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

surreal lights, she couldn’t make out their words, but she’d bet they talked about her.
    *
    Who is she? Gerard kept his gaze on her where she stood across the road.
    “What’s she doing here?” Rashid asked. “I thought she was a honey trap you didn’t want to fall into.”
    Something about this woman didn’t add up... “Look at her and tell me something,” he said. “What do you think has happened to her?”
    Rashid shrugged. “She looks annoyed, as if she’s stuck in this place and would rather be anywhere but here.”
    Gerard nodded. “My thoughts, too. Do you think this is how a woman who’s just run into a fight, picked up a gun, aimed, shot, and killed a man, would look?”
    “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Rashid’s face echoed the disbelief in his words.
    “No, I’m not.” He shook his head. “It’s thanks to her I’m alive. The guy was about to shoot me down.”
    Rashid’s mouth hung open. “You’re telling me this scrap of a woman brought down a thug that size?”
    “Yes.”
    Who could she be?
    She had retreated into a corner, her intense eyes seeming to capture every detail of all the activity around her. A guy from the SAMU, the French emergency service, went up to her and placed a blanket around her shoulders while the doctor questioned her. She nodded in Gerard’s direction after a few seconds.
    She’d killed a man barely half an hour earlier, bon sang ; yet, she stood quiet and unruffled, still with her wits about her while the chaos of police investigation buzzed all over the place. She should’ve been trembling and even hysterical. Not so calmly detached.
    Again, he couldn’t help but think she must be something else than what he’d initially thought her to be.
    Come to think of it, he didn’t know who and what she really was. He’d believed her to be a lure—his mistake.
    “What are you going to do about her?” Rashid asked, breaking through his thoughts.
    Gerard watched her for long seconds. “You know, they say you should keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
    “Is she a friend or an enemy?”
    He didn’t know for sure. Something told him she wasn’t the enemy because she’d killed that guy without a second thought. The enemy wouldn’t decimate its own side.
    But what if it all amounted to a ploy, to win his trust?
    He didn’t know, and couldn’t know, really. Somehow, she held the key—the way she’d shot meant she couldn’t be any regular lure sent to honey-trap him. He’d have to figure out what part she played, and if she even represented part of the whole scheme.
    And the thug sent to kill him? Who, and why? Could it be pure luck she’d been around to help at that precise moment?
    The questions rolled in his head, adding pieces to an already complex jumble.
    Something bigger than a gang of casino robbers must be at work here, for why else would these petty thieves send a killer after him? They amounted to the only case he worked on at the moment. How did he connect the dots? A lure he could understand, acting as leverage for blackmail purposes, or to get information out of him. But to order his death at the hands of a hit man?
    And what of the woman in all this?
    His gaze locked with her blue eyes. Without breaking eye contact, he walked up to her. Every step hurt, but he paid the pain no heed. Too much going on to bother with a little niggle.
    He stopped inches from her body. She lifted her face to his, and he brought his hand up to graze her cheek with his knuckles.
    Why did he do that? He had no clue, and he couldn’t stop himself before he’d made contact with her creamy skin.
    She blinked under the touch, and her lips parted.
    “ Pardon, Commissaire. Nous devons interroger la dame .”
    The voice and the inopportune interruption of one of his officers startled them both out of the hypnotic tension that had settled between them. She glanced at the officer, before her gaze returned to him.
    He nodded towards the police van.