I’ll take it.
“When you smile, I feel it in here,” I rubbed the middle of my chest. “Your laugh…makes me smile. When I’m the one to make you do that, my day is automatically better. Your touch calms me. Having you near makes life that much brighter, in a world so dark and gray thanks to what I do. You do everything you can to make my little girl’s life that much easier, but what you don’t get is that simply being around her makes her happy. You’re a giver, a nurturer, a lover, and a protector.” Her eyes finally came to meet mine. “You speak your mind. And even though you infuriate me to no end with certain impulsive reactions, I get why you do what you do. I hate arguing with you, but I love it all at the same time. You challenge me, and all of what I’ve said lists things I’ve always needed and never got with Eva. If she were to come back, I could never get from her what you give me. I don’t want anyone else. I want you. You’re perfect for me, Em…in every way, and that’s the gist of it.”
Reaching out, I grabbed onto her right hand and pulled her into me.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“So am I.” I kissed her forehead. “Had I treated you the way you should have been treated, I doubt tonight would have happened. You’re my woman first and foremost.”
“Your woman, huh?” Humor laced her words, despite the weary look in her eyes.
“Girlfriend, woman, significant other…I don’t care how anyone calls it, but let’s face it for what it is. You’re mine, Emberlyn Roth.”
Her eyes closed as a peaceful look came over her face. “Yours,” she mouthed, a small smile spreading over her delectable lips.
“Can I kiss you now?” I asked what I’d been dying to do since I’d first gotten home.
“Please,” she breathed onto my lips right before she took charge.
Emberlyn
The following week had gone significantly better, even with relocating to my house. Despite the lack of one-on-one, Shane had become quite attentive. In spite our opposite schedules, he never hesitated to show me affection, even when Lana Rose was around. If anything, he seemed to thrive on her reactions. It seemed the girl enjoyed her father’s displays. To be honest, he doted on her about as much as he did on me.
As for the photomosaic, Shane had told me that they’d discovered the identity of the murderer, and urged me to work on it, but at my leisure and not to stress to get it done. Imagine my surprise when I found out that Shane’s boss’s son was the culprit. Let’s just say that the web woven was highly tangled. Before Shane and Eva had become an item, it turns out that Casen and she had a past together. He’d disappeared for a while, only to turn up on the force—albeit as a traffic cop—at the same precinct Shane worked out of.
Today was Shane’s last night shift before he had a full weekend off. I had prepped and delivered all of my week’s orders before Lana Rose was due home yesterday, so I decided to spend my Friday working on the mosaic I had neglected for most of the week, but still had quite a bit left to fill in.
Sitting on my living room floor with far too many pieces remaining to place, I looked for inspiration on how best to organize them.
And I found it.
Staring back at me from my fireplace mantle was a framed shot of Lana Rose in her mother’s arms. The same one that was on Rosie’s bedside table—a shot that was far too familiar, and one that I absolutely had fallen in love with, so when the little girl had packed her bags, I’d brought it along with us and set it in a place of pride so everyone could see it.
My eyes darted down to the carpet, seeing far too clearly the distorted images as my hands began to work frantically placing pieces, maneuvering them around, repeating as often as I needed until an enlarged, partially complete, but distorted replica of that framed photo stared back at me.
Only one piece was missing.
Shane mentioned something about him thinking it was some kind of a countdown.
With dread making my stomach churn, I climbed up to my feet and rushed upstairs, barging into my bedroom where Shane was sleeping off his shift.
“Shane!” I panted as the man shot up in bed as if he was primed to take on a hidden attacker.
“What! What’s going on?” The man’s eyes were wild as he took in the room, settling on me.
“You said you thought those pieces were part of a countdown or something, right?”
“Right.”
“I think you need to see this.” Without waiting for his reply, I ran back downstairs.
I could hear him stumbling to get his clothes on before his bare feet began to hit each tread.
“Where are you?” His voice was rough with sleep and most likely adrenaline.
“Living room,” I told him. “Shane, you need to get to Lana Rose. I have a really bad feeling about this.”
“I’ll put Will on it.” He grabbed his phone, holding his finger in a motion for silence to which I nodded. “Hey…Yeah. I need you to get to Rosie’s school before it lets out. I think we might have a lead in the case…Thanks, man.”
Phone disconnected, Shane’s ass hit the edge of my couch while he stared down at the mosaic.
“Is there anything I can do?” I offered, doubting that there would be.
“C’mere.” He gestured with his hand, not looking at me. I did as he requested.
No sooner that I was within reaching distance; he pulled me to stand between his legs and wrapped his arms around my waist, his head buried in my stomach. I fanned my fingers through his unruly hair, still mussed from sleep and tried to offer him comfort.
“I’m too close to this, Em,” he rasped. “God, if I lose her too, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
My heart broke for him and Nora. Hell, it broke for me.
“You can’t think like that, Shane,” I choked out. “Will’s on his way to get her. He’ll get there before she leaves. She’ll be home soon.”
Chapter 33
Shane
True to her word, Lana Rose arrived at Emberlyn’s fifteen minutes later.
