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I glared at Dante, who did not seem worried about the gun being directed at him. Granted, it took a lot more than that to scare either of us.

“You cannot just suggest we kill a police officer,” I snapped.

Dante wasn’t even looking at Colton; his hazel gaze was on me. “What, like you’ve never done it before?”

I squeezed the bridge of my nose between my fingers. He was having far too much fun with this. Of course he was. He didn’t have skin in the game, beyond whether Colton had a heavy trigger finger.

Maybe, just maybe, he was a little jealous. Dante didn’t strike me as the possessive type, but he was a man. It was in their DNA to kill each other for the right to fuck, to own something.

He couldn’t know that Colton and I had kissed. Unless he had been camping out in the woods and watching me in the middle of the night. Which might’ve explained why he showed up all the time.

“As a matter of fact, I’ve never murdered a cop before,” I hissed at him.

“Never?” he probed, as if he knew something he shouldn’t.

Of course, he knew something he shouldn’t. Because it was becoming more and more clear that Dante had more than a passing interest in me. Knew too much about me. For what reason, I couldn’t think about right then.

I cracked my neck. He must’ve been talking about that one fucker who had pulled me over for a routine stop, made up a bullshit arrest, then tried to rape me when he had me in cuffs. That was my first time killing a monster of the human variety.

“That doesn’t count,” I spoke through gritted teeth, wondering how in the fuck he knew that. I’d only told Donny. And she did not have loose lips. Especially not with Dante.

“Stop!” Colton yelled, pulling both of our attention back to him. His eyes were pinned on me. “What the fuck is going on, Hadley? Tell me right now, before I shoot first and ask questions later.”

“You’re not going to do that, Colton.” I blew out a leaden breath. “You’re too much of a good man for that. So to remain a good man, with your belief system intact, I urge you to turn around and forget you saw us.”

I was offering him the option that he’d never take, not in a million years. Colton was a good guy, not a look-the-other-way guy.

But hell, would it make life easier for me if he were.

“Not happenin’.” He spoke through barely moving, thin lips. “Put your weapon down, Hadley. Slowly.”

Oh, no. He was entering cop mode. This was not going to end well.

I adjusted my grip on my gun. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Colton.” But what was I going to do with my gun, shoot him?

No.

Even to save my own skin, I wouldn’t kill Colton.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Dante sighed, advancing quickly.

Colton, who had his gun raised, hesitated. Because he was an honorable man. Even when his instincts were telling him to shoot, he didn’t. And it gave Dante the opening to disarm and coldcock him with his own weapon.

I didn’t think it was because Colton wasn’t capable, strong, competent in a fight. It was because he’d just witnessed something that defied the laws of nature, defied whatever image of me he had in his mind.

He was still nursing hope, however small, that the girl he once knew, the girl he once loved, existed inside of me somewhere.

This scene killed that hope once and for all.

But seeing Colton crumple to the ground, hitting it hard, sprawled out in the dirt, had my stomach turning in disgust. At myself. For coming back there, stirring up old hornets' nests for a vendetta I couldn’t let die.

“Really?” I advanced on Dante, my gun still drawn, ready to stop Dante from killing him.

Even if it meant I had to kill Dante.

Colton was currently a thorn in my side, but seeing him lying unconscious on the ground, I couldn’t escape the reality that I still cared about him.

Dante … I cared about him too. And I wasn’t sure if I was able to kill him. Weak… The two men in front of me made me weak, clouding my normally clear, cold mind.