in front of the apartment, changing every few hours in shifts, but he isn’t one of the men who arrives to sit and watch over us.
I buy six pregnancy tests and take three, knowing it’s too early but unable to stop myself.
They’re all negative. That does nothing for my peace of mind.
I go to the bank, take out the safety deposit box, and stare at the diamond necklace. I run my fingers over the coldly glittering stones, wondering if they used to belong to someone my maybe-baby daddy killed.
I develop a nasty case of insomnia.
Then, the following Tuesday, something crosses my desk that stops me cold.
It’s an article in the digital edition of the newspaper. A small article, three pages deep, about an elderly man living in obscurity in a small town in Arizona who went to the grocery store one morning and wound up in jail a few days later, charged with multiple crimes committed many years ago.
According to the prosecutor, the man was a former mafia member who’d vanished without a trace thirty years prior. His family and associates thought him dead, the victim of a contract killing. But he’d been living out West all these years under an assumed name, quietly going about his business.
It wasn’t so much the man himself that got my attention, but the way he was caught.
An informant identified him.
Another former mafia member, now on the police payroll and working undercover, happened to be in that particular grocery store on that particular morning, buying cigarettes. He was on a driving trip from New York to California to visit his only grandchild, his crippling fear of flying keeping him off a plane.
Former mafioso number two saw former mafioso number one at the checkout, and the rest, as they say, was history.
I stare at the article with my heart racing like mad in my chest, reading it over and over. One word keeps jumping out at me.
Informant.
I grab a yellow legal pad from the top drawer of my desk and hastily scribble a list.
Secrets
Mafia
Different name
Access to FBI database
Access to air force satellite
Scary good background checks
No personal artifacts in residence
Geo-location device in business cards
Arrested on multiple felony charges but quickly let go
“He’s doing important work.”
“There are too many lives at stake to take that risk.”
I add Shakespeare buff and annoyingly arrogant, but cross them out because they don’t matter.
Then I sit back in my chair, stunned.
It blows over me like nuclear fallout. An atomic mushroom cloud, raining toxic ash.
Killian Black is working with the federal government.
He made a deal with the FBI to keep himself out of prison. He’s an informant on the mafia.
My maybe-baby daddy is a snitch.
“Holy shit,” I say aloud, causing a girl walking past my cubicle to look at me strangely.
I don’t care. I’m in the middle of something too big to give a damn what anyone thinks about me right now.
And I have to admit, my idea makes total sense.
He was arrested on multiple felony charges but let go the same day. He says cryptic things about how he’s helping people, and that there are too many lives at stake to trust me first. He has access to all kinds of technology that regular people don’t—I mean, who puts a biometric fingerprint scanner on their friggin’ computer?
Someone who’s working for the government, that’s who.
All the puzzle pieces finally come together, so I see the whole picture at last.
I’m so stunned, I’m numb. I can’t feel a thing. I don’t know if I’m happy, sad, or crushingly disappointed. I’ve got an abandoned Western town of tumble weeds and rutted mud roads inside me, with empty buildings and no signs of life except for the vultures picking over bleached bones.
My desk phone rings. I answer with something that could be, “Huh?” but I’m not sure because my brain isn’t working.
“Hullo, lass.”
His voice is low, but it’s enough to make every cell in my body wake up from their comas.
I hunch over my desk, clutching the phone to my ear, my heart pounding like mad. “You.”
There’s a pause, then Killian says, “Aye. Me. Who were you expecting?”
Though he can’t see me, I wave my hand frantically in the air to dismiss the small talk. Speaking in a combination of a whisper and a hiss, I say, “I figured it out!”
His voice sharpens. “Figured what out?”
I open my mouth to answer, but realize with a cold snap of fear that it might not be in my best interests to let him know what I know.