Chapter 15
Standing within a foot of an exceptionally well bearded man greatly increases the likelihood that a baby will fall out of your vagina nine months later.
-Proven Fact
Tai
I just need you to love me. Make me forget,” she pleaded.
Those words haunted me during my sleep.
My mind was a tangle of emotions. And they all centered on Mia, in my nightmares, and for once, not Cati, my sister.
Mia was rocking back and forth, holding her dead son in her arms, as she cried.
“Please don’t leave me. I need you. I need you,” she keened.
My heart started to pound, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get to her.
My fingers turned bloody as I clawed at my invisible cage.
Then I froze when my sister, with her long, beautiful black hair and long legs walked out from the clearing beyond Mia.
She walked slowly, keeping her eyes on me as she moved.
My breathing started to come in pants, and I tried harder to get out, knowing that this wouldn’t end well.
Nothing ever ended well when Cati was involved.
Cati didn’t have the best taste in men. She trusted too easily. She cared too much.
She was the one thing in my world that I tried to take care of, even when I tried my hardest not to care.
Cati reached Mia and carefully disentangled Colt’s lifeless body from her arms.
Mia cried out in alarm, trying to get up, but couldn’t.
The same invisible cage held her down, keeping her immobile.
Cati looked once more at me, then she took Colt and walked back towards the direction she came, not looking back once.
Mia’s head turned in my direction.
“This is all your fault. If you’d have just given me another baby, I would’ve never tried to get a bone marrow transplant,” she hissed.
She looked like she hated me, and I shrank back in surprise at the venom in her tone.
“I didn’t mean to…I’m sorry.”
I woke up to my body covered in sweat.
Nothing new.
It wasn’t the first time…and it wouldn’t be the last.
I got out of bed and squinted at the closed bedroom door when I heard the pots and pans going in my kitchen again.
This time, however, I knew it wasn’t Mia.
She had to work this morning, so it could only be one other person.
My brother.
I scrubbed my face and teeth clean, then pulled on a pair of jeans that were at the bottom of the bed before walking out the bedroom door.
I found my brother at the stove, cooking what I assumed were eggs.
My eyes ran over the table as I passed it, and I froze at what I saw on it.
My eyes focused on the paper, and I bent over the table as I stared in disbelief.
My stomach dropped at what I was reading.
Amelia Davis, a nurse at Kilgore Memorial, has been accused of blackmailing a prominent business man in this community. Detectives are still gathering evidence and confirming the facts but enough had been gathered for a judge to issue an arrest warrant. She was arrested last night at her mother’s home on extortion charges and will be arraigned later this afternoon.
My heart pounded.
“Did you read this?” I asked my brother.
My brother turned around, his brow furrowed.
“No, what?” He asked, dropping the spatula he’d been using to flip eggs and walking over to me.
I threw the paper at him, then ran back into the bedroom to grab a shirt and shove my feet into boots.
I was grabbing my wallet and keys by the time Jack had gotten through the entire article.
I glanced at my phone before I shoved it into my pocket but didn’t see any missed calls.
Jack jumped into the passenger side of my truck as I started the old girl up, and we rode in silence to the police station.
My mind was reeling.
Why hadn’t anyone called me?
What the fuck was going on?
“You do realize that there’s something seriously wrong here,” Jack said.
I tossed him an exacerbated look.
“Of course I know something’s fucking wrong here,” I said. “She didn’t do any of this.”
Jack gave me a look.
I started to get angry.
“Mia’s not like my ex-wife,” I said through clenched teeth.
He didn’t say anything.
God, would he ever fucking trust me?
We arrived at the station in less than five minutes, and I parked the truck illegally right in front of the station.
None of the boys from the fire station, nor the police department, would have my truck towed. You don’t piss off your brothers.
Luke saw me the moment I walked in, and I saw the moment he realized I was upset.
His back straightened, and his eyes widened.
Luke was the assistant chief.
He was also a member of the SWAT team, and a very good friend.
Right now, though, I wasn’t liking him very much.
“Where is she?” I barked.
Luke’s brows rose.
“Where’s who?” He asked.
I clenched and unclenched my teeth.
“Mia Davis,” I said.
His head turned.
“The paper said she was here, that you arrested her for extortion,” my brother explained with a sigh.
Dawning awareness appeared on Luke’s place.
“She’s yours?” He asked.
I nodded stiffly.
“This whole fucking thing is weird as hell,” he said, looking at his watch.
I looked at my watch, realizing that it was five past six in the morning.
What the fuck was my brother doing at my place so early, anyway?
“What’s weird about it?” Jack asked.
“You mean other than he arrested an innocent woman?” I asked sarcastically.
