Page 51 of Detective for the Debutante (SAFE Haven Security #3)
MURPHY
B lue and red lights flash against the industrial buildings, headlights lighting up the area until it almost looks like daylight in the small semicircle of police vehicles and several ambulances.
My car is a crunch of metal in the steel door, having rammed three times into the door in order to break it open.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Warren asks.
“I’m okay.” The words are automatic, but I scan the remaining ambulances until I find the one where Leigh is being checked out.
“You’re rubbing your neck. Sure you didn’t get whiplash? Looks like your airbags deployed.”
I drop my hand, not even realizing I had been rubbing at the ache I feel only when I think about it.
I shrug a shoulder, holding back the wince.
“I’m sore, but nothing a hot shower and some aspirin won’t fix.”
An ambulance takes off, lights and sirens blaring.
Must be Vanderweel Senior.
He’s alive—barely.
“I hope he makes it.” I say the words more to myself, but Warren responds.
“Really?” He seems surprised.
I nod.
“He needs to face what’s he’s done.”
“Think he really killed Selene Gordon?” he asks.
I hadn’t even been thinking about that. He needs to pay for what he did to Leigh.
“At this point? I don’t know. I wouldn’t put it past him. I never would have thought I’d watch him point a gun at someone with the intent to kill them. But I have no doubt he would have shot Leigh if she moved.” I shudder at the memory, my eyes finding her again.
The EMT is checking out the cut on her lip and she winces.
“Are we done here? I’d like to…” I nod in the direction of Leigh’s ambulance.
I’ve spent the last fifteen minutes talking to Warren about everything I know.
Finding Leigh’s car unlocked with her phone and keys, the way Sydney was able to track her with the AirTag—fuck, pride swells in my chest at how resourceful Leigh was to keep it with her. I might have been too late otherwise.
I almost was.
Even though she had disabled two of the three men who took her, Vanderweel was going to kill her. I know that with every fiber of my being.
“Yeah. Think she’d be up for coming to the station tomorrow to give her statement?”
I nod.
“I don’t see why not. But if not, would Monday work?”
It’s late. Hard to believe it’s still Saturday night, but just barely. If she needs to go to the hospital, it’ll be later still.
“Yeah, of course. I’m on shift on Monday too. Thanks, O’Connell.” Warren pats me on the shoulder and heads for the uniform who waits with Charlie Vanderweel in the back of a squad car.
I walk toward Leigh with purpose, reaching her side as the EMT finishes checking her out.
“What is it about you that we keep meeting like this?” I tease her gently, not sure if it’s the right thing to say.
Her lips lift in a smile, her arms opening until I step between them, pulling her to me.
“I’d say you were bad luck,” she sasses back.
Fuck. This girl.
This woman.
Mine.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Do you need to go to the hospital and get checked out?”
She shakes her head.
“No, she says I have a cut on my lip and some bruises and scrapes, but that’s it.”
I look at the female EMT who nods, confirming Leigh’s statement. Not that I think Leigh would lie—more like stretch the truth a bit— but I know she’s not the biggest fan of hospitals.
“I’d offer to drive you home, but I don’t think I have a car anymore,” I murmur.
If insurance doesn’t total my car, it’ll be a miracle. Not like I care. I’d make the same choice again and again. After trying the one door chained and padlocked several times over, I knew it would be my only way in to get to her.
I’d heard her first scream. My time was up.
Her eyes find mine, reflecting the lights.
“I-I killed someone.” Her lip quivers with her statement, tears pooling in her eyes.
I lift a finger, running it along her jawline.
“It’s going to be okay.”
“B-b-but I pushed him and he fell…are they going to arrest me?” she asks, her gaze darting to the dozen or so officers milling around the scene.
“I very much doubt the DA is going to charge you. I don’t know for sure, since this isn’t my case. But you were acting in self-defense, Stóirín. No jury in the world would convict you.”
She leans her head back against my chest, her sigh blowing through the cotton of my shirt as the tension ebbs from her shoulders. Is that what she was worried about?
“I-is Charlie okay?”
