Vicki Pettersson - The Given

He needed to get her out of there. She was destined to remain alive for now, but anything could change that, a moment when he made the wrong step . . . or one in which he didn’t act at all. He just needed to get her out of there, he thought, lifting her deadweight into his arms. Then they could figure out what to do next.

As long as it included him not leaving her side until this thing was over.

Kit wasn’t entirely unaware of her surroundings. Although her senses were blunted, numbness coating everything from her fingertips to her tongue to the eyes shaking in her head, she still felt the cold air envelop her as Grif carried her outside. It attacked her skin in sharp contrast to the reassuring warmth of his arms around hers, and his chest felt almost hot against her cheek. She was scared by Barbara’s death, and shocked by the changes writhing like snakes inside her own body, but somehow she also felt safe.

Kit had grown up afraid. When your mother falls fatally ill when you are twelve, and your father is murdered four years later, it rather deepens the suspicion that the world is not a safe place. She’d fought the effects of that by deliberately choosing things that, while not safe, were inherently good.

Her job was good. She fought to uncover the wrongs and ills in the world, and make it a better place through fantastic reportage. She might not be able to change anything on a large scale—nothing globally or cosmically, like Grif—but she could do her part, one story and one person at a time.

She also chose her attitude. The swing skirts and crinoline and Betty bangs were more than just show. When you walk around the world attempting to make it a brighter and better place, sometimes a bit of that shine actually takes hold. So now, she chose to focus on the feeling of safety as if it was a talisman, and after a few more seconds she was able to focus her eyes, her mind, and her other senses outward as well.

“Put me down,” she rasped when they were tucked around the back of a nearby steakhouse. Grif obliged wordlessly . . . and Kit doubled over. Her legs buckled and her knees scraped the pavement, but Grif caught her under her arms once more, and again, his contrasting warmth made all the difference in the world. His arms were strong and firm around her shoulders, and the Sen-Sen that always scented his breath wafted over her as he spoke soothing words in her ear.

I’m in shock, Kit realized, as one last shudder numbed her core and reverberated out through her limbs. From the moment the first gunshot had roared through the suite, she’d been wondering when the shakes would start. Yet the subsequent jolts—Barbara’s body splayed on the floor, the surefire instinct that the killer was coming for Kit next, and then Grif’s almost immediate arrival—had delayed the onset, at least for a bit.

She’d have chided herself for falling apart in front of Grif—of course, he was as coolly assessing as ever—but then why would he mind after walking in on such a grisly murder? He could see death coming and going. He practically held the door open for it every time.

Kit realized her teeth were chattering, and she clenched her jaw shut and tried to right herself again. Grif released her only after he saw that she was stable, and she caught one last whiff of his pomade as he steadied her on her feet. Then it, and the security of his arms, was gone.

“What?” she said, realizing he’d been speaking. She rubbed her nose, hating the way gunpowder clung to the soft lining inside.

“We’ll get somewhere safe and work it out . . .” Grif was saying, taking on most of her weight as he pulled her forward. Here he was, after so many months of her wishing it to be so. Absent, and then there. A memory and then her reality, once again. That alone was enough to make her dizzy. It also made her want to laugh and cry at the same time . . . though that could have just been the shock.

“Not going anywhere . . .” he was saying, “. . . stick close to your side . . .”

But hadn’t he said that before?

Don’t be a fool, Kit. I don’t see anyone else helping you up off the ground.

And there was certainly no one else she trusted with her life more than Griffin Shaw. Maybe not her heart, not that ever again, but her life? Yes.

“How did you get here?” she asked.

“How did you?”

“I told you. Barbara invited me over.”

“You knew her?”

Blowing out a trembling breath, Kit gave Grif a nod, both in answer and to let him know her legs would hold. Yeah, she thought, as they walked more swiftly, this grumpy retro angel had broken her heart. He’d been so obsessed with the past that he couldn’t see through it to a future with Kit, but he was never cruel. Besides, if Grif thought she was in trouble, then she believed him.

She halted again suddenly, and saw him brace, ready to catch her if she fell. “I am in way over my head,” she said suddenly.

Grif stared at her for so long she wasn’t sure he was going to answer. Then he gave his own shaky laugh. “Have you ever uttered those words before in your life?”

And Kit laughed. Or at least she did in her mind. On the outside, where the wind was blasting a chill up her skirt and a woman lay headless in a high-rise suite behind them, she just stood and stared. But the levity helped in a moment when she realized that danger was once again a certainty in her life. It also helped her ignore the way her mind had unclenched for the first time in months. She was suddenly no longer burdened with the task of trying not to think about Griffin Shaw.

Unfortunately, the very first thought that whipped through her head when she saw his sturdy, shit-hot wingtips pointed directly at her, like divining rods, under that guest-room bed was another shock: God. I don’t love him even an ounce less than the last time I saw him.

It was also partly why she still shook. For Kit, it was perhaps the most dangerous thing of all.

The hired help came in sweating and shaky, smelling of gunpowder and blood, and huffing even though he’d driven all the way across town and there was no way he should be out of breath. Working beneath the trained glare of a green banker’s lamp, the man behind the desk gripped the pencil so tightly that the lead splintered between his strong fingers, and he had to force himself to relax. It’s okay, he told himself, as he removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He’d been working for hours, a way to keep his mind off the night’s planned events. The numbers in the ledgers were beginning to squiggle before his eyes anyway.

Swiveling in the office chair, he folded his hands over his belly and stared at the man who was supposed to be a cold-blooded killer.

“Justin,” he said by way of greeting. He would ask nothing, though he expected those who worked for him to tell all.

Justin fidgeted on his feet, which was rare. “Shit.”

And that said it all.

The man sighed and waited.

“My man . . . he screwed up.”

The man closed his eyes and waited some more. “First of all, we weren’t seen on the way in. You were right. The party was a great distraction. We used the residents’ parking garage to go up and back.”

“But.” Not a question. When someone overexplained, there was always a “but.”

“And I offed the old bird, it was as easy as you said. I think she knew what I was going to do, but she laid down on the floor and practically pulled the trigger for me.”

Yes. Fifty years of guilt would do that to you.

“But,” he said again.

“But then I left Larry to clean up while I readied the car, and the other woman, the Craig girl, got away.” Thus the sweating, the fidgeting, the lost breath when every damned thing should be under control.