Officially Over It - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,9

if we switched. “But I’ll be sure to keep my distance.”

Bitch.

I hated Eerie.

In fact, hated wasn’t even a strong enough word for what I felt for the woman.

“Just make sure that you keep it that way,” she instructed. “I have to go. I’ll be back, though. Make sure you’re not anywhere near my kid when I get back.”

It would only be a few days later that I’d realize exactly why she wanted me as far away from her kid as possible.

And Nathan wasn’t going to like the reason.

Chapter 4

It’s okay. I’m on 500 mg of Fuckitall.

-Text from Reggie to Nathan

Nathan

“What?” I asked, not sure that I heard him correctly.

“I said,” Sammy repeated, “that Reggie’s apartment was broken into last night. Hastings called to tell me to look into it. She said that Reggie was acting off.”

I felt a surge of anger pour through me upon hearing that news.

“I didn’t know,” I said, my hands clenching into fists at the mention of Regina Morton. “Are you sure?”

“Hastings said that it happened. She met with Sierra and Reggie for lunch. Just thought you might want to know.” Sammy picked up his gun and re-holstered it. “I gotta go to work. See you tomorrow.”

I was just getting off of my shift and heading home, but he had just started his shift.

A lot of us on the SWAT team worked a lot of random shifts, and unfortunately, when the time came that we had to respond to a SWAT call, we were fucking tired.

“Oh, hey,” Sammy called, stopping me from hanging my uniform shirt up. “I forgot to ask. Do you want to come float the river with us on Saturday? A few of us are going to go.”

I thought that sounded awful, but I liked that they were including me.

I wouldn’t be going, though.

“Actually,” I said, seconds away from turning him down.

“Reggie’s going to come.”

I narrowed my eyes at my friend.

It was as if he knew what mentioning Reggie’s name did to me.

Hell, maybe he knew something I didn’t.

All I knew was that the woman threw me off course. That I could never manage to hit it into fair territory where she was concerned.

“I’ll have to check my schedule,” I lied.

“You don’t have a schedule,” Sammy said. “You’ve been at home for the last six Saturdays.”

That was true, but why did he know that?

“Why do you know that?” I voiced my inner dialogue.

Inner me had a point.

Sammy grinned. “Hastings has the whole place wired. She can see all. Like Santa. She knows when you’ve been sleeping. Knows when you’re awake.”

“Knows if you’ve been bad or good?” I finished for him.

Sammy, the jovial bastard, wasn’t singing yet, but it was a close thing.

“So be good for goodness sake.”

Malachi said in a deep, dark timbre as he came around the corner, “Are we already singing Christmas songs?”

I crossed my arms over my chest and said, “No. He’s trying to convince me to go float down the river. And then he informed me that he knows my whereabouts at all times.”

“Hastings has a sweet ass setup at her place,” Malachi said as he crossed to his own locker.

Sammy went stock still.

“How do you know anything about my girl’s place?” Sammy asked, arms crossing over his chest.

Malachi turned to survey Sammy.

“You remember when you died not too long ago?” Malachi asked softly. “Your girl cried for hours. I was worried about her. So I went over there to check on her. When she didn’t answer the door for over three hours, I finally decided to pick the lock and go inside. I found her at her computer crying silently in her sleep. I chose to leave her alone, but I got a good look at her setup.”

Sammy deflated.

“Oh.”

A couple of weeks ago there’d been a massive pileup on the interstate that we’d thought had taken the lives of nineteen people. Three of which had belonged to Hastings in some way.

At the time, we were led to believe that Sammy, along with Hastings’ father and sister, were in the crash.

Hours later, her mom had suffered a fatal heart attack upon hearing the news of her husband.

Only, an ex-police officer by the name of Patman had taken Sammy by surprise when he’d exited his vehicle and stood on the sidelines surveying the accident scene. Patman had hurt Sammy, knocked him out cold, and had shoved him into his truck during the chaos.

It’d taken Sammy days to escape.

Which led to how and why Malachi had thought he needed to go