was to keep his focus on helping her find out what really happened to Mark. They’d made some progress, but there was more to do. Going to Mark’s apartment to see if they could find anything there that could be of help was next on his to-do list.
He wasn’t surprised when he told Alexis of his plan to search Mark’s apartment that she wanted to go with him. As angry as she might have been with him, she was determined to find the answers to the questions surrounding her brother’s death. She didn’t say a single word to him on the drive to the apartment, however. She wouldn’t even look at him. It felt like his insides were being scooped out with a spoon, but he knew it was for the best. He had to nip the feelings building between them in the bud now before they got out of hand. As much as he wanted to kiss her and more, he couldn’t change who he was.
A man who was afraid of getting his heart broken again.
Mark had rented one side of a duplex in suburban Alexandria. The duplex’s owner, Mark’s landlord, occupied the other side. The small yard in front of the home was well taken care of, neatly cut grass edged with a flower bed blooming with brightly colored tulips. The driveway looked as if someone had recently touched up the asphalt, and the detached garage TJ glimpsed from the front of the house looked to have been recently painted.
There was no car in the shared driveway when TJ parked at the curb and no one answered the landlord’s door when he and Alexis knocked to let the man know they’d be clearing out some of Mark’s things today.
Alexis’s hand shook as she stuck the key into the lock on the door.
“You okay?” TJ gazed down at her. He was more than a little emotional himself. He couldn’t imagine what Alexis was feeling at the moment.
But she nodded. “Yeah. It’s time I do this. Mark’s landlord has contacted me about getting his things. Knowing what I know now about Mark being late on the rent so much, he’s actually been rather kind in not pushing me to clear out the place sooner.”
They’d stopped and picked up several boxes and some packing tape on the way to Mark’s house. Alexis had been all in on focusing on packing up Mark’s things rather than the information Detective Chellel and Noel Muscarelli had told them about Mark, but packing up her dead brother’s things seemed to be hitting her hard now.
The small one-bedroom space was clean and functional. A long black leather sofa with colorful throw pillows faced a large wall-mounted flat-screen television and a glass-top coffee table. Two end tables, each with a porcelain lamp, flanked the sofa. A flowery tablecloth covered the dining table that separated the living room from the kitchen. Frilly curtains hung at the single large window in the living room.
“This place is freezing,” Alexis said, turning up the thermostat on the wall.
She wasn’t wrong about that, but still a musty odor hung in the air. TJ recognized it as the smell of a space that had sat uninhabited for too long.
“We’ll warm up as we work,” he said, although he elected to keep his coat on for the time being.
Alexis appeared to have the same idea, pulling the zipper on the padded vest she wore over her thick sweater higher as she ambled to the opposite side of the living room. Keeping her distance. He fought the internal push-pull of wanting her close but needing to hold her at arm’s length.
“Is there somewhere you want to start?” he asked, focusing back on the task at hand.
They weren’t just there to pack up Mark’s things. The Mark that he and Alexis knew and the Mark that Detective Chellel and Noel Muscarelli described were so different, TJ hoped that he’d find something in his old friend’s apartment that would help traverse the gulf between the two Marks. Something that would help stem the turmoil he felt. He didn’t want to believe that Mark could have done what he was accused of, but Detective Chellel wasn’t wrong about financial stress and substance abuse making people do things that they wouldn’t otherwise do. If Mark was really in as much financial trouble as Detective Chellel said he was, maybe he’d seen stealing Nimbus as his only way out.
He knew that Alexis would never believe her brother was a thief, though. Not without irrefutable proof.
“Why don’t you start by packing up Mark’s clothes? I’m sure Mark wouldn’t like his sister rooting around in his underwear drawer,” Alexis said without looking at him. “I’ll pack up the kitchen.”
“Okay,” TJ answered, hesitant to leave her in the room alone, although he figured that was exactly why she’d made the suggestion. “Remember to be on the lookout for anything that might help the investigation. Papers. Notes. Journals. A flash drive.”
