Death of a Chorus Girl (The Delacroix Series Book 1) (28 page)

“Did you kill Annie?” I ask him pointblank.

An evil smirk curls his lips but doesn’t reach his eyes.  “Yeah, I got her killed.”  He bites off each word.

The curtains wave wildly when the air conditioning in the room kicks on.  I stand and look Steve right in the eye.  “If you think I’m going to let you do to Em whatever it is you have planned, then you’re the moron.  You might as well kill me now because that’s the only way you’re going to get her.”

He growls and his finger twitches on the trigger.  “You hear that, bitch!  Dick here is willing to die for your sorry ass.  It’s time to prove one of us wrong.  Stay hidden and show him how little you think of him.  Show him he’s just a tool you’re using to protect your partner.” 
Is he talking about Worthy?
  It doesn’t matter in the end.  I know Em isn’t using me.  “Otherwise come out here and save his life.  Show me he means something to you.”  There is no movement in the room except for the curtains and Steve’s arm as he raises the gun until the barrel points right between my eyes.

I instinctively raise my arms.  I stand there, stunned, staring into the eyes of someone I thought I knew. 
How have I been so blind?
  Steve leans to the side, hollering for her again, and his arm shifts slightly to my left.  His eyes grow wide so I twist to see what it is that has surprised him.  I don’t get a chance to see it, though.  A deathly quiet falls over the room before the sound of gunfire pierces the silence.  One shot quickly follows another.  I don’t blink as they go off.  A burn explodes in my arm.  Blood spatter rains down on the space in front of me.  I fall to my knees, stunned, when I realize she pulled the trigger.

Richard Giordano: Mount Sinai Hospital

I
wake up with a headache and dry mouth.  I groan as my eyes flutter open.  “Where am I?”

“Mount Sinai, Rich.”

“What happened?” I stammer.  It hurts so much to talk.

“I was hoping you could tell me that.”  The voice holds a forced calm.  I turn my head in the direction it came from to find the captain leaning against the hospital room wall.

I try to think but the images and thoughts don’t make any sense.  Then the memory of Steve’s pained and hurt eyes boring into mine over the barrel of his gun makes everything snap into place.  “Oh my God!  Em?!”  The beeping of my heart monitor escalates to match my racing pulse.

The captain sighs.  “She’s fine,” he offers, “but she’s out on bail.”  I blanch at the admission.  If I weren’t swimming in sedatives and painkillers, I would have leaped from the bed.

“Why would she need to be out on bail?”

“She shot a cop, Rich, suspension or not.  Two if she shot you too.”

I flinch and grimace at the thought. 
Did she shoot me?

“So we’re still classifying Steve as a cop,” I say to deflect us both from focusing on Em possibly being the one who put me in here.  “He killed Annie.”

The captain’s eyebrows try to crawl off his forehead.  “He confessed that to you?!  Can Em confirm it?  She wouldn’t talk to us and neither will Steve!”

I squirm a little in the bed.  “I don’t know what Em heard.”  I pause and swallow hard.  “And Steve didn’t exactly say he killed Annie.”

“Well, what did he say,
exactly?
” the captain demands with narrowed eyes.

What did he say? 
Those moments at Julliard are hazy and hard to remember.  I was so focused on saving Em’s life at the time.  “That Annie ruined his life.  He sounded hurt and remorseful.  He said he was going to keep Em from doing the same to me.  He said he got her killed”

“You sure about that wording?” he asks and I nod my confirmation.  “Any lawyer worth his salt will have a field day with that phrasing, Rich.”

How am I supposed to explain the look in Steve’s eyes when he confessed?  How do I explain the feeling in my gut that told me he set the wheels in motion, which resulted in her death?  “What did Em tell you?” I ask, tired of trying to convince the captain of Steve’s involvement in Annie’s murder.  It doesn’t matter to me anyway.  He attempted to murder Em and me.  That should be enough to put him in jail for many years.

“Not much,” he concedes with a sigh.  “She did admit to shooting Steve but says it was in your defense.  Is that true?”

A memory of the spray of blood erupting from Steve’s shoulder jumps to the forefront of my mind.  “I didn’t shoot him and he didn’t shoot himself.  So she had to have and yeah, it would have been in my defense.  Steve’s barrel was trained on me.  Drop the charges.”

The captain shakes his head and rolls his eyes.  “We can’t sweep this under the rug because of you.  We have to complete an investigation.  The rats are processing the evidence collected from the scene now.  Back to the question you’ve been avoiding.  Did Em shoot you too?”

I close my eyes and sigh.  In my heart, I don’t want to believe Em shot me but I can’t say no because I really don’t know.

If you finished Death of a Chorus Girl, I would be honored if you would consider leaving an honest review.  Find it here at
Amazon
and/or
Goodreads
.

And while you wait to find out what happens next in Empathy’s and Richard’s lives, feel free to check out the Charlotte Grace series.  You’ll learn more about Empathy’s cousin, Wesley Breaux there.

This series is definitely to my fans.  The ones who have stuck with me since the beginning.  The ones who shove my books into their friends’ hands.  And you, the one who made it to the end and are ready for Don’t Drink The Nine.  I wouldn’t be doing this without you, so thank you.  Thank you for your interest and thank you for taking the time to read my little book.

But I would be remiss to not thank the following ladies who read my stories before they are perfect and help me make them so.  Christine, Iliana, Lara, and Heather, you gals rock and I love ya!

I am a lover of all things artistic. I grew up surrounded by the performing arts both as a spectator and performer. That love of creation and design is the fuel for my writing now. Being able to create and entertain is a dream come true.

The imagination is a powerful thing, able to take you places you never dreamed. I write realistic fantasy. The idea of the possible having impossible explanations fascinates me. That idea is the driving force behind the Charlotte Grace series.