“I’m fine. Just fine. Okay? You can leave me alone. I’m fine.”
Her eyes met mine again, challenging. She was furious, more so than I’d seen her in a very long time.
“Why don’t you drop the knife. Okay?” As I stood, she took a deep breath, staring at it while walking to the sink. The clatter of the blade as she dropped it brought a sigh to my lips.
She turned on the water, another sob indicating she was anything but fine. I stood over her as she scrubbed blood from her hands, only walking away when she glared me in the eyes.
I held up my hands in surrender, moving through the house checking the others. They were all in their thirties. All white with short, cropped hair.
Almost as if members of a military organization. That was new. What they didn’t appear to be were members of any cartel or even the bike gang from Texas we’d dealt with over a year before.
And as expected, no identification.
They reminded me of what little I knew about the Brotherhood’s invisible army I’d thought about before.
She found me in the bedroom, standing in the doorway. “How did they find us?”
I thought about what she’d brought. The one thing they could count on was her wallet. “There’s only one easy way,” I told her and moved toward the purse that had been dropped on the kitchen floor in the melee.
Her face was quizzical as I yanked the wallet into my hand, and she almost stopped me when I started ripping it apart. But I could tell the moment she realized what I was doing.
It took me ten seconds to find what I was looking for. While the beacon was tiny, little more than the size of a broken-off zipper, the technology had changed over the years. When I held it into the light, I sensed her anger flaring.
As soon as I dropped it onto the floor, I stomped my boot down, crushing it.
“That means they were in my house when I was there.”
Nodding, I surveyed the scene again. “Likely.”
“What now?”
“Now, we get the fuck out here. And you are not going to keep me from taking you to safety.”
Her lower lip quivered, but she nodded. “Okay. When are we leaving?”
“I’m calling the pilot right now. Go get a few things together. But search your bags in case they hid another one.”
“Okay. What about them?”
Another disadvantage of not being in our hometown. No cleanup crew. With the houses being so close, someone had likely heard the shots. That meant police in a foreign country and that meant explanations I didn’t have.
I doubted the Prince family name carried any weight down here.
“There’s nothing we can do. I will take pictures and send them off to a couple people I know. With any luck, they’re in a database and we can discover who they are.”
“Our fingerprints are everywhere. We’ll be considered fugitives.”
“There’s nothing we can do from here, but I’m certain Alexander can make it go away. Go get ready. Change. Gather all your things.”
“Okay, I will.” She allowed her gaze to fall and so did I. “Thank you.”
“Why are you thanking me?”
“Because you always have my back. I can always count on you.”
Jesus Christ. We’d just been attacked and all I could think about was taking her into my arms.
And not just for comfort either.