Alexis frowned, but nodded.
TJ headed into Mark’s room. A mattress and box spring sat on a metal frame, no headboard, with a blue comforter and another bunch of throw pillows covering it. The same frilly curtains from the living room hung on the window in the bedroom.
The closet door stood open. Although Mark may have lived simply in most respects, TJ wasn’t surprised to see the closet packed full of clothes. Clothes had always been one area where Mark liked to indulge. His favorite saying was “the clothes make the man.”
“Alexis, you should see this,” he called, moving over to the nightstand beside the bed.
He picked up a framed photo and turned as Alexis entered the room.
“What is it?”
TJ nodded at the photo in his hand. “Didn’t you say Mark and Jessica broke up? Why would he keep her photo by the bed?”
Her hand brushed against his as he handed the photo to her. A charge of desire sparked in him. He met her gaze and found desire that matched his own there. Despite everything he’d said earlier, the attraction between them was undeniable. If she was anyone other than Mark’s sister...
Alexis stepped back, taking the photo with her, and looked down at it. When she looked at him again, the moment had passed.
“I don’t know,” she said. “If she and Mark were still together, where is she? She wasn’t at his funeral, and I haven’t heard from her.”
“That’s a good question and one we’ll definitely want—”
TJ was interrupted by the sound of glass shattering in the living room, followed by a thundering whoosh.
He ran out into the hall.
Fire raced up the curtains and along the cheap carpeting covering the floor. The gaping hole in the window was evidence of the fire’s origin. Someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail through the window.
The sound of more glass shattering and a crash sent him racing back into Mark’s bedroom.
A second firebomb had come through the bedroom window, landing on the bed and engulfing it in flames.
Alexis crouched on the floor near the closet, her hands covering her head.
“Alexis! Are you okay?”
She looked up at him from her crouched position. “I ducked,” she said, her voice shaky. “It...it just missed me.”
“We have to get out of here.”
He helped her to her feet.
Thick smoke filled the apartment.
“Cover your mouth,” TJ ordered, shielding his own mouth as best he could, using the sleeve of his shirt.
Alexis did the same, and together they made their way into the hallway.
The living room was nearly completely engulfed in flames now. There was no way they could reach the front door without going through the fire.
“Does this place have a rear entrance?” TJ asked, casting about for another means of getting out.
Alexis coughed. “No.”
TJ glanced back at the bedroom. The window in the room was big enough for them to get out of, but the fire had totally engulfed the bed and it was far closer to the window than he would have liked when making an escape.
There was only one other possibility.
“In here.”
TJ pulled Alexis into the bathroom and shut the door behind them. He grabbed one of the two towels from the towel rack on the wall and stuffed it under the door. He wet the second towel and handed it to Alexis. “Use that to cover your face.”
“What about you?” Alexis asked, doing as he told her.
TJ studied the window above the bathroom sink. “I’m going to work on getting us out of here.”
He hopped up on the countertop and flicked the latch on the window. It opened, but when he tried pulling the windowpane open, it wouldn’t budge. It had been painted over at some point.
He had to get that window open. Hopefully, a neighbor or a passerby had already seen the smoke and flames and called the fire department, but he couldn’t wait around. The fire was consuming the duplex, and he and Alexis might not have much more time before the smoke overwhelmed them. The window was their only path to safety.
He jumped off the counter and scanned the bathroom. There wasn’t much that looked like it could be of any use, but maybe if he could get the towel rod off the wall.
He grabbed the towel rod and yanked. Catching onto his plan, Alexis joined him, pulling on the other end.
It took longer than he’d have liked under the circumstances, but the rod finally came away from the wall.
“Stand back,” he ordered Alexis, hopping back up on the counter with the rod in his hand.
He slammed the rod into the window, shattering the glass. A few more strikes and all the glass gave way.
