But I’m frozen in place as they disappear from my sight, hitting the floor with such force the house seems to shake. I hear grunting, cursing, a scuffling sound, and then the crack of a gun going off.
I scream and push myself off the floor, disregarding Kyle’s order to run and scrambling around the couch instead. I’m immediately relieved to see Kyle pushing up to his knees, the gun now in his hand with a dark red stain of blood spreading across Steve’s chest. His eyes are closed, and he’s not moving at all.
Kyle stands. His eyes roam over me, head to toe, before he asks, “You okay?”
“No,” I say in a shaky voice.
“Are you hurt?” he asks with concerned eyes as he steps toward me.
I hold my hands out to fend him off and take a step back. Shaking my head, I tell him, “Not hurt.”
Kyle gives a sad smile of acknowledgment and tells me, “Dial 9-1-1. Tell them you had an intruder who has been shot and killed. Tell them there’s an armed ATF agent in the house when they arrive.”
“An armed what?” I gasp in surprise, but Kyle ignores me, instead pulling his phone out of his pocket.
I watch as he dials a number and puts the phone to his ear, completely shocked by what has occurred and not understanding a damn thing. He walks to the window, gun still in his hand, and looks out into the darkness. When someone answers on the other side of the phone, he says, “I’ve been found. I need you to get here now.”
Kyle’s eyes cut to me, and then he covers the mouthpiece of his phone. In a firm voice, he says, “Call the police, Jane. Now.”
This jolts me somewhat… the businesslike calm he’s exhibiting despite the fact I think he just killed a man. I pull my own phone out of my pocket with a shaking hand and call the police like he asked me to do.
?
“I don’t give a shit what you say,” I growl at the cop who’s been sitting with me for the past hour. “I’m done. I’m going home, and you can’t stop me.”
“Miss Cresson,” the man says patiently. “Your house is still being processed. You can’t go home.”
I have no clue who this guy is with. I’ve got local police, state patrol, FBI, and ATF. I swear I even saw people walking around with jackets that said Homeland Security.
I give the man a sarcastically sweet smile and tell him, “Well, I guess it’s a good fucking thing my parents live within walking distance of me, huh?”
I push up from the table, the chair scraping on the tile floor. I’ve been in this room longer than the hour this man has been talking to me. I was brought here in the back of one our local police cruisers, driven by Chance Dawson, a total goober I went to school with who I’m sure had never seen a dead body before. He acted like he was driving a celebrity or something to the station when he was told to bring me there by an FBI agent who showed up on the scene not long after I called the police and Kyle had finished talking to whoever was on the phone.
We had been immediately separated, each being interviewed by men who had clearly identified themselves as FBI, although I was told vaguely that I’d be interviewed later by ATF. I have no clue what the fuck is going on, but I notice with an odd sort of detachment that Kyle didn’t seemed wigged out by any of this.
Not that I was held at gunpoint.
Not that he killed a man.
Not that he was surrounded by flashing police lights and was telling his story to the FBI. In fact, he had been casually leaning up against one of the unmarked cars with his hands in his pockets, cutting short glances of worry at me. I glared back at him, because the one thing that had become patently clear to me is that Kyle had been beyond deceitful. I mean… I’m not stupid. I knew he had secrets he was keeping. But I didn’t know they involved murder and law enforcement and Jesus… will I be able to get the blood out of my carpet when I get home?
“Miss Cresson, I urge you to please wait,” the man says. “I know Agents Kizner and Sommerville want to speak to you.”
“I have no clue who those men are, and I don’t want to know,” I snap at him as I walk for the door.
“They’re ATF and they’re heading up this entire investigation,” he says as my hand closes around the knob.
“Well, good for them,” I sneer as I jerk the door open. “I wish them the best of luck.”
I step out of the small room I’d been put in at our dinky Misty Harbor police department and run smack into Kyle. His hands come out to steady my arms, and I immediately tear free of him.
“Don’t touch me,” I snarl.
He flinches slightly, but his face hardens into stony resolve. “We need to talk.”
“You need to go to hell,” I hiss at him, so angry by his duplicity that I can barely look at him.
“Agent Sommerville,” the man who had been sitting with me says to Kyle from behind me. “I tried to keep her in place.”
“It’s okay,” Kyle says to the man, but he doesn’t take his eyes off me. “Clear the room so I can talk to her.”