Reaper's Fire

With that, I rolled off her, biting back any comment as she leaned over and grabbed her crumpled shirt for cover. Too little, too late—I’d already seen everything she had to offer.

She disappeared into an attached bathroom that looked like a newer addition to the house. I suspected her dad had put it in for her. Tinker had always been his angel, something I’d learned from talking to the long-term tenants. They all thought she was the shit, and I tended to agree.

None of them had mentioned a baby, though.

Frowning at the thought, I studied her room. It wasn’t one of those shrines to the teenage years, thank fuck. She had a queen-size bed—king would be better, but we could deal with that later—and a nice-enough little bedroom set. The walls were covered in paper and while it was girly, it wasn’t so bad that it gave me hives. Reminded me of the shop more than anything, and I wondered how she’d decorated her place in Seattle.

Fuck me. Seattle. Her ex lived there. The prosecutor. Cocksucker. Had to hate him on two fronts—not only had he hurt Tinker, hypocritical fucker was dirty as hell. Sooner or later we’d figure out all his secrets. Then I’d hold them over his head, make him give Tinker whatever she needed.

Pity.

I’d rather beat the shit out of him, but blackmail was probably cleaner in the long run. I heard the toilet flush, followed by the sink. A minute later Tinker stepped out wearing that long, silky robe of hers. The fabric was so thin that it covered a hell of a lot less than she probably realized, something I wouldn’t be pointing out to her anytime soon.

“So,” she said, staring at me as I lounged across her bed, arms tucked behind my head. “I thought about it and I don’t think we need to talk. My business is my own.”

“Your business is mine,” I correctly gently.

“How do you figure?”

“I’m pushy like that,” I said, sitting up to pat the spot next to me on the bed. “Come have a seat and tell me what happened. I don’t know the details, but I know damned well where stretch marks come from. From the way you reacted to my lie—and yeah, I’m an asshole, et cetera, we can talk about that later—the story doesn’t end happy. Tell me what happened. I need to know.”

She came toward the bed, sitting down at the foot of it, well out of my reach. Then she stared at me, sighing.

“I’ll tell you once,” she said. “Then we’re never talking about it again. Agreed?”

“No,” I said, and she frowned.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I promised that I’d never lie to you again,” I said bluntly. “Seeing as I don’t know what you’re about to say, I don’t see how I can agree to never talk about it again. Maybe we’ll need to talk about it.”

She sighed, then stared at the wall for a minute.

“We could always fuck if you’re not ready to talk,” I suggested. Tinker flipped me off, then crossed her arms, taking a deep, shuddering breath to steel herself.

“Okay, here goes,” she said. “I always wanted a baby. Lots of babies. Brandon wasn’t so excited by the thought, but I figured he’d change his mind. He was always about looking good in public, and his mom sure as hell wanted grandchildren. But it never seemed like the right time to start a family. It didn’t help that he worked crazy long hours, but I was starting my own business and . . . Well, for a long time I just figured we still had plenty of time. Then I hit thirty and we had a come-to-Jesus talk that ended with me throwing out my birth control. But I didn’t get pregnant.”

She stopped talking, pulling the robe more tightly around her shoulders, as if it could protect her from whatever came next.

“I’d almost given up when it finally happened,” she said, eyes dimming. “I’d been tracking my fertility for years, had gotten all kinds of tests. Brandon would never get tested, though, and my doctor said there could be a thousand reasons . . . Then I got pregnant. It felt like a miracle, and I was so excited. I’d almost given up by then, you know? Anyway, I expected Brandon to be happy, but he really didn’t seem to care. He was working really hard on a bunch of cases, and one of them was kind of high profile. He was going after a motorcycle club, actually.”

She shot me another look. “Not yours, I don’t think.”

“No, wasn’t the Reapers,” I told her, thinking back to what I’d heard. “Smaller club. Seattle. They’re under us, but their own group. Kind of like the Nighthawks.”

“So getting that case was a big deal,” she said. “Huge deal. He was excited to be working on something so big, and he was busy. I was excited for the baby, and while he wasn’t really with me, I didn’t care. Looking back, I realize we’d been living separate lives for a long time anyway. We shared a house and had sex sometimes, but not that often. Other than that, I think I spent more time talking to his paralegal than to my own husband.”

“Sounds like a real prince.”

She snorted. “You have no idea. It’s worth mentioning that he cheated on me at least once, with another attorney who worked in his office. May have happened more than that, now that I look back. I’d stopped caring at that point.”

“Why the hell didn’t you leave him?” I asked, confused. “Life’s short—why waste it on someone like that?”

She shrugged. “Habit? I don’t know. In retrospect, it’s crazy, but when you’re in the moment . . . I think a part of me hoped that having a baby together would fix things. I don’t know. None of it matters, because when I was eight months along I started having trouble. Spotting. Cramps. A lot of that happens late in pregnancy anyway, but one morning the bleeding started and it wouldn’t stop. I lost the baby.”

I’d half expected something like this. I mean, either she’d lost the kid or had given it up for adoption. I’d known that from the minute I saw the stretch marks. Still, hearing the words made it real.

“I’m really sorry, Tinker.”

She blinked rapidly, and I watched as a tear ran down her face. She ignored it, staring straight ahead.

“She was a little girl. I hadn’t found out ahead of time. I wanted it to be a surprise. I named her Tricia, after my mom. Brandon was in court that day and he didn’t ask for a continuance or anything. He could’ve, you know. There’s no judge on earth who wouldn’t have let him go to the hospital, but Brandon didn’t care enough about our daughter to be there.”