Accomplice by Kristi Lea Page B

the next room, and a faint hiss that might have been a sharp
intake of breath. She sat in one of the arm chairs and waited. He hadn’t closed
the bathroom door all the way, and from here she could see a thin slice of the
action through the crack.
    Noah’s dark form loomed above a white pedestal
sink. He had taken off his shirt and she could see hints of the tanned skin of
his back before he turned away. Her pulse quickened and she felt a rush of heat
through her belly and to her sex. She forced her eyes down to her hands.
    Something hit the bathroom floor with a bang and
she heard a stream of unintelligible cursing from Noah.
    She jumped up and knocked softly on the cracked
door. It swung wide open. Noah sat on the lid of the toilet, shirtless, his
face pale and his breathing heavy. His bag lay at his feet, with toothpaste and
shampoo and other toiletry bottles spilling out of the open zipper. The exposed
wound on his shoulder was bruised black and blue with an ugly black and red
slash through the middle probably three inches long. One corner wept tears of
red blood where the stitches didn’t hold the edges closed.
    “Are you okay?”
    He didn’t answer right away.
    She bent down to help pick up the fallen bag,
expecting another brusque retort. Surprisingly, he stayed where he was. Quickly
she stuffed the contents back into the bag and sat back. “Can I help?”
    “I will be fine.” His voice was shaky.
    “Yeah, right.” She shoved the bag to one corner
and stood to wash her hands at the sink, taking time to scrub them thoroughly.
He had set out a couple of gauze pads, bandage tape, and a tube of prescription
antibiotic on the ledge. She spotted a bottle of Tylenol on the floor and left
it there.
    Grabbing the supplies, she turned back toward him.
“Let me see that arm.”
    To her surprise, he turned slightly so she could.
    “Hold still.” She began to clean the area around
the wound with one of the pads. “What happened? The news report was pretty
vague about the whole thing.”
    He winced as she got close to where the cut was
still tender. “I found a guy sneaking out of your garden. He shot me.”
    “Did you catch him?” She squeezed a line of the
ointment onto a clean gauze pad. “Who was it?”
    “I got shot and hit my head on the concrete. He
got away.”
    She began cutting strips of tape. “What was he
after?”
    His eyes flickered from the scissors in her hands
to her face and then back. “No one knows. Your security didn’t even know he was
there. They were supposed to turn over any surveillance video for us to look
at.”
    She patted the last of the tape in place and
tossed the scraps in the trash. “And?”
    He shrugged and then winced. Jess found the
dropped bottle of Tylenol on the floor and handed it to him. “Unless you had
something else to take care of the pain.”
    He lifted his gaze from the bottle. It lingered
for a minute on her chest, but by the time his eyes met hers, they were
unreadable. “Nope.”
    She waited. Raised an eyebrow to his stony
expression. “So what did the security tapes show? It is my house. I have a
right to know.”
    “You probably do.” He stood up and made to walk
past her.
    It was either climb in the sink to avoid him, or
park herself in front of that solid expanse of muscled chest. She parked. And
crossed her arms. And tried to ignore the way his abdominal muscles rippled
when he breathed. “What did you see on the tapes?”
    “You would have to ask an active member of the
force. I am on ‘leave pending an internal investigation’.”
    The air in her lungs escaped with a whoosh and she
folded meekly as he maneuvered around her and back into the bedroom.
    Next to the dresser he gingerly slipped a t-shirt
over his head then leaned his good arm down on the edge of the bed to rest,
still breathing heavier than she liked.
    She took a minute to parse his words. Law
enforcement agencies launched internal investigations when officers shot
suspects, not the