Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) by Karen Rose

            Tom pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. Slowly he followed Karl into the kitchen, feeling addled and irritated about it.

            Irina looked behind him. “Where is Liza?”

            “She left,” Tom said brusquely.

            “I passed her in the driveway,” Karl said, then leaned in to whisper something in Irina’s ear.

            Irina’s back straightened as she turned to Tom, glaring daggers. “You let her leave? Alone?”

            “Shit,” Tom whispered, his blood running cold. She’d witnessed the sniper on that rooftop. If he saw her . . . “She needs protection.”

            “Which I was providing,” Rodriguez said very slowly. “Until you let her leave. Alone.”

            Tom’s temper boiled. “I didn’t let her do anything. She’s a grown woman, for God’s sake.”

            Who he’d made cry. And he still didn’t know why.

            He clenched his eyes shut, giving in to the need to rub his temples. “Dammit,” he whispered.

            “I can’t go after her,” Rodriguez said. “I’m on Callahan detail until she’s safe at home.”

            “Rafe can take me home,” Mercy offered. “He can take Amos and Abigail, too.”

            Because they all lived in apartments within the same house until Amos and Rafe finished renovating the new house.

            Rodriguez shook his head. “I’d need to get that cleared, Miss Callahan.”

            Irina made a noise. “All this talk, all while Liza is unprotected.” She took out her cell phone and pressed a button. “Damien, this is your mother.” Her lips pursed. “Do not sass me, young man. I am not in the mood.”

            Damien Sokolov was one of Irina’s sons, a uniformed cop with the Russian division in West Sacramento. Tom had thought at first the division dealt with Russian organized crime, but instead it served the large Russian-speaking population of West Sac.

            “I need you to go to Liza’s house,” Irina was saying to her son. “To make sure she gets home safely.” Irina smiled. “You’re a good boy, Damien. I will send the address.”

            Tom’s head fell back to hit the laundry room door. “Tell him not to worry about it. I’ll go.”

            Irina’s smile was smug as she slipped her phone into her pocket without saying goodbye. “Good.”

            Tom scowled. “Did you even call him?”

            Irina just chuckled. “Go and make sure she is okay, Tom. You know you want to.”

            Hell of it was . . . he did.

            Which was not a big deal. At all. It’s what friends do for each other. Like she’d taken care of him when he had the flu in January when they’d first arrived in California and knew no one but each other. Or like he held her every time he heard her cry out in the night through the duplex wall they shared, her nightmares making her shudder and tremble in his arms.

            Or like she took care of “his dog.” Except that before today, Pebbles had been “our dog.”

            Today she’d said “his dog.” He’d just realized that, and his heart hurt. Something had happened. Something new. Something that I did. He needed to figure out what that was.

            He looked to Croft, noting that Abigail no longer sat at the table. Amos was gone as well. “Did you get what you needed from Abigail?” he asked.

            She nodded. “I’m about ninety-five percent sure it’s a Chicos tat. I don’t think there’re many tattoo artists in the area who’d ink that design. They don’t want negative gang attention. Mr. Terrill said he hadn’t seen the tattoo, because he hadn’t seen DJ without his shirt in a very long time. Abigail must have caught DJ at the right moment. Terrill said he knew that DJ has an Eden tattoo because he was there the night they tattooed him.”

            “On DJ’s thirteenth birthday,” Tom said, recalling Mercy’s brother Gideon talking about the night he got his Eden tattoo.