Page 74 of Dark Angel
“I’ll call CJ,” Develin said, his voice low and husky. “Can you move him yourself?”
How are we going to do that?
“I got this.”
In the darkened room, she could feel his power and confidence thundering off him.
“CJ gets paid, but tip him,” Develin said. “Stay until he puts the body into the cremator.”
What the hell?
Develin rattled off the address, hung up. Gabriel slid his phone into his pants pocket, walked right up to her. “Let me walk you to your SUV.”
She’d just killed a man… with her bare hands. A Bratva. With what little sanity she had left, she needed to see this through.
“You need me,” she said. “I didn’t hear this Develin offering to help load this whale into your vehicle. What do you drive?”
“A Ferrari and a pickup truck.”
“I have the SUV. I killed Orca. I must hide the evidence.” She’d never reacted like that, never taken a life so quickly.… or at all. She was struggling to comprehend what had just happened… let alone keep her accent intact.
A flash of gratitude washed over him. “Let get to work.”
After Gabriel closed and locked the front window, they lowered every window treatment in the house. He retrieved two pairs of gloves and a large tarp from the basement. Her fingers were swimming in them, but she wasn’t about to leave any more of her DNA than she already had.
As they worked together, her frantic heart beat slowed down, in part because Gabriel was rock solid. He stayed focused on one small task at a time, and he remained calm and in complete control. Had they been packing for a picnic in the park, she had every confidence he’d act the exact same way.
That helped her not freak the hell out.
They spread out the tarp, rolled the dead man onto it, then wrapped him in it. Yes, Gabriel looked to be six-one and was built like a tank, but he was superhero strong. She wondered if the intensity of the situation had bolstered his strength… or maybe it was the fear of getting caught. She had no idea why the mobster would be waiting to kill him, but there appeared to be a lot more to business magnate Gabriel Santini than finding some thumb drive. With the fat man in the tarp, they got busy securing the body with rope. When finished, they let gravity take it down the stairs to the first floor.
Beyond the sweating, her muscles would hate her tomorrow. For now, she was doing everything she could to simply manage through the current problem—the large one in front of her—before she moved on to consider anything else.
I’m in hella trouble.
He stepped close, removed the glove from his hand, and tilted her face to his. “How do you feel—a Russian woman with close ties to her government—taking out a fellow comrade?”
She peered into his sexy, almond-shaped eyes, refusing to answer that question.
The air turned charged with desire, the energy flowing from him into her, the need to kiss him taking hold.
I’ve totally lost it.
I was safer—way safer—in Russia.
He leaned down, dropped a tender kiss on her lips. “This stays between us.”
“You think?”
His killer smile turned her inside out, but it fell away before she could appreciate how truly handsome he was.
“Sinclair Develin knows, which means his wife does,” she murmured.
“They won’t tell anyone.”
They better not.
He stole one more kiss before he asked for her keys. She handed them over, he backed the SUV up the hilly front yard to the steps leading to his front door.
