Proof of Life (The Potentate of Atlanta #4) - Hailey Edwards Page 0,83
like I always do when time permits.” Her tears hit her pants with wet plops. “I was halfway back to the Faraday when I noticed I had her ID badge in my pocket, so I circled back to the hospital and hit the help desk. I had them page her, but she didn’t show. An older man, another surgeon, came to explain she had been on leave for a month.”
Green.
“What did you do next?”
“I thought maybe if she got fired, she would have been too embarrassed to tell me. The hormone therapy was hard on her, and she got written up a few times for losing her temper. I checked our apartment in case she had gone home. She knew I was working, so she would have had the place to herself, but she wasn’t there.”
Green.
“Where did you find her?”
“She came home at dawn, still dressed for work. I confronted her, but she made all these excuses.” Ares shifted on the bed to get more comfortable. “She told me stress was bad for the baby, and I was driving her nuts with all the questions. I was worried she was right, so I let it go.”
Green.
“You didn’t really let it go,” I asked gently, “did you?”
“I started staying up days, following her. Liz—” She shut her eyes briefly. “My Liz wasn’t the type to have an affair, but I couldn’t turn a blind eye. She was finally pregnant, and I became obsessed with tracking her. I had to know the child didn’t belong to an ex-boyfriend or…”
A current one.
How much simpler infidelity would have been compared to all this.
Green.
“You were there,” I said, prying her heart open wider, “at Choco-Loco.”
“There was no reason for Liz to be there that night, so I followed her inside.” Ares swallowed. “Chef Daaé… He was already dead. A stake through the heart. I didn’t understand. I stood there, but I...” It was clear she still struggled with it. “That’s when I got it, what she meant to do. I begged her to stop, but she wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t fight her…” She turned bloodshot eyes on us. “The baby. I couldn’t risk the baby. Not after we tried so hard.”
Quiet sobs broke the harsh lines of her shoulders then, and my heart shattered into razor-sharp pieces.
“Have you considered Liz didn’t want a baby?” I hated to twist the knife, but it was already in my hand. “That she never had trouble conceiving?”
The lowest of the low wouldn’t wield a woman’s desire for a child with her mate against her, but Liz had used the struggle to bring them closer, to tie their goals tighter, to blind Ares to what else she might be doing under her nose.
Watch the left hand while the right balls into a fist and punches you into next week.
Classic misdirection.
“She lied to me, used me, but it doesn’t change the fact I loved that woman with everything in me.” Ares laugh-cried and sniffled. “The Liz I loved doesn’t exist, but this one moves like her, talks like her, and it makes me a coward, but I still tell myself my Liz is in there.”
Green.
Guess this time I was the right fist staring down the barrel of next week. “Are you sure she’s pregnant?”
A slow breath shuddered out of her. “Yes.”
Green.
A gwyllgi nose would be impossible to fool. They would pick up the subtle changes in scent in their mate, but I wore a ring to fake mine. Who was to say Liz hadn’t done the same? She was a doctor, of that I had no doubt, given her service record among the gwyllgi. But that meant she had access to pregnant gwyllgi females and could craft a disguise based on their natural pheromones. “Help us then.”
“I can’t.”
Red.
“What do you think will happen to your child if Liz goes free? The coven will help her raise it. What kind of life is that for a kid? What kind of mom would you be if you let it happen?”
“I’ll never see it,” she breathed. “I’ll be killed for my crimes, and I’ll deserve it.”
Tisdale was a wise alpha, and a good mother. Both of those required a streak of ruthlessness.
“Are you saying because you won’t be there to see it, that makes it all right?”
“What’s worse? That the child grows up orphaned or is raised by at least one parent?”
“Depending on the parent,” I said with absolute certainty, “an orphan would be luckier.”