“Okay,” he said, hopping down off the counter again. “Up you go and through the window.”
Alexis gave the small opening the once-over. “I’m not sure I’ll fit.”
TJ placed a hand on either of her shoulders and looked her in the eye. “It’s our only way out, so you’ll have to.”
He steadied her as she climbed on the counter. She stuck her head out of the opening, wiggling until her entire torso was out.
“I don’t think I’m going to make it.” Her voice floated back through the window.
TJ hopped onto the counter again and placed his hands on her bottom. “On the count of three, I’m going to push. One. Two. Three.”
He shoved, and Alexis tumbled the rest of the way out of the window. He had nearly as much trouble getting out of the small window, but he finally managed to squeeze his body through.
TJ crawled away from the house toward where Alexis lay on the grass in the backyard.
“Are you okay?” he asked, scanning her body. There were visible cuts and bruises on her hands.
“I think...my arm.” She clutched her right forearm.
Her vest was covered in soot, not unlike his own clothing. But it was the lower portion of her right sleeve that he noticed now. It was burned away and her usually smooth brown skin was red and raw. The second Molotov cocktail hadn’t missed her after all. It must have caught the sleeve of her shirt. It was a miracle that it hadn’t done more damage.
TJ swore, which led to a coughing fit. He patted his back pocket where his cell phone should be and found that it was missing. He’d probably dropped it in the chaos of trying to get out of the fire.
Luckily, he could hear sirens approaching.
Alexis groaned next to him.
He gathered her in his arms. “It’s okay, baby. It’s alright. Help will be here any second now.”
Help was on the way, and as soon as he was sure that Alexis would be okay, he was going to find the bastard who had just tried to kill them and make him pay.
Chapter Seventeen
TJ paced the hospital waiting room.
The EMTs had allowed him to ride in the ambulance with Alexis but the nurses wouldn’t let him go any further than the emergency room waiting area. That had been more than an hour earlier, and no one was giving him any information about Alexis’s condition. He was getting desperate.
Alexis’s burns had looked serious.
He should have moved faster. Been paying more attention to whether or not they were being followed. All his bravado from the hours before was gone, leaving nothing but guilt and regret for having taken on a case he was utterly unqualified to handle.
He’d spent the last hour beating himself up for not having anticipated the second firebomb. It galled him to admit it, but the truth was that he was in way over his head. The most important thing to him was that Alexis be kept safe, and he knew now that he wasn’t the man who could make that happen. As soon as he was sure Alexis was okay, he was going to turn her case over to Shawn or another West operative with more experience in dangerous, complex cases.
The doors to the ER opened and Detective Chellel strode into the waiting room.
“Roman! What the hell have you and Miss Douglas gotten yourselves into?”
“We haven’t gotten ourselves into anything,” TJ responded, facing the detective down. “Someone tried to kill us.”
“You had no business being at Mark Douglas’s place. The arson inspector tells me the entire space is a loss.”
“Alexis had every right to be there. It’s her brother’s place, and we were there packing up his things.”
“Right,” Chellel scoffed. “Packing. And snooping, no doubt. You don’t think we scoured every inch of that place before we released it?”
TJ fisted his hands on his hips. “Well, then you don’t have to worry. We’ll find anything you missed.”
Detective Chellel let out a long, slow breath. “I’m not here to fight with you. How is Miss Douglas?”
TJ ran a shaky hand over his head. “I don’t know. No one has told me anything since they took her in the back. Her arm was burned pretty badly.”
“She’s tough. I know that for a fact. She’ll be okay.”
Alexis was tough, but that did nothing to keep him from worrying about her.
“The officer who took your statements at the scene gave me a brief rundown on what happened, but I’d like to hear the details from you if I could.”
The detective led him to a bank of chairs, and they sat.
“We went to Mark’s place to pack up some of his things, but also to look around, see if we could find anything that might point toward someone other than Mark as the thief.”
