Breaking Steele (Sarah Steele Legal Thriller)

Chapter 52

BEFORE THE SWEAT HAD dried on my face, I’d called Detective Monroe. I told him that there’d been a break-in at Mandy’s, two men were dead, and one of them was Hank Williams.

I went back and stood in the doorway to my room. Blood was soaked into the carpet and the tall man in the middle of the floor stared up with soulless eyes. This time I couldn’t hold it in. I bent over and threw up in the hallway.

* * *

TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, the detectives and policemen found me curled up on the couch in a daze.

“They’re upstairs,” I whispered.

Detective Ross ran up the stairs two at a time. I could see his profile as he looked in the room. Revulsion flooded his face, and then he entered.

Detective Monroe stayed beside me. He didn’t say a word, but I could see it in his eyes: pity. He knew I’d been through hell, and he wanted to help.

I’d already gone through an abridged version of the story in my mind. As an attorney, I knew what I could tell them and what I had to keep to myself. But I was too weak to tell them anything.

“Can I give you my testimony later?” I said in a thin voice. My eyes could barely stay open.

He took a throw blanket from the end of the couch and settled it over me. As it collapsed around my shoulders, I completely relaxed. I barely even heard him say, “Of course.”

I closed my eyes and fell asleep.