After what felt like a lifetime, she whispered, “You saved my life again, Dannyboy.”

“I will always be there for you.” As her hand raised up to touch his face, he captured it and pressed a kiss to her palm. “Always.”

Chapter 53

Anne sat on the back of the ambulance and held the ice pack to her nose. The bleeding had stopped, but she was worried it was broken. Every time she poked it, it made a crunching sound and that was not good news.

“—so that was when you decided to come out here and confront him?” the detective said to her.

Two more police vehicles came up to the scene and joined the four that were already parked in a circle around the ranch. The uniforms who got out were folks she remembered from her nights at Timeout, and absurdly she wanted to wave and say hello to them, like she was the hostess of this shit party.

“Anne?”

“Sorry.” She refocused on the woman. “Yeah, I decided to come talk to him. It seemed like everything was adding up, but I needed to be sure. When I got here, I opened the back of the trailer”—edited to remove mention of her shooting the lock off—“and I saw the office equipment in there.”

“What kind of office equipment?”

“Laptops. Computers. Phones. I’m guessing that Ripkin Development was either hiding things they wanted to destroy in Ollie Popper’s extensive collection, or they have far more extensive dealings in the black market than law enforcement can even begin to contemplate.”

“Okay, so then what happened?”

Her mouth started to move again, words leaving in a stream, and she guessed she was making sense. The detective was nodding and making notes.

But Anne had stopped listening to herself.

Danny came walking around the corner of the house, two uniforms with him, the three men talking intently. When he saw that she was looking at him, he stopped, like he wasn’t sure whether he was welcome or not.

Soot, who had been by her side, let out a chuff in greeting.

“That’s all for right now. We’ll let you get treated, and you’ll have to make a formal statement.”

“Anytime you want me at the station, I’ll come down.”

“Thanks, Inspector Ashburn. We appreciate your cooperation.”

As she was left alone, Danny said something to the pair of cops and came over. “Hey. Nice nose job.”

She took the ice pick off. “Do you think it’s too much? I was just looking to get the bridge narrowed and the tip turned up a little.”

“I think we need to wait until the swelling goes down.”

“Yeah. Plastic surgery is like that.”

“Can I say hi to your dog?”

Like they were strangers. “He loves you.”

Danny got down on his haunches, that knee of his crouching. As he put his face into Soot’s, he said, “You okay there? You were limping.”

“I think Moose kicked him. At least neither of us got shot.”

As she regarded Danny, she measured every inch of him, from the way the sunlight flashed in his jet black hair, to those stupidly huge shoulders of his, to his hands. Those amazing, strong, blue-collar hands.

That had saved her life twice.

Because the truth was, she had been losing physical strength fast. And if Moose had gotten hold of that gun—and the man would have—he would have put a bullet in her head.

Tears flooded her eyes, so she closed them.

“Anne,” Danny said in a broken voice.

There was a shuffle, and then he was sitting next to her on the ambulance but not touching her. “Give us a minute,” she heard him say to someone.

She sniffled herself back into order—or tried to. Jesus, her nose hurt.

“So in the rules of evidence,” she said roughly, “the court allows deathbed confessions even if they’re heresy outside of that situation. You know, because people don’t lie when they’re just about to die.”

“No. They don’t.”

“I’m thinking it’s probably the same with people right after they kill their best friend.” She closed her eyes. “Oh, God, did this just happen. I mean, really?”

A warm, calloused hand took hers. “Yes. To both, I mean.”

“What?” Her head just couldn’t seem to process anything. “I’m not thinking straight.”

“I didn’t lie, about Deandra.” As Anne looked at him again, he stared right back at her. “You don’t have to be with me if you don’t want to, but I need to you know the truth. I didn’t lie about her. She came in yesterday morning all pissed off, spouting shit to lash out at everyone around her. The night of the rehearsal dinner she came on to me back at my apartment, it’s true, but I turned her down. Moose might have seen her dress on the floor, but what he didn’t catch was me frog-marching her out the door and locking things up so she couldn’t get back in. She wasn’t for me. She never was.”

When Anne took a deep breath, her ribs hurt, and she grimaced. Which made her nose hurt more.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I just . . . I believed what was in front of me.”

She fell into confirming her hypothesis, which had been that Danny was too good to be true.

“It’s okay.” He looked down at the ground. “It is what it is—”

“I love you.”

His head turned back to her so fast, she heard his neck crack.

“Just figured I should tell you.” Anne shrugged. “It’s too little, too late, but—”

The kiss came out of nowhere, his mouth fusing with hers, and she was too shell-shocked to respond. At first. She got with the program quick, though.

When they finally parted, she couldn’t get enough of staring into those blue eyes. “I’m sorry about Moose, too. I know . . . I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now.”

He nodded as he brushed her hair back. “None of it seems real at all. Except for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

His face settled into hard lines. “If anyone tries to hurt you, I will come for them. And I will take care of the situation in any way I have to.” Anne’s first instinct was to tell him she didn’t need the help, but that was reflex, not reality. She wanted him in her life in all the ways that counted, and the knight in shinning armor stuff was part of that mix.

Reaching up, she smoothed his furrowed brows. “Guess what?”

“What?”

“Two can play at that game.” She smiled a little. “I’ve got your back when you need it, too. I’m your partner, not a princess in a tower.”

“And that, my fair lady, is why I love you.”

He kissed her again, and she thought about all the emotions in the air between them, hope, sadness, gratitude, anger, and confusion at Moose . . . fading terror. She had been through enough bad accident scenes and fires to know there would be a tail on all this. They would get through it together, though. What choice was there. You were either a survivor or casualty.

And they were survivors.

“Anne.”

At the sound of her brother saying her name, they pulled apart. Tom was standing by the back of the ambulance, tall as always, autocratic as ever—with eyes that were tearing up.

Anne shifted off the steel bumper and went to him. There was an awkward moment, as they had never been huggers—

Her brother’s heavy arms came around her and drew her against his big chest. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath.

For a moment, the past and the present blended together, and she felt an echo of the way it had been for her as a child with her father, sheltered in the lee of something greater and stronger than herself. But then all that had gone away, the hero image replaced by a human with devastating flaws.

Which was why people needed to stand on their own two feet.

Pulling back, she looked up. The vulnerability in her brother’s face was a shock. He’d never looked to her for grounding or support. He never looked to anyone for that.

“It’s okay,” she told him. “It’s all okay. I promise.”

He shuddered and dropped his head. “I can’t lose you, Sister.”