“And did you find anything?”
“We weren’t in the apartment long enough to find anything before the first firebomb came through the window.”
Detective Chellel pulled a small notebook from her purse. “And that was the one that was thrown into the living room, correct?”
“Yes, a Molotov cocktail came through the living room window and about thirty seconds later, a second bomb was thrown through the bedroom window.”
Detective Chellel took notes. “And you and Miss Douglas didn’t see anyone before the fire broke out. No movement outside the windows? The sounds of someone prowling around outside?”
“No. Nothing, but I was...distracted,” he conceded.
“Distracted?” Chellel gave him a knowing look.
There was no way he was going to confirm what she appeared to be thinking, so he told a half truth. “I’d just found a photo of Mark’s ex-girlfriend next to his bed. Alexis believed that Mark and Jessica had broken up, so we were surprised to see the photo.”
She moaned as he pulled her firmly against him.
Her breasts swelled against his chest, and he imagined what it would feel like to strip her of her top and take each round bud into his mouth. His erection swelled.
Alexis broke off the kiss and met his gaze, lust swimming in her eyes. “Take me to bed.”
Her words hit him like a cold shower.
He grasped her wrists gently and eased her back. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”
Confusion mixed with the lust in her eyes. “Why not?” she said, nearly breathless from his kiss.
Why not? It was a good question, one he suspected she wouldn’t like his answer for.
“I’m supposed to be protecting you. Not taking advantage of you.”
“You’re not taking advantage. I want this, and I think you do, too.”
She leaned forward, but he held her firmly. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from making love to her if he let her kiss him again. “Alexis, I can’t. I can’t do that to Mark.”
She eased off his lap. “What does Mark have to do with you and me being together?”
“You’re his sister and, even though we were on the outs when he died, I still considered him my friend. My best friend. I can’t do that to him. And I’m not the kind of guy you should be with anyway.”
Alexis shook her head, a humorless laugh falling from her lips. “And you know the kind of guy I should be with?”
“Yes,” he said, exasperated. “Someone who can give you everything you deserve. A home. Marriage. Children. I can’t do any of that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.” The words burst out of him now. “Because I fell in love my first year in the military. Her name was Lyssa, and I thought I’d spend my life with her. I wanted to give all of those things, but then she died and I just can’t take the chance of losing someone I love again.” His breaths came out in heavy puffs.
“I’m sorry you lost someone you loved, but I’m sure she wouldn’t want you to cut yourself off from the possibility of ever finding someone to spend your life with. Not if she loved you as much as I can see you loved her.”
On some level, he knew what Alexis said made sense, but the pain and the grief were just too deep. “I’m sorry, Alexis. I just can’t.”
The sorrow in her eyes mingled with pity. “I’m going to my room,” she said, avoiding looking at him. “I don’t think lunch is such a good idea. I’ve lost my appetite.”
* * *
AS MUCH AS he’d wanted to be with Alexis, TJ knew he’d made the right decision in stopping where they’d been headed. She deserved more than a quick roll in the hay, and he wasn’t the kind of man who did relationships. The best thing he could do for her was to keep his focus on helping her find out what really happened to Mark. They’d made some progress, but there was more to do. Going to Mark’s apartment to see if they could find anything there that could be of help was next on his to-do list.
He wasn’t surprised when he told Alexis of his plan to search Mark’s apartment that she wanted to go with him. As angry as she might have been with him, she was determined to find the answers to the questions surrounding her brother’s death. She didn’t say a single word to him on the drive to the apartment, however. She wouldn’t even look at him. It felt like his insides were being scooped out with a spoon, but he knew it was for the best. He had to nip the feelings building between them in the bud now before they got out of hand. As much as he wanted to kiss her and more, he couldn’t change who he was.
A man who was afraid of getting his heart broken again.
