I smiled slightly.
She had no clue just how much she helped.
“Why are you smiling?” Stan asked, ruining my good thoughts.
I shrugged. “No reason.”
His eyes narrowed.
And to keep him talking, and me breathing, I continued to ask questions.
“Why the cop’s wives. Why babies?” I asked carefully.
He sneered.
“Why would I want to bring more of those bastards into this world? Not by my hands, no sir.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t aiding in any more births to people like you.”
I shook my head.
The degree of his hate was staggering.
To take his problems out on innocent children was just jaw dropping to me.
“What would your wife think about all of this?” I asked softly.
Stan’s eye twitched, and it was long moments before he answered.
“Well, I’m not sure why she would even matter anymore. She’s gone, and I’ll never need to know what my wife thinks about any of this,” Stan’s voice broke. “Because she’s so gone. Gone, gone, gone.”
“She’s not gone,” I said softly. “She lives on in your memories.”
Shit, now I was quoting Big Hero 6!
I knew I shouldn’t have watched that movie with Reggie!
“She tells me I should think before I act. I don’t know how to do that,” he admitted, looking down at his hand and dropping his gun to the floor.
I didn’t move.
Not time yet.
My heart rate picked up when I saw the movement in the side window of my place.
A distinctly blonde head popped into the side window before disappearing just as quickly.
Luke.
Good.
Only a little bit longer now.
“Women have a way about them. They think they’re right…but most of the time they are right. I’ve found that out myself just the other day,” I told him, thinking back to the night Nikki saw me with Lisette. “They’re smart creatures, women. They instinctively know what is best for us, and they move heaven and earth to make us happy.”
And Nikki did do that.
Every day.
I saw that now, with the threat of my life being taken from me from a man that felt such pain over the loss of his own woman.
Stan’s eyes moved to the table, and my breath caught in my throat when I caught sight of the sonogram picture that I’d dropped there when I arrived home.
I’d seen it in the cab of the truck, and on instinct had grabbed it to make sure it wouldn’t get ruined.
Now the man that wanted to take her away from me was staring at it like it was the lowliest of life forms.
“Cops don’t deserve to have a happy life,” he muttered darkly. “You don’t deserve to live.”
He dropped down scooping the gun up off the floor and pointing it for real this time and I knew my time was up.
He wasn’t going to wait, and if I didn’t do something, I’d be lying in a pool of blood.
“May you rot in he…”
Boom!
I closed my eyes, sick to my stomach.
The smoking gun still in my hand.
Stan was dead before his body even met the floor.
“Shit!” Luke said, rounding the corner of the back hallway with his gun in his hand. “You scared the shit out of me, man!”
I raised my head and looked at my boss, and one of the best friends I’ve ever had.
“I don’t think we need that warrant anymore,” I said softly.
Luke’s face lit in a brief smile before he moved around the table where I was sitting and took a knee on the floor beside Stan’s prone body.
“Dead,” he confirmed, standing up. “Gotta call this in.”
With that, he put his phone up to his ear and reported the shooting.
Slowly, I placed my gun on the table by my right elbow, and moved to stand.
Blood was slowly filling up the floor beneath Stan’s body and I had to step over it in order not to track it throughout the house.
“Want me to go outside?” I asked.
Luke shook his head.