Luke ran his hands through his hair.
“She’s not exactly arrested…she’s being questioned,” Luke explained, leading us through a maze of hallways, down into the bowels of the station.
He stopped at a plain brown door and opened it.
Luke went in, but I stopped in the doorway, taking in the scene in front of me with disbelieving eyes.
“What the fuck?” I asked.
Mia wasn’t in cuffs. She wasn’t being treated poorly, either.
In fact, she looked like she was better than okay.
She was laughing with Nico, of all people, looking at his phone as he swiped through picture after picture.
On the table in front of her there was a plethora of food and drinks.
A coffee from Starbucks and what looked to be the remnants of breakfast from McDonald’s.
I cleared my throat and both Nico and Mia looked up.
Mia stiffened.
“I told you not to bother him so early!” She cried, shooting an accusing glare at Nico.
Nico held his hands up.
“It wasn’t me, Chiquita,” he said. “Promise.”
She harrumphed, then burst into a huge smile as she got a look at me.
“Did you get dressed in the dark?” She wondered, looking down at the shirt I was wearing.
It was the same one I was wearing yesterday, and so were the pants.
I shrugged as I entered the room, taking a seat at Mia’s left.
Jack followed me in, but I ignored him.
He wasn’t on my favorite people list right then.
“Tell me what the hell is going on,” I demanded.
Luke took up positon against one wall, and Jack followed suit on the other.
Nico shoved his phone back into his pocket and crossed his arms over his chest.
Mia bit her lip, looking first at Luke then at Nico, before she turned back to me.
“Someone is blackmailing my ex, I mean…Colt’s father…and trying to pin it on me,” she said finally.
“But not you,” Jack said.
Mia’s eyes went wide.
“Of course not me!” She cried. “I haven’t seen him, or spoken to him, in over a year and a half now.”
Jack shrugged unrepentantly.
Mia’s eyes turned to me.
“You never contacted him when your son was sick?” Jack continued.
She shook her head.
That was news to me.
Why hadn’t she done that?
“I had my doctor call him. I couldn’t call him since I had the restraining order out against me,” Mia explained.
Her face flushed as she said that, and Jack’s eyes narrowed.
“Why does he have a restraining order against you?” Jack asked.
Mia sighed.
“I slept with the father of the children I was watching. I had just started at the hospital, and I was still working for the man that hired me to watch his kids, along with another part-time job, while I waited for the hospital to finish the hiring process. I’d told him I was leaving to start full time with the hospital, as a nurse, and he decided to throw me a going away party,” she said to her lap. “I don’t know what happened. I guess I got drunk. I don’t know. The next morning, I woke up and I was in bed with him…and I left.”
She looked beyond embarrassed that she was having to have this conversation.
I was the only one surprised by it all, though.
Jack, Nico and Luke looked like they knew the entire sordid tale.
“And you got pregnant,” Jack confirmed.
“Yes,” she agreed almost unwillingly. “I went back to tell him about a month later, and he said to get rid of it. Said that he would have no part in raising Colt, and that if I knew what was good for me, I’d get rid of it while I still could.”
“You didn’t,” Luke said.
She finally looked up to him.
“I don’t even know how I did that…got drunk,” she said. “I haven’t had a drink in years. I wasn’t a big drinker to begin with. He kept handing me drinks, and I kept taking them. They tasted so good. I didn’t even realize that there was alcohol in them. What kind of stupid person doesn’t realize there’s alcohol in their drink?”
“A lot of people. There’s drinks out there that taste exactly like a candy drop in the form of a beverage. Seriously, you wouldn’t believe how many drinks there are where you can’t tell there’s alcohol in them,” Nico said, trying to help her out.
She shrugged. “I tried to go back to Edwin and tell him about Colt…about his leukemia. But he said if I came on his property again he’d sue me for anything he could think of…and he probably would have, too. He’s got the cash to do it. His wife is a millionaire in her own right. I’m sure the two of them together would make a formidable pair.”
“Fuck,” Jack said harshly.
She winced. “Yeah. It wasn’t my finest moment. I tried to contact him one more time, hoping that he’d reconsider, but he didn’t. After that, I was slapped with a court order to stay at least five hundred feet from him at all times. It was awesome.”
Jack knew all of this already.
Hell, I knew before he even said he’d done it that he’d run a background check on her weeks ago.
In fact, he probably knew more about her than I did.
“Why don’t we just cut the bullshit, Jackopa, and you tell Luke and Nico what you’ve found on your end? There’s a reason you showed up at my house, conveniently placed the paper exactly where I was sure to see it and woke me up so early. You know something, so enough already and just spill it,” I called him on his shit.
