Bulletproof Princess Read Free Page B

his free time now, the guy would never let him have a moment’s peace again.
    “And I don’t care,” his boss answered, confirming his suspicions. “I touch down in ten minutes. I need you there in the next five.” The phone died in his hand, which was just was well, because the look he gave it should have killed it.
    “Problems?” Eli pushed his plate away and stood. Looking to his wife he asked, “Flan?”
    Bex grabbed his hand with a wink. “Full of questions tonight, huh? Yeah, you’ve been fussing over that flan all day. I can’t wait anymore.”
    As much as he would have liked to stay for dessert, he knew there’d be hell to pay if he didn’t show up at the Bellagio as bidden. “Grambling needs me for God knows what.” He rose and dropped his napkin onto his plate. “Dinner was wonderful, thank you both so much for inviting me.”
    “Absolutely. You know you’re always welcome when you’re in town.” Bex rose from her place and came around the table, and for a moment, he feared she was going to hug him, but she just slugged him in the shoulder. It was actually preferable.
    Eli emerged from the kitchen with a small plastic box in his hands. “Here, flan to take with you. It’s so worth it.”
    Mack was touched. It wasn’t often someone went out of their way for him. “Thank you.” He accepted the box and walked to the door with his hosts. “I really do appreciate you having me over.”
    Eli shook his hand and opened the heavy front door. “Anytime. We mean that.”
    As Mack started his rental, the deep rumble of the engine soothed him. It was going to be a long night; he felt it in his bones, but nothing he couldn’t handle. That much he knew for certain.
     

* * *
     
    It was like a movie. A loud, vividly colorful movie, with bright lights and sirens, but it didn’t seem real. As Cassie stood out in the back of the hotel next to the Maybach, leaning against her guitar case like it was the only thing holding her up, she watched the proceedings with the detached eye of a movie reviewer. The uniformed officers milling around, the crime scene tape fluttering in the warm breeze, the slow roll of the coroner’s wagon as it backed in near the main service doors, none of it interested her, because she’d tapped out.
    It was unreal, it was beyond her. She’d reached her threshold for coping and dropped over the edge into nothing, a bracing numbness. Trista had tried talking to her, but forming words wasn’t high on Cassie’s list of priorities, so she was left alone, which was as she wanted. Even now, as a man in a suit just a shade older than her own twenty-five years shuffled over to her, a gold badge clipped to his waist and a gun prominently on his hip, she couldn’t be moved to care.
    “Miss Witt?” He seemed to have a problem looking directly at her, focusing on the notebook in his hands instead of her face. “I’m Detective Job Redman. Do you feel up to talking to me?”
    She snorted, her upbringing in the church finding his first name more than a little comical. “Job, huh?”
    His cheeks darkened, stained bright pink and making his boyish face look that much younger. “Yeah,” he rubbed the back of his neck with a rueful grin, “my parents had a sense of humor.”
    She knew all about a name fraught with history, much of it negative. “He says to the woman whose parents named her Cassandra.”
    He grinned broadly for a moment, looking directly at her for the first time before remembering his surroundings. “Fair enough. Do you feel up to giving me your statement?”
    She looked from him to the men huddled around the open back door of the coroner’s van, still no emotion about it, and she feared she may never feel again. “I suppose.”
    He followed her line of sight to the van and stepped in front of it, breaking its hold on her mind. “I understand you saw the incident?”
    ‘The incident’ was a sterile way of saying she saw her manager, a friend who had stepped in