“Daddy! Uncle Will let me ride in the front and turn the lights on in the cruiser,” she announced at the same time, taking a running leap into my arms. I held her tightly and for much longer than my normal.
All this time, I’d been sitting on these pieces with only one missing. It scared the life out of me that Dodge could have struck where it hurt most at any point. Problem was, there was still one piece missing, which meant that someone else was going to get hurt before he came for me.
Ten minutes later, I was still stuck in my thoughts. Emberlyn and Will were entertaining my daughter when Dalton showed up with a heavily pregnant Devolin and Brycen Matthews in tow.
Seeing as Emberlyn’s house was decked to the nines with Stan’s bells and whistles security-wise, I’d been okay with temporarily moving into her place. It would do a better job to keep the most precious people in my life safe.
“You need to let your mother know what’s going on,” Emberlyn whispered to me while the others sat around her dining room table, devising a plan of action, while Brycen typed away with Devolin at his side, giving him a run for his money.
“I will,” I vowed, “but she’ll be at Maggie’s for at least another week.” Emberlyn nodded, seemingly satisfied with my answer. After all, a hip replacement on a seventy-something woman took some time before said woman could do everything on her own again.
“I think I’ve got something,” Devolin blurted.
“What?” I got up, rushing to stand behind her, Dalton on one side, me on the other.
“I’m going to go check on Rosie,” Emberlyn announced.
“Please.” I gave her a meaningful look of appreciation. She’d been in Emberlyn’s bedroom watching a movie, which should almost be over. The last thing I wanted was for her to come down and overhear something about the investigation which now included her.
Emberlyn
“You want to watch the next one with me?” Lana Rose asked.
I’d come to check on her
, noticing that she’d decimated the two slices of pizza we’d left her with from our earlier order.
“Sure.” I propped a few extra pillows against my headboard, then kicked off my shoes before joining her on my bed. Lana Rose moved closer, cuddling into my side on a sigh, as we watched the end credits to the first of the Hunger Games trilogy.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Everything is just fine, Sweets,” I reassured her, kissing the top of her head. “Daddy just needs help for some work stuff.”
“He hugged me extra tight. Daddy doesn’t do that unless he’s been worried sick about me,” she announced.
“Rosie, you’ll have to talk to your dad about that.” I wasn’t sure how much he wanted his daughter to know, and I wasn’t about to overstep my bounds.
“So there is something wrong?” She arched her neck so she could look up at me.
“Yes and no,” I simply stated, gaining a confused look from the nine-year-old.
Just then, the bedroom door creaked open.
“Mind if I join you, ladies?” Devolin pushed the door wider, revealing her large belly, which she was holding. “The guys kicked me out.” My brows arched. Devolin didn’t strike me as a pushover. “I’m having some Braxton Hicks contractions and Dalton wants me to take it easy,” she explained on a grumble.
“You can sit next to me!” Rosie’s smile beamed.
Next thing I knew, the movie mostly as background noise, Rosie proceeded with the grand inquisition—about babies.
In that moment, and with the topic the little girl and myself had been on prior to the other woman’s interruption, I was extremely thankful to talk babies. So was Devolin, by the look on her face.
“I’d like a baby someday,” Lana Rose said, breaking the peaceful silence. Turning to stare at the girl, I’d noticed that she’d shifted just enough so that one of her hands rubbed Devolin’s belly as it moved in subtle undulations when the baby shifted. Devolin had fallen asleep, and it looked like Rosie was fading quickly.
Shifting onto my side, I spooned her in a hug as I covered her rubbing hand. “Me too,” I yawned. “Me too, Sweets.”
Shane
“How did we miss this?” was the first thing I asked as soon as Emberlyn had disappeared. “Jesus Christ! He’s been local this entire time?”
Dalton and Will were both on their phones. Dalton with Rex, one of our part-timers, while Will had our captain verifying the information.
According to what Devolin had managed to find, there was a property—albeit in a remote location on the outskirts of Jacksonville—that could potentially be used by Casen Dodge. Will was checking up to see if Captain Dodge knew anything about it.
Hanging up his phone, the man turned to me and shook his head.
“Cap says he’d heard of that place, but he had no idea that it was still in the family. It’s some old hunting shack in the bush that used to belong to his wife’s father. She hated going up there, and since she was an only child, he assumes that it must have been passed off to her in the will when all of this time, he thought she’d sold it off years ago,” Will explained.
“I need a unit sent out there,” I told him.
“Cap’s already taken care of that.”
“I’m sending Rex and Cade in too,” Dalton said, as he slid his finger across his phone’s screen to disconnect the call he’d been on.
“ETA?” I asked.
“An hour, tops,” he said.
“Good.”
Will and Brycen had left about five minutes before, while I pulled out a beer, handing one to Dalton as we settled on the couch. The man needed it after his wife had managed to scare the daylights out of him with what seemed like severe Braxton Hicks contractions.
“She’ll be fine, you know,” I told him.
He sighed. “I fucking hope you’re right.”
