Reasonable Doubt (35 page)

“Come on.”

Sarah’s soft words were a welcome command, and she followed her out of the building, past the agents, past Kayla still prone on the floor, toward a future she hoped they would share.

*

Sarah pulled her car into Ellery’s driveway and shut off the engine. She looked over at the passenger seat. Ellery was staring at the front door, but she couldn’t read her expression. Should she stay or go? They hadn’t talked much on the ride over, both of them seemingly sucked out of adrenaline. She leaned back in the seat and waited for Ellery to make the first move. A few seconds later, her phone rang and she rushed to silence it, the sound a painful reminder of the ordeal they’d just endured.

“Do you need to get that?” Ellery asked.

Sarah looked at Danny’s name on the display. By now she’d probably heard what happened and was worried, but Sarah didn’t want anything to interrupt whatever was about to happen between her and Ellery. When the message icon appeared on her screen, she typed a quick text to let Danny know she was okay, switched off the ringer, and stowed the phone in the console. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. I understand you have a job to do.”

Sarah started to say she wasn’t here because of the job, but Ellery spoke first. “Walk me in?”

“Absolutely.”

They were halfway up the walk when she heard Leo’s gruff voice call out. “You found her.”

Sarah raised a hand to wave at him and he leaned over the railing of his front porch as they approached. “I said I would.”

“You look like you got a little beat up in the process,” he said.

“You should see the other guy.”

Leo grunted his approval and gave her a quick salute before returning to his chair.

As Ellery pushed open the front door, she said, “Something going on between you two I should know about?”

“We seem to have formed a bond.” Sarah followed her into the kitchen. “Actually, there’s probably a lot of detail we’re both missing about what went down today. Are you up for talking about it?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“There are a bunch of things I’d like to talk about. If you want to start with what happened today, we can do that.”

Sarah glanced down the hallway. The door to Ellery’s bedroom was shut, but every inch of the interior was emblazoned on her mind and she sensed it always would be, no matter what happened next. She’d brought Ellery home because it had seemed like the right thing to do, but now that they were here, every detail about the night before came rushing back, and she wasn’t sure if her motives were fueled by arousal or something more permanent. Back in the tunnel, she’d been ready to call what she felt for Ellery love, but was that a by-product of danger or a real feeling?

Ellery’s voice cut through her thoughts. “Kayla and Jasmine showed up here around noon. They said they were looking for Naveed. Apparently, he missed his court appearance this morning. Meg was already here when they arrived. She’d called earlier to ask about Naveed and I asked her to come by to talk about something that was on my mind.”

Sarah looked into Ellery’s eyes as she relayed the simple facts. She saw pain and something else. Longing? Whatever it was, Ellery had apparently decided not to push for some big discussion about feelings, instead choosing to sort through the events that had brought them to this point. It couldn’t hurt to meet her halfway.

“HSI took Naveed into custody this morning,” she said. “When we took a break, he made a phone call to Jasmine. It sounded innocuous at the time, but we think he must have given her some kind of code to signal her to initiate this plan.”

“Is Meg okay?”

“For now. After you and Kayla left the van, Jasmine became a big soppy mess. I don’t think she was ever really committed to any of this. She just wanted to be close to Naveed. As for Meg, she has a lot of questions to answer. You should know HSI has connected her to Jafari and they’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the evidence they gathered from her office.”

Ellery sighed. “Whatever she’s done, she didn’t deserve what could have happened today. I’m fairly certain those girls intended to take us out with them.”

Sarah shook her head to clear a mental image of the downtown building exploding with Ellery underneath it. “Thank God for Leo. After he saw Kayla and Jasmine drive off with you and Meg, he showed up at headquarters demanding to see me. Clever trick with the card in your wallet.”

“I figured it was a long shot, but I’m glad it worked. I think we’ll let Leo stay on as head of the neighborhood watch,” Ellery said as she reached into the fridge, pulled out a beer, and tilted it in her direction. Sarah started to shake her head no. Any minute now, she could get called back in to deal with the aftermath of the scene she’d just left. HSI had both of the Barstow brothers in custody now and they’d want to try to question them. Aadila’s crew would be spread thin, and she imagined she and Trip would be asked to help out. The process would be long and tiring, and it would consume her while it lasted.

She stared at the beer in Ellery’s hand and closed her mind against all the distractions. She reached for the bottle and, as she grasped it, her fingers closed around Ellery’s, and she braced against the onslaught of opposite sensations. The heat of Ellery’s touch and the chill of the bottle—the contrast pretty much summed up everything about their relationship. Relationship. Outside of the bonds she’d formed on the job, the entire concept of a relationship was foreign. Was she ready to accept this most personal challenge and have a life defined by more than her work?

She looked into Ellery’s eyes and she knew. She didn’t want the push and pull of working this investigation. She’d come to Dallas to find something new and exciting, someone she could love who would love her back. Standing here in front of Ellery, she was absolutely certain she’d found exactly what she was looking for, and she wasn’t going to let anything get in the way.

She set the bottle on the table and pulled Ellery into her arms. “I want to talk about something else.”

Ellery pulled back and met her eyes, her expression hopeful. “Okay, what do you want to talk about?”

“I’m falling in love with you.”

Ellery grinned. “You really know how to change the subject.”

Sarah play shoved her. “Is that all you have to say?”

Ellery caught her hands and pulled them to her lips. She kissed the tips of her fingers one by one, as she withheld her answer with delicious delay. Sarah groaned in response to her soft, teasing touch. “You have incredible skills, but are you going to answer my question?”

“I’m saying plenty here.” Ellery kissed another fingertip. “I’m pretty sure I fell in love with you when you showed up at the design show in that blazing hot red dress. Or maybe it was when you met me for coffee and then dashed off in your shiny blue Corvette. You’re bold and smart and full of life.” She leaned in for a kiss and murmured against her lips. “How could I not fall in love with you? All this time, I guess I’ve been waiting for you to catch up.”

Sarah melted into the kiss, into the heat of Ellery’s embrace, and let her uncertainty about her job and her role in the investigation recede. Her body hummed with anticipation and, for once, the suspense wasn’t about a mystery she was trying to solve, but about the path her life was about to take. She was in love, and all that mattered was she was here with Ellery, and Ellery loved her back. She had no doubt everything else would fall into place.

align=center style='text-align:center;text-indent:0in'>THE END

Carsen Taite’s goal as an author is to spin tales with plot lines as interesting as the cases she encountered in her career as a criminal defense lawyer. She is the author of a dozen previously released novels,
truelesbianlove.com
,
It Should be a Crime
(a Lambda Literary Award finalist),
Do Not Disturb
,
Nothing But the Truth
,
The Best Defense
,
Slingshot
,
Beyond Innocence
,
Battle Axe, Rush
,
Switchblade, Courtship
, and
Lay Down the Law
. She is currently working on her fourteenth novel,
Above the Law
, the second book in the Lone Star Law series. Learn more at www.carsentaite.com.

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