Free Walking The Edge: A Romantic Suspense/Espionage Thriller (Corpus Brides Trilogy Book 1) by Zee Monodee Page A

gently drifted from the barrel.
    He blinked when he focused on her face.
    It can’t be. The same woman who’d met him at the bistro. Yet, at the same time, not her. Her features looked different, harder, and, he realized with dread, completely focused yet expressionless.
    Something told him to take another look. She hadn’t dropped the gun, and for an insane moment, he wondered if she’d aim it his way and shoot. There had been no hesitation in her two shots, and, as his eyes took in the way she held the Sig—one hand curled around the grip and the other anchoring it—realization clattered in his brain.
    She held it like a professional, and merde if she hadn’t shot like a professional, too.
    Finally, she lowered the weapon and stepped up to him.
    From his previous deduction, he hadn’t expected her to be trembling or bumbling her way about, but still, the efficiency with which she sidestepped the body and crouched at Gerard’s side sent warning bells off in his head.
    “Who the hell are you?” he asked, aware the thought had made it into words.

 
    Chapter Four
     
    Marseille. Quartier de Saint-Giniez in the 8ème arrondissement
    Saturday, December 15. 10.15 p.m.
     
    That’s what I’d like to know, too. But she didn’t reply even as the thought crossed her mind.
    Not the time to look for answers.
    Instead, she raked her gaze over him, stopping at the trickles of blood oozing from his lip and the gaping cut along his eyebrow. “Are you okay?”
    He nodded. “Just—” he winced as he tried to move, “—help me stand up.”
    She held his elbow and braced her arm around his waist.
    After leaning against the wall, his breathing hard and laboured, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his mobile, punched in a number, and waited.
    “Rashid, it’s me. Take some men and come to my place. And call the coroner. One man was shot.”
    She understood his French as he talked. What the hell...? And what to make of the inert body on the asphalt? She’d killed that man...
    Flashes of light captured her attention, and she glanced up, finding people silhouetted against previously dark windows. Some ground-floor occupants had stepped out; a few of them called to Gerard. He reassured them he had things under control.
    Yeah, right. He’d taken a beating, and the hiss that escaped his lips as she pressed a little too hard onto his side told her he’d been badly hurt. “You should get checked by a doctor.”
    “No need,” he grumbled.
    Typical man; thought himself invincible.
    “I can make it,” he added and gently shrugged her off.
    She let him go. He wanted to act tough? Be my guest.
    With stumbling steps, he moved to the large door where he’d stopped a few minutes earlier. He tried to lift it, and grunted in pain. Reflex pushed her to his side where she reached out to help, only to be shooed off again. So he’d treat her like a fragile female now? After she’d brought down and killed a veritable gorilla back there?
    About that... her mind prodded, but she slammed the lid onto that line of thought. Not for the here and now.
    A couple of neighbourhood men came up and helped him open the shutter-like door, exposing a lived-in garage behind the panel.
    His residence? And a garage, in such a posh area? Curiouser and curiouser.
    The sounds of police sirens soon blared through the air. Minutes later, uniformed and civilian-clothed officers swamped the area, flashing colours from their vehicles’ strobes sending eerie lights like a laser show onto the smooth walls of the surrounding buildings. A medic with a stethoscope around his neck converged onto her and escorted her to an ambulance a few feet away.
    On the way, she caught the eyes of the man who’d bumped into her at the station. He halted at the sight of her—or so she assumed—and then, immediately swooped in on the commissaire . Besson spoke with the handsome, Mediterranean-looking guy, and both men turned towards her. Across the distance, and with the