Dirty Deeds by Rhys Ford

Author:Rhys Ford [Ford, Rhys]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press

Chapter 12

BOBBY CAME through the front door, a round of cursing telling me he’d probably had more than a few pieces of glass dug into him when he wiggled in. My shirt wore most of my own battle with the door, and my ears were losing their war with Julili’s high-pitched screeching.

“Hey, come on, cut me some slack here,” I begged her. The cape’s material did nothing to soak up the woman’s blood, and I was worrying about how much of it I was getting on the floor. I was getting sick of people bleeding out on me. Focusing on the woman gurgling next to me, I tried to keep her conscious. “Come on, honey. Stay with us. Help’s going to be here. Okay?”

“Oh God, please! Don’t hurt me!” Julili pleaded with Bobby, fumbling to open her purse. “I don’t have a lot of money, but I give you what I have, yes?”

“Don’t let her go anyway, dude. That’s one of the girls we’re looking for.” Julili’s wailing began anew, and somewhere lost in the keening, she begged us not to kill her. Shouting over the din, I yelled at Bobby. “Cops coming?”

“Yeah!” Bobby downgraded his growl to a soothing murmur and stroked Julili’s shoulder. “No one’s going to hurt you, honey. We’re here to help.”

The woman I was trying to hold together burbled something again, and I held my breath, hoping we could wait it out long enough for someone who knew what they were doing to show up.

I didn’t have to wait that long. Hot on the heels of Julili’s dramatic entrance, the back door rattled open again, and a pair of serious-looking medics rushed in. The taller of the two, a too-skinny man with a shock of bright-red hair, quickly scanned Julili, looking for injuries, and I caught his attention with a shout.

“Over here.” I pressed harder, but the silky material was next to useless, sliding around under my hand. “I’ve got a gunshot wound.”

His partner was cheese to his chalk, a thickly built swarthy man whose ancestors probably slung grappling hooks over the sides of galleons, but he moved more quickly than I’d imagined someone of his bulk could. I stepped aside as he slid in, crouching down to remove the cape and rattling off incomprehensible medical things to his scarecrow.

“Let me go. I can’t talk to the cops.” Julili tried to shove Bobby away, but it was like a breeze against a sequoia. She was built delicate, fine bones and slender flesh. Her English was accented, slurring the sounds together in a rolling musical tone, but the fire beneath it burned off any hint of submissiveness.

“They can help you, Julili,” I reassured her. “There’s a detective from LA. She’ll make sure you’re safe.”

“Let’s take this outside,” Bobby said softly. The woman I’d found was thrashing about, fighting off the EMTs’ assistance. Things weren’t looking good for her. Even I could see that, but it wasn’t something Julili Quang needed to witness. “Come on.”

The cops swarmed on us a few seconds later.

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