Mark had rented one side of a duplex in suburban Alexandria. The duplex’s owner, Mark’s landlord, occupied the other side. The small yard in front of the home was well taken care of, neatly cut grass edged with a flower bed blooming with brightly colored tulips. The driveway looked as if someone had recently touched up the asphalt, and the detached garage TJ glimpsed from the front of the house looked to have been recently painted.
There was no car in the shared driveway when TJ parked at the curb and no one answered the landlord’s door when he and Alexis knocked to let the man know they’d be clearing out some of Mark’s things today.
Alexis’s hand shook as she stuck the key into the lock on the door.
“You okay?” TJ gazed down at her. He was more than a little emotional himself. He couldn’t imagine what Alexis was feeling at the moment.
But she nodded. “Yeah. It’s time I do this. Mark’s landlord has contacted me about getting his things. Knowing what I know now about Mark being late on the rent so much, he’s actually been rather kind in not pushing me to clear out the place sooner.”
They’d stopped and picked up several boxes and some packing tape on the way to Mark’s house. Alexis had been all in on focusing on packing up Mark’s things rather than the information Detective Chellel and Noel Muscarelli had told them about Mark, but packing up her dead brother’s things seemed to be hitting her hard now.
The small one-bedroom space was clean and functional. A long black leather sofa with colorful throw pillows faced a large wall-mounted flat-screen television and a glass-top coffee table. Two end tables, each with a porcelain lamp, flanked the sofa. A flowery tablecloth covered the dining table that separated the living room from the kitchen. Frilly curtains hung at the single large window in the living room.
“This place is freezing,” Alexis said, turning up the thermostat on the wall.
She wasn’t wrong about that, but still a musty odor hung in the air. TJ recognized it as the smell of a space that had sat uninhabited for too long.
“We’ll warm up as we work,” he said, although he elected to keep his coat on for the time being.
Alexis appeared to have the same idea, pulling the zipper on the padded vest she wore over her thick sweater higher as she ambled to the opposite side of the living room. Keeping her distance. He fought the internal push-pull of wanting her close but needing to hold her at arm’s length.
“Is there somewhere you want to start?” he asked, focusing back on the task at hand.
They weren’t just there to pack up Mark’s things. The Mark that he and Alexis knew and the Mark that Detective Chellel and Noel Muscarelli described were so different, TJ hoped that he’d find something in his old friend’s apartment that would help traverse the gulf between the two Marks. Something that would help stem the turmoil he felt. He didn’t want to believe that Mark could have done what he was accused of, but Detective Chellel wasn’t wrong about financial stress and substance abuse making people do things that they wouldn’t otherwise do. If Mark was really in as much financial trouble as Detective Chellel said he was, maybe he’d seen stealing Nimbus as his only way out.
He knew that Alexis would never believe her brother was a thief, though. Not without irrefutable proof.
“Why don’t you start by packing up Mark’s clothes? I’m sure Mark wouldn’t like his sister rooting around in his underwear drawer,” Alexis said without looking at him. “I’ll pack up the kitchen.”
“Okay,” TJ answered, hesitant to leave her in the room alone, although he figured that was exactly why she’d made the suggestion. “Remember to be on the lookout for anything that might help the investigation. Papers. Notes. Journals. A flash drive.”
Alexis frowned, but nodded.
TJ headed into Mark’s room. A mattress and box spring sat on a metal frame, no headboard, with a blue comforter and another bunch of throw pillows covering it. The same frilly curtains from the living room hung on the window in the bedroom.
The closet door stood open. Although Mark may have lived simply in most respects, TJ wasn’t surprised to see the closet packed full of clothes. Clothes had always been one area where Mark liked to indulge. His favorite saying was “the clothes make the man.”
“Alexis, you should see this,” he called, moving over to the nightstand beside the bed.
He picked up a framed photo and turned as Alexis entered the room.
“What is it?”
TJ nodded at the photo in his hand. “Didn’t you say Mark and Jessica broke up? Why would he keep her photo by the bed?”