“Eva had them bad when she was pregnant with Lana Rose,” I said.
“Dev says it’s normal. She’s been through so much that I worry.”
“I know how it is.” It was my turn to sigh, adding measure to my frustration by rubbing my face with a single palm. “Don’t expect the worry to go away once this kid comes out though,” I chuckled. “It gets worse.”
The man groaned. “Yeah, I figured as much.” He took a long pull from his bottle, finishing his beer off.
“I’ve been doing some thinking over these last few weeks,” I started.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I paused. “With everything going on with this investigation, and with Em coming into our lives, I think it’s time I make a few changes.”
The man shifted in his seat, turning his body toward me and leaning forward, then grinned. “Any of those changes work to my benefit?”
My answer was simple—a nod.
“I’m glad to hear it, my friend.”
“Good.”
“So when’s this change happening?”
“Let me see this case through to the end,” I told him. “I’ll be handing in my resignation before the ink dries on any of that closing paperwork. Timewise, I guess it’ll depend on the captain and the bureaucrats.”
“Keep me posted, bro. You know I’d have taken you on full-time over a year ago when NSI was finally in the black.” He slapped me on the side of the shoulder as he got up. “Now that we’re done for the night, let me get my wife and we’ll get out of your hair.”
That’s when we found the most precious sight of all: three beauties sound asleep, one large with child, while the other two protectively held her belly, all cocooned together.
“That’s where it’s at, right there, my man.” Dalton patted my shoulder as he made his way past me and toward his wife.
He had no idea how right he was.
Chapter 34
Casen
That bitch had managed to figure it out. At least she was good for something. Who knew that getting to Peters would end up being so easy.
I guess that job at the pen worked out in my favor.
I’d met Trevor Sykes while moonlighting for the Pender Correctional Center in Burgaw, North Carolina, three years ago. He’d apparently beaten his wife good, leaving her in the hospital within an inch of her life. Long story short, she put him in jail for a good long time, but the fucker must have gotten out on good behavior. Lord knew Pender was battling a fight against overcrowding, resulting in my latest ally’s early release.
My gig as a security guard came right after Peters had put a nail in my professional coffin by reporting me for misconduct on some fucking burglary case which landed me into being a traffic cop. Of course he hadn’t been the only one to burn me that time; but rivers ran deep between that son of a bitch and me—back to before he’d first failed me in the academy. Truth of the matter was, he’d already broken the last straw years before that when he defaced what was mine. My Eva.
Eva was a beauty—one no one else could hold a candle to her. It’s why I’d gotten rid of them—those women.
You should have been more patient.
Had I been, I could have gotten rid of that little shit of a kid she’d had with Peters, ridding her of him, as well. Sure, it would have taken some time to gain her forgiveness, but that was Eva to the core: forgiving. It didn’t matter what I did as we grew up. She’d always take me back.
That incessant headache was back too; nagging me to do something about it. It usually entailed a special brand of therapy—a bloody one, but I would wait.
“Baby, come back to bed,” the woman behind me begged.
She looked just like my Evie. Sounded like her too. But she wasn’t; not really.
“I’m gonna go for a run,” I told her. When my thoughts strayed to Eva Peters, it always left me repulsed by whatever woman I was with at the time.
She lifted her head and eyed the alarm clock. “At four in the morning?”
Ignoring her comment, I shoved my legs in my black sweatpants, then slid on my black hoodie, before making for the door. “Bac
k in an hour, Liz.”
The commotion around Emberlyn Roth’s house over the last week had been almost comical. I’d been lying in wait, watching; especially when my grandfather’s old hunting shack had been discovered. It was a fucking good thing I parked at a distance and made the rest of my way on foot. Had I used the old access road to get to the drive, I’d have been caught—no ifs, ands, or buts—what with the manpower that was floating around the place that night.
My skin began to prickle with the need to act, but I stayed put.
That’s when I saw the man make his way around the bushes carrying something.
It wasn’t until he was half a block away—having delivered a small parcel—that I made my approach.
“Sykes?” I asked. How the fuck had he gotten out of jail? The man was deranged. Maybe that’s why we’d gotten along so well at the pen.
He stopped, turned around, and peered at me. His eyes widened with recognition. “Dodge? What the fuck are you doing here?”
“You’re gonna get yourself into heaps of trouble, my man. We need to talk.”
Shane
I was sitting at Emberlyn’s kitchen island, nursing a cup of coffee, while the girls were puttering around in her cottage, staring at the pile of unopened mail that sat there when something caught my eye.
A bright red envelope stuck out of the pile.
Considering Christmas was around the corner, yet a month away, I thought it odd for a card to be arriving so early already, but what did I know? I didn’t send that shit out, which meant I never got anything either.
“What’re you doing?” Emberlyn’s voice knocked me out of my musings.
“Aren’t you going to open your mail?”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve been here for a week and the pile seems to only be growing,” I stated.
She smirked. “It’s mostly junk anyway, but if it bothers you, why don’t you just open it? Leave the bills and throw the junk.”
Night Shift (Nightshade Book 2) Page 13