“And to think I wasn’t sure you cared.”

Posted November 3, 2020 by Dana

“You suicidal son of a bitch!” Wy said, eyes blazing. “That is the last time you go up in a plane with me, I don’t care how much the frigging state is paying! You could have been hurt! You could have been killed!” She wound up and hit him again, this time her clenched fist hitting him flush on the nose, and he was so befuddled he went backwards ass over teakettle to fall heavily on the opposite side of the four-wheeler.

“Hey,” the man cuffed to the back of the four-wheeler said, “fight!” He peered around himself with short-sighted eyes.

Prince rose to her feet, shaky but determined. “All right, that’s enough.” She managed to grab hold of one of Wy’s arms.

Wy, unheeding, continued to shout, the volume steadily increasing. “You’ve got a death wish, fine, throw yourself off the deck of that derelict you’re sleeping on! Jump in front of a truck! Get yourself shot by some drunk in a bar, I don’t care!”

Liam raised himself to his knees. He gulped in a welcome breath of air and felt his belly. It was sore but it was still there. He tried hard to keep the grin from spreading across his face, and failed. “And to think I wasn’t sure you cared.”

It only fanned the flames. “You miserable prick!” She actually came around the four-wheeler and pulled back her foot to kick him, and was thwarted only when Prince caught both her arms this time.

“All right,” Prince said, probably as sternly as she could with her head beating like a tomtom. “That’s enough.”

Wy wrestled free and would have clocked her, too, if Liam hadn’t managed to get up and catch her fist in one hand. She tried to kick him in the shins then, which he thwarted by catching her foot and holding it in the air. He shook his head at Prince when she made as if to grab Wy from behind. “Stop it, Wy,” he said, his firm tone belied by the grin, which had managed to spread all over his face and whose beam could probably be seen from orbit. “You hit her and you’re assaulting a police officer.” The grin widened impossibly further. “Hit me again, and it’s a lover’s quarrel.”

Excerpt from the second Liam Campbell novel, So Sure of Death. The fifth, Spoils of the Dead, publishes on February 6, 2021. Order your signed hardcover here.