I look for the car where Charlie was waiting, Warren now talking to him.
“He’s not hurt.” I can’t really say if he’s okay or not.
The gun Vanderweel Senior was holding had gone off as the two struggled for it. But it was Vanderweel Senior who had been hit.
“His dad killed his fiancée,” she whispers, arms squeezing tighter around me.
But it’s how she says the words that breaks my heart and has me holding her a little more carefully. She’s lost more than a little bit of her belief in humanity tonight.
“I know, sweetheart.”
We stand in silence for several breaths, letting the world rush around us. The coroner’s van pulls up to collect Ellis, and it’s not something I want her to see.
“Are you ready to go home?” I ask her.
“You don’t have a car,” she reminds me.
“So we’ll get a uni to drive us.”
Once we’re in the back of a car and I give Leigh’s address to the officer, I sit back and hand over her phone.
“You’ll want to call Sydney. She helped track you down. That was smart thinking with the AirTag, by the way,” I tell her.
Her soft smile might as well light up the night, because it lights up my whole world.
“You found my phone? And my camera bag?”
I nod, my smile growing at the mention of her beloved camera.
“And your car. I locked the car and they’re going to get it to a lab to process it.”
“They wanted it to get stolen.”
“It probably would have been but I found it first,” I assure her.
Her fingers fly on her screen for a moment before she puts the phone down in her lap.
“I just texted her to let her know I am okay. She made me promise to call her tomorrow.”
My phone pings with a text and I tug it free from my pocket to read it.
SYDNEY
Good job, Detective McHottie. Maybe you deserve her after all.
I show the text to Leigh who laughs and leans against my side.
“That’s Sydney,” she says on a yawn.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
“I’m still mad at you,” she murmurs and glances up.
Her expression holds her hurt. The one I inflicted.
“I know. And I deserve your anger.”
“We’re going to talk about it tomorrow,” she tells me. “I’m calling a truce for tonight.”
“Whatever you say, Stóirín. So long as it means I get to hold you.”
That’s the only way I’ll know peace tonight—holding her in my arms.
She snuggles back against me, and the only sound is her quiet breathing until we pull up in front of her house.
We use the keypad to get into her garage, and I lead her inside and into her bathroom, turning on the water in the shower.
“What are you doing?” she asks as I flip off the light in the bathroom.
There’s still enough ambient light coming from her bedroom to see.
“ We . We are going to take a shower and go to bed.”
“Oh. Okay.” The fact that she doesn’t argue with me is proof she’s reaching the end of her limit.
Tugging her under the warm spray, I shampoo her hair and rinse it before doing the same with the conditioner. Her body is marred with bruises still visible in the dim light, and my hands fist at my sides as red clouds my vision.
But rage doesn’t belong in this moment with her.
Gratitude does.
I’m so fucking grateful I found her.
Taking several deep breaths, I relax my fingers, reaching for her soap and running gentle hands along her body until every trace of soap is gone.
I’m reluctant to let her go, so worried she’ll disappear if I’m not touching her.
But eventually she’s clean and I run soap over my own body quickly before cranking off the water.
Shivers rack her body and I grab a towel, wrapping her up and running my hands up and down her arms before I worry about myself. Convinced she’s dry, I run a towel over myself before leading her into the bedroom. I pull back the covers and help her in, climbing in after her.
“You’re exhausted,” I murmur, brushing my lips against her hair where she lies curled in my arms.
“Aren’t you?”
“Don’t worry about me, sweetheart. Get some sleep.”
Her breathing is already deepening as she continues to fight to stay awake.
“So tired,” she murmurs.
“You have every right to be. Sleep, my love.”
“’Kay.”
Even after her even breaths wash against my chest consistently, I lie awake, holding her to me. Her weight is so slight, it amazes me she survived tonight with only a cut lip and bruises.
It could have been worse. So much worse.
But it’s not.
Life has a way of working out.
Just like Mom said earlier.
And tonight, Leigh is safe.
My breath catches in my lungs, my arms tightening around her at how much of a miracle that is.
The other miracle?
She’s mine.
And I don’t have to let her go.