“Are you hit? Nina, are you hit?”
She tried to answer Aaron’s frantic questions, but she couldn’t get enough air to breathe, let alone talk. “Get off me,” she gasped. “Get off.”
Aaron stumbled to his feet and held out his hand. She grabbed it. Her legs wobbled, but she managed to stand upright. “Are you hurt?” She patted his blood-speckled shirt. His hands touched her cheeks, her shoulders, her hands. She looked down. She was speckled too.
The blood wasn’t Aaron’s.
Or hers.
Skeet lay on the floor, facedown. Detective Cavazos squatted next to him. He touched his fingers to the man’s neck. He glanced up at King and shook his head.
King sighed and turned back to Nina. “That’s what they call a squeaker.”
“How did you know?”
“Rick Zavala called the station looking for me.”
She leaned into Aaron. Chills ran through her mixed with white heat. Sweat rolled down Aaron’s face. His hair was damp. So were his eyes. “I told you he wasn’t a bad man.”
King sighed again. “He also admitted he murdered Melanie Martinez.” He motioned for them to follow him from the darkroom. “Careful where you step, please. What did you throw on him?” 288
“Developer. It’s an irritant for skin and eyes.”
“I gathered that.”
“Is it over? Someone talk to me. What is going on?” Grace’s high-pitched demands wafted through the open door to the stairs. “Somebody, please!”
Nina wobbled toward the stairs. King grabbed her arm. “They’re fine. I need you to stay put for a minute, okay?”
His phone went to his ear. He asked for an ambulance. Paramedics. CSU.
She didn’t need an ambulance. She needed to see her family. “I’m fine. Is everyone all right?”
“I checked on everyone.” King’s partner appeared at the top of the stairs. “They’re fine. I’ll meet CSU at the door.”
King nodded and gave Cavazos a thumbs-up. They seemed to be getting along better. “Your friend Rick gave us the lay of the land.”
“He’s not my friend.”
“I’m sorry about that.” He did seem sorry. “What were you thinking? Are you that naive or truly morons?”
“Hey.” Aaron tottered as if he might make a run at King. Nina took his hand. “Name calling isn’t necessary.”
“You couldn’t trust the professionals to do their jobs? You had to get in our way.”
“You were busy looking at me, interrogating me and Aaron and Jan and Trevor. Instead of finding out who really killed my dad. I had no choice.”
“Says you.” He sounded like a fifth grader. “We had the money trail. We had the electronic trail of texts and emails. We needed to cross a few more t’s, that’s all. Police work takes time. It’s not guns blazing. It’s methodical evidence collection that solves cases.”
“Are you done?”
“I’m done.”
“Rick killed my dad because he tried to blackmail Peter Coggins into taking him on as a partner?”
“The conversation was fast and furious and slightly garbled, but he says no.”
Nina strangled the urge to scream. “Seriously? He’ll admit to killing Melanie but not my dad?”
“I haven’t had a chance to interrogate him. This was a ninety-second phone call. We were more concerned with getting here before we had two more murders—or more—on my hands. Don’t worry, before this is over, he’ll admit it.”
“What about Peter Coggins and the others?” Aaron’s words were slurred as if the reality of the last thirty minutes—had it only been thirty minutes?—had stunned him. “Do they know it’s over?”
“My folks are rousting them from bed as we speak. We need to grab them before they realize what went down here.” King grinned happily. “They won’t know old Skeet here is dead for a while. It gives us a chance to milk them. They’ll think we know more than we do.”
“He was the guy in the park.” Aaron swiped at his nose. Blood soaked his sleeve. “The guy following you and Liz.”
Nina snatched a tissue from the box on her coffee table. “He was the guy who reached over me after the accident and grabbed the envelope from my car. I could smell the Paco Rabanne on him.”
Aaron took her offering. “Who was driving the SUV that hit Nina?”
“We don’t know everything. Possibly Jerome Solomon, your dad’s bailiff, or one of Skeet Miles’s thugs from his so-called security firm. It’s a work in progress—one we would’ve finished if two amateurs playing with fire hadn’t gotten in our way.” King shrugged. “We do know this guy was a bad dude who hired himself out as a hit man. His real name is Marcus Miles.”
“Where’s Rick now?”
“He said he was on his way downtown to turn himself in.”
King stood back to let a paramedic pass. The woman glanced from Nina to Aaron and then back. “He looks a little worse for wear. I’ll start with him.”
“I hate to do this to you, but I need both of you to come downtown one more time to be interviewed.” King yawned and checked his watch. “Cavazos will handle it.”
“Not you?” Nina was too tired for sarcasm. She wanted to sleep. She wanted to think. She needed to think about Aaron’s words and what she’d said to him. They needed to talk before the light of day made them both too scared to admit they’d spoken the truth under duress. It wasn’t fear of dying. It was fear of living. “Are you headed home to catch up on your beauty sleep or something?”
“I imagine I’ll be tied up with the officer-involved shooting team for quite a while. Again.”