Asking for Trouble - Leslie Kelly [60]
The same thing the cops had asked him. And he told her the same thing he’d told them. “I didn’t fight back. I wasn’t about to get shot in the face over a hundred bucks. I handed him my wallet and my watch. When he asked what else I had, I told him where to find the laptop.” Smiling slightly, he admitted, “To tell you the truth, for a second there, I was more worried about whether I’d backed up the writing I’d done that day onto my memory stick than I was about losing a few possessions.”
She managed a smile. A shaky one.
“I figured that would be the end of it. They’d get out and be long gone, figuring—probably correctly—that a tourist wasn’t going to stick around town long enough to see them brought to justice.”
“But they didn’t leave?”
He shook his head. “No. That was when I realized I might be in a more dangerous situation than I’d thought. The guy ordered me to go to the edge of the balcony and turn around, facing away from him. I refused. Because I saw a look in his eye that I didn’t like and realized his accomplice—the woman—had edged around beside me, instead of heading for the door.”
Knowing he was reaching the most difficult part, he sipped his drink before continuing. “He lunged, and I knew at that second, he intended for me to go over the side. Make it look like a suicide or something. I guess that’s why he didn’t shoot at first.”
A sniff and a sheen of moisture in Lottie’s eyes told him how she was reacting. He put his hand on her thigh, squeezing lightly, and she covered it with her own, gripping him tight.
“Realizing this wasn’t just some robbery I was going to walk away from with a frightening memory to share with friends, I fought back. He wanted me over that railing and I wasn’t going. I was holding my own until the woman got involved. I didn’t even see the knife in her hand—didn’t realize she’d slashed at me until I tasted the blood.”
“That bitch,” Lottie said, visible tears now spilling out of her eyes. “I can’t even imagine.”
“I think that’s what made it real—made me know for sure I was fighting for my life. So I managed to trip him. As he went down, he hit his head on the edge of a wrought-iron table that I’d sat at every day to have my breakfast.”
“Was he…”
“Knocked out.”
“But she wasn’t.”
“No.” A muscle in his jaw clenched, causing the scar on the side of his face to throb. Just as it did every time he thought of the woman who’d put it there. “She was enraged, screaming at me for hurting him. I thought at the time he was her boyfriend but when the police checked their ID and found they had the same last name—Harrington—they figured they were married. We later found out they were brother and sister. Anyway, she was hysterical, thinking I’d killed him.”
“Oh, there’s moral authority, blaming a man for fighting for his own life.”
Simon continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “He’d dropped his gun when he fell. She picked it up.”
“She was the one who shot you,” Lottie whispered.
He nodded, rubbing at the scar on his chest, remembering the pain when the bullet had pierced his body. “Not in a really critical spot—she missed my heart by a couple of inches. So I wasn’t entirely out of commission. I lunged at her and we fought over the gun.” His voice quivering the slightest bit at the memory of how it had felt, in that moment, he proceeded to the ugly end.
“She was strong—I was getting dizzy from losing so much blood—and I knew she was about to shoot me again. So I tackled her, trying to knock the gun out of her hand.”
Staring into Lottie’s gentle brown eyes, he finally admitted, “And she went over the railing.”
SIMON HADN’T KNOWN exactly what to expect from Lottie after she’d heard the whole ugly story. In his mind, the images were so horrible, so bloody and vicious, he couldn’t help wondering if she’d retreat from him. What woman would feel okay finding out her lover had been responsible for the brutal death of another woman?
He should have known better. After a long moment in which Lottie absorbed his words, she slowly sipped the rest