and walk out with vengeance flowing through their veins. They’ve had time to play it over and over again in their sick minds just how they were going to make these women pay. So when they get out, they know exactly what they want, and they aren’t about to risk the bitch telling on them again.
“Hospital is looking at hiring him back, but they want the investigation over first,” Austin continued with a heavy sigh. “I don’t know if it helps, but she did all this crap last minute… making sure they knew where to find you. That they knew the kid was yours. It was almost like—”
“She knew he was coming.”
I could have stopped this.
Jesus.
I could have stepped in and done something, and that’s what made it that much more painful.
“So, you’re sure it was him?” I growled, rolling my shoulders back.
“I’d put fucking money on it. But we questioned him yesterday, and there’s nothing we can do,” Austin ground out between clenched teeth. “I’ve got a dead girl. Orphaned baby. Missing sister. And a fucking dirty doctor with an alibi.”
“Missing sister?”
Austin scrunched up his nose. “Yeah. Emma had her sister move in with her a little over a year ago. She’s sixteen. We can’t find her.”
“So, you don’t know if she ran, or if he—”
“Exactly,” Austin cut in, his partner looking at him sideways. “I can’t talk much about it. The case is still open.”
“Gotcha,” I answered, rolling my shoulders.
“Shotgun.” I turned, seeing Meyah standing at the door, a little body in her arms, and a bottle in her hand. “I’m going to give him a bottle and put him in your bed,” Meyah announced, the tiny bundle in her arms squirming and wriggling, making these little suckling noises that were doing something to my heart.
Making it race.
“Okay, I’ll uh…”
“Take your time,” she added, offering me a supportive smile before turning away and making her way up the stairs.
Shuffling on my feet, I looked back, but Austin simply nodded before I could say anything, dipping his head and saying the words that I never woke up this morning thinking I could even possibly hear. “I’ll be in touch. Congrats, Dad.”
Fuck.
AVERY
My fingertips felt like they were burning against the cup of coffee in my hands. I’d been sitting here for a good twenty minutes, and it still had yet to cool down. “I wouldn’t give up your day job,” I teased Myth, said maker of the coffee.
“Laken insists on boiling the water and making it herself like this rather than with the machine, so that’s how I make it now,” he answered with a shrug like he couldn’t see the issue. Which was incredibly cute, or would be, if the cup of coffee in my hands wasn’t ninety-nine percent boiling water and able to burn my face off in half a second if I even put it anywhere near my mouth.
One of the swinging doors swung open, Meyah slipping in through it and offering Myth a tight smile. One that said, ‘You’re relieved of your duties. It’s my turn to watch the crazy bitch.’
“Is Shotgun okay?” I couldn’t help myself. My gut was tightening and twisting, tied up in damn knots, wondering whether I’d said too much this time.
Whether I’d pushed him too far.
One look at that baby boy, and I saw me.
The one person who loved him, who he could rely on, stolen away by this monster. Then, just being left floating with the tide, not knowing if someone was ever going to fish you out and keep you from drowning in the waves.
Some days it still felt like I was floating, but Shotgun had been my anchor. The club too—the place where I finally felt like I wasn’t going to be washed away when the next storm came thundering in. Though the clouds were beginning to grow a little darker around us, and I figured we were about to test just how much stress that anchor could hold.
Meyah slipped into a chair opposite me, leaning forward on her elbows, but before she could even answer the first question, another one slipped out, one that had been itching at the back of my mind since we were at the hospital with Holly. “Who was she? Emma, I mean.”
If Meyah was surprised by the question, she didn’t let it show. “She was a friend me and Dakota knew from school. She was doing nursing, and we called her on the odd occasion when someone got hurt. If you haven’t