Her hand brushed against his as he handed the photo to her. A charge of desire sparked in him. He met her gaze and found desire that matched his own there. Despite everything he’d said earlier, the attraction between them was undeniable. If she was anyone other than Mark’s sister...
Alexis stepped back, taking the photo with her, and looked down at it. When she looked at him again, the moment had passed.
“I don’t know,” she said. “If she and Mark were still together, where is she? She wasn’t at his funeral, and I haven’t heard from her.”
“That’s a good question and one we’ll definitely want—”
TJ was interrupted by the sound of glass shattering in the living room, followed by a thundering whoosh.
He ran out into the hall.
Fire raced up the curtains and along the cheap carpeting covering the floor. The gaping hole in the window was evidence of the fire’s origin. Someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail through the window.
The sound of more glass shattering and a crash sent him racing back into Mark’s bedroom.
A second firebomb had come through the bedroom window, landing on the bed and engulfing it in flames.
Alexis crouched on the floor near the closet, her hands covering her head.
“Alexis! Are you okay?”
She looked up at him from her crouched position. “I ducked,” she said, her voice shaky. “It...it just missed me.”
“We have to get out of here.”
He helped her to her feet.
Thick smoke filled the apartment.
“Cover your mouth,” TJ ordered, shielding his own mouth as best he could, using the sleeve of his shirt.
Alexis did the same, and together they made their way into the hallway.
The living room was nearly completely engulfed in flames now. There was no way they could reach the front door without going through the fire.
“Does this place have a rear entrance?” TJ asked, casting about for another means of getting out.
Alexis coughed. “No.”
TJ glanced back at the bedroom. The window in the room was big enough for them to get out of, but the fire had totally engulfed the bed and it was far closer to the window than he would have liked when making an escape.
There was only one other possibility.
“In here.”
TJ pulled Alexis into the bathroom and shut the door behind them. He grabbed one of the two towels from the towel rack on the wall and stuffed it under the door. He wet the second towel and handed it to Alexis. “Use that to cover your face.”
“What about you?” Alexis asked, doing as he told her.
TJ studied the window above the bathroom sink. “I’m going to work on getting us out of here.”
He hopped up on the countertop and flicked the latch on the window. It opened, but when he tried pulling the windowpane open, it wouldn’t budge. It had been painted over at some point.
He had to get that window open. Hopefully, a neighbor or a passerby had already seen the smoke and flames and called the fire department, but he couldn’t wait around. The fire was consuming the duplex, and he and Alexis might not have much more time before the smoke overwhelmed them. The window was their only path to safety.
He jumped off the counter and scanned the bathroom. There wasn’t much that looked like it could be of any use, but maybe if he could get the towel rod off the wall.
He grabbed the towel rod and yanked. Catching onto his plan, Alexis joined him, pulling on the other end.
It took longer than he’d have liked under the circumstances, but the rod finally came away from the wall.
“Stand back,” he ordered Alexis, hopping back up on the counter with the rod in his hand.
He slammed the rod into the window, shattering the glass. A few more strikes and all the glass gave way.
“Okay,” he said, hopping down off the counter again. “Up you go and through the window.”
Alexis gave the small opening the once-over. “I’m not sure I’ll fit.”
TJ placed a hand on either of her shoulders and looked her in the eye. “It’s our only way out, so you’ll have to.”
He steadied her as she climbed on the counter. She stuck her head out of the opening, wiggling until her entire torso was out.
“I don’t think I’m going to make it.” Her voice floated back through the window.
TJ hopped onto the counter again and placed his hands on her bottom. “On the count of three, I’m going to push. One. Two. Three.”
He shoved, and Alexis tumbled the rest of the way out of the window. He had nearly as much trouble getting out of the small window, but he finally managed to squeeze his body through.
TJ crawled away from the house toward where Alexis lay on the grass in the backyard.
“Are you okay?” he asked, scanning her body. There were visible cuts and bruises on her hands.