He sighed and dropped his act.
“I just wanted to get all of my ducks in a row,” he said.
“And what’d you find?” Luke rumbled, rubbing his face.
He must’ve been up all night.
I would’ve normally felt bad for him, but he wanted this job, and it came with a lot of responsibilities.
Like keeping my girl here overnight.
“How long have you been here?” I asked shortly.
Mia looked at her watch.
It was then I saw she was already dressed and ready for work.
“About a half hour,” she said.
My brows furrowed.
“Then how in the hell is it already in the paper?” I asked. “How do they even know about this?”
“I can help with that,” Jack said, pulling out a piece of paper from his pocket. “You asked me to look into those articles that’ve been showing up on the firefighters and the calls y’all have run before any news is released to the public.”
Luke shot me a look.
I’d asked him to look into it, too.
But he’d been slower about it than Jack had.
I was just covering my bases, though.
“Same chick, I mean reporter, has written all the articles,” he said. “Ran a background check on her and her financials. Real interesting stuff. It seems that she’s been getting a weekly deposit. They conveniently started two days before the first article she published about the trailer park fire. And she’s been getting one a week since then, all from the same person. This person.”
He showed me the information he’d been able to dig up, and I groaned.
Wanda McCarty, the partial owner of Jenner’s Heating and Air.
“Mother. Fucker.”
“What?” Everyone asked at once.
Jack glared at me.
“Tai had the fire marshal give out a few tickets on an A/C business, and in the meantime, it seems that he managed to well and truly piss off the woman that runs the show there in the process,” Jack said reproachfully.
I winced.
Yep that’d been me. I had done that.
Me and my overreacting self.
But, really, that miserable bitch had it coming.
“I’m aware that she doesn’t like me, for some reason, and she’s refused to schedule an appointment for some A/C repairs in my old place. So what? What does all the rest of this have to do with me?” Mia asked glaring at me through narrowed eyes clearly telling me this conversation was far from over.
I grinned unrepentantly.
“She was also sending emails to one Edwin McCain from a Gmail account listed as . McCain is the man you stated was Colt’s father, correct?” Jack questioned.
Mia closed her eyes and sighed.
“So were they both in on it, or was Wanda doing it all on her own?” I asked.
“Edwin wasn’t aware of Wanda. All he knew was that the woman he had a restraining order on was now threatening him,” he said. “He also told his wife about what happened, and she said he had to file a police report about it.”
I closed my eyes as I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“This is one big cluster fuck,” I said.
Jack snorted.
“You could say that again,” he said.
My eyes popped open to glare at my brother.
“Back off,” I said. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
He bared his teeth at me.
“How many times do I have to tell you to keep your nose out of other people’s business?” He snapped.
“Okay, here we go,” I said, throwing up my hands.
My brother still blamed me for everything, like I was still that fucked up mess of a teenage boy, and he clearly would never stop.
“What, exactly, would you have done had Winter been in this same situation?” I asked curiously.
Jack scowled. “Winter wouldn’t have been in this situation, because I would have taken care of it. It’s a moot point.”
My eyes narrowed.
“Boys,” Mia said softly. “This isn’t the time nor the place…”
I sat back in my chair and glared daggers at my brother.
Jack did much the same, and the other two men in the room who didn’t have the last name Stoker (who, I might add, were lucky bastards to not be related to the mother fucker who loves to make my life a living hell) both sighed.
“So…what now?” Mia asked softly. “Am I allowed to go to work?”
Luke nodded.
“Yes. With this new evidence that was conveniently brought to our attention, we now have other avenues to investigate. We’ll let Mr. McCain know about this development in the case and how we plan to proceed,” Luke said, moving to the door.
“And what about the other bitch?” I asked.
Luke’s eyebrows rose at my use of colorful language.
I was normally pretty careful about using profanity in a professional setting.
There was just something about this whole situation that was really bothering me.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I had a really bad feeling about it. And it was making it hard to control my emotions.
I really, really wanted to punch my brother in the face.
Granted, I wanted to do that a lot. But usually I was able to hide it better than I was able to do at this moment in time.
Mia stood up, too, and started for the door.
She grabbed my hand on the way, though, dragging me along with her.
I flipped my brother off as we went, and he had the nerve to laugh.
Fucker.
Nico followed me out, and my brother followed behind him.
I kept Mia’s hand in mine, tugging her back slightly to walk next to me.
“Don’t wait for me to wake up next time, okay?” I asked.
She smiled, her pretty white teeth gleaming.
“Yeah, I’ll call you next time.”
“Promise?” I said.
She nodded.
“Promise.”