“I think...my arm.” She clutched her right forearm.
Her vest was covered in soot, not unlike his own clothing. But it was the lower portion of her right sleeve that he noticed now. It was burned away and her usually smooth brown skin was red and raw. The second Molotov cocktail hadn’t missed her after all. It must have caught the sleeve of her shirt. It was a miracle that it hadn’t done more damage.
TJ swore, which led to a coughing fit. He patted his back pocket where his cell phone should be and found that it was missing. He’d probably dropped it in the chaos of trying to get out of the fire.
Luckily, he could hear sirens approaching.
Alexis groaned next to him.
He gathered her in his arms. “It’s okay, baby. It’s alright. Help will be here any second now.”
Help was on the way, and as soon as he was sure that Alexis would be okay, he was going to find the bastard who had just tried to kill them and make him pay.
Chapter Seventeen
TJ paced the hospital waiting room.
The EMTs had allowed him to ride in the ambulance with Alexis but the nurses wouldn’t let him go any further than the emergency room waiting area. That had been more than an hour earlier, and no one was giving him any information about Alexis’s condition. He was getting desperate.
Alexis’s burns had looked serious.
He should have moved faster. Been paying more attention to whether or not they were being followed. All his bravado from the hours before was gone, leaving nothing but guilt and regret for having taken on a case he was utterly unqualified to handle.
He’d spent the last hour beating himself up for not having anticipated the second firebomb. It galled him to admit it, but the truth was that he was in way over his head. The most important thing to him was that Alexis be kept safe, and he knew now that he wasn’t the man who could make that happen. As soon as he was sure Alexis was okay, he was going to turn her case over to Shawn or another West operative with more experience in dangerous, complex cases.
The doors to the ER opened and Detective Chellel strode into the waiting room.
“Roman! What the hell have you and Miss Douglas gotten yourselves into?”
“We haven’t gotten ourselves into anything,” TJ responded, facing the detective down. “Someone tried to kill us.”
“You had no business being at Mark Douglas’s place. The arson inspector tells me the entire space is a loss.”
“Alexis had every right to be there. It’s her brother’s place, and we were there packing up his things.”
“Right,” Chellel scoffed. “Packing. And snooping, no doubt. You don’t think we scoured every inch of that place before we released it?”
TJ fisted his hands on his hips. “Well, then you don’t have to worry. We’ll find anything you missed.”
Detective Chellel let out a long, slow breath. “I’m not here to fight with you. How is Miss Douglas?”
TJ ran a shaky hand over his head. “I don’t know. No one has told me anything since they took her in the back. Her arm was burned pretty badly.”
“She’s tough. I know that for a fact. She’ll be okay.”
Alexis was tough, but that did nothing to keep him from worrying about her.
“The officer who took your statements at the scene gave me a brief rundown on what happened, but I’d like to hear the details from you if I could.”
The detective led him to a bank of chairs, and they sat.
“We went to Mark’s place to pack up some of his things, but also to look around, see if we could find anything that might point toward someone other than Mark as the thief.”
“And did you find anything?”
“We weren’t in the apartment long enough to find anything before the first firebomb came through the window.”
Detective Chellel pulled a small notebook from her purse. “And that was the one that was thrown into the living room, correct?”
“Yes, a Molotov cocktail came through the living room window and about thirty seconds later, a second bomb was thrown through the bedroom window.”
Detective Chellel took notes. “And you and Miss Douglas didn’t see anyone before the fire broke out. No movement outside the windows? The sounds of someone prowling around outside?”
“No. Nothing, but I was...distracted,” he conceded.
“Distracted?” Chellel gave him a knowing look.
There was no way he was going to confirm what she appeared to be thinking, so he told a half truth. “I’d just found a photo of Mark’s ex-girlfriend next to his bed. Alexis believed that Mark and Jessica had broken up, so we were surprised to see the photo.”
