by Lane Hart
“No, actually. I didn’t even think about it until I realized I was late. That’s when I asked myself why I wasn’t more careful.”
“Why weren’t you?” Knox asks.
“I…I don’t know. It didn’t cross my mind at the time, maybe because so much was going on with the case, and we used condoms...”
“I’m glad you didn’t. I mean, you probably weren’t happy when you found out, but I’m really glad you decided to keep her.”
Hands going to my growing stomach, I tell him, “The way I loved this little person so fast was surprising. I may not have expected to get pregnant, but I couldn’t imagine not having this baby even for a second,” I admit.
“Same here. Which makes it even more confusing…”
“Makes what confusing?” I ask.
“How my mother could give me up so easily,” he answers, making my chest ache for him.
“Maybe you could find her and ask her why…”
“No,” he says, dismissing the idea and then quickly changing the subject. “So, what the fuck are we gonna do about the chief?”
Throwing my hands up in the air, I tell him, “I don’t know. It’s not like anyone would believe he sent someone after me because he thinks he knocked me up when he gave me a promotion in exchange for sex.”
“Maybe not, but he can’t get away with this!”
“No, he can’t.”
“And he may come after you again, even harder to make sure you don’t talk about any of it.”
“That’s also true,” I agree.
“Let me kill him,” Knox offers.
“No!” I quickly bat down that idea. “We’re not doing anything that puts you at risk of getting caught! Thinking about you being taken away in handcuffs…” I shake my head to erase the image. “That would break my fucking heart.”
“Okay, so something less severe,” he says.
“Let’s get you home first, and then we’ll try to come up with a plan,” I tell him. “My opinion is that death is too quick. We need to ruin him.”
“Deal,” Knox says. “Losing everything hurts more than dying.”
…
Knox
I can’t believe that son of a bitch took advantage of Jade. Knowing what he did, it makes me want to nail him in the face with my fist until there’s nothing but blood and broken bones left.
But Jade is right.
If the police chief turns up dead, there will be too much heat on the investigation. The other cops won’t stop until they find the person responsible for ending their boss.
Since Jade wants to make him suffer, I think we need to slap him with the mother of all public shaming. To pull that off, though, we’re gonna need help. That’s why I’ve called Ivan and asked him to meet us back at the apartment once the hospital lets me go.
I finally make it out the sliding doors around noon. Jade is waiting for me in her car when the nurse wheels me out, even though it’s completely unnecessary. I can walk just fine since it was my hand that was shot up, not my legs. Apparently, the wheelchair service for discharged patients is one of the hospital rules they don’t ever bend because it would open them up to liability if someone falls down.
“Thanks,” I tell the nurse when she locks the wheels and allows me to get up and into the car.
“You sure you feel okay?” Jade asks after I buckle myself into the passenger seat.
“Hell yes,” I tell her. “Ready to stay at my place for a few days?”
“Sure,” she agrees.
This morning, after we talked about it, the two of us decided that it would be best if she didn’t return to her house until the chief is dealt with. It won’t take him long to find out I was involved since my name is on the incident report from the shooting, but hopefully we’ll have him by the balls before he comes up with my address.
“I didn’t have a chance to clean before all this went down,” I warn her when she parks in front of my apartment, apparently remembering it from the last time she was here months ago, waking me up to bring me in for questioning in Robbie’s murder.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” she says before we both get out of the car. Jade comes around and grabs my elbow to help me.
“I can walk on my own,” I assure her.
“Yeah, but the pain meds you’re on could make you dizzy.”
“If you say so,” I mutter, letting it go. Even though I don’t want to be treated like a cripple, especially by Jade, I still love any way that she touches me too much to complain.
Ivan, thankfully, opens the front door before we knock since I don’t have my keys on me.
“Hey, man. Good to see you up and moving,” he says when he gives me a one-armed hug and clasps my back.
“Seriously, it’s just a head and hand injury,” I remind them. “It’s not like I’m dying.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he huffs. “I took out your trash and brought you some groceries, so you better be nice.”
“Thanks,” I tell him, knowing that, by “trash”, he means the bottles of booze littering the kitchen and my bedroom.
“Come on, let’s get you into bed,” Jade says as she urges me inside the apartment.
“But I’m not tired.”
“Good,” is her one-word reply along with a grin that tells me exactly what she has in mind.
“I like what you’ve done with Cain’s old room,” Ivan says once we’re all inside.
“Yeah, it’s just a start,” I tell him as we walk past it. Or we start to, and then Jade walks backward to get another look.
“Knox,” she gasps as she steps inside, so I follow behind her.
“I know she probably won’t be here much, but I wanted to have a place for her to sleep or whatever, just in case,” I explain in a rush.
“That’s…really sweet,” Jade says as she runs her hand over the crib railing. “You put it together by yourself?”
“Ah, yeah,” I answer, leaving out that it took me a few days and several attempts. “Having that set up in here finally made it seem real, you know?” I tell her.
“Yeah, it does,” she agrees with a nod before she throws her arms around me, hugging me tighter than ever before. If I had to guess, it’s the emotional impact of yesterday hitting Jade at full force, knowing that, if the intruder had gotten to her, we could’ve lost our little girl.
“She’s still okay, right?” I ask Jade to make sure since the doctor ordered another ultrasound before we left the hospital today.
“She is,” Jade says before she pulls away. Reaching into the back pocket of her suit from yesterday that she put on again at the hospital, she pulls out a piece of paper and hands it to me. But it’s not paper, it’s a black and white photo of what’s clearly the profile of the baby. “I should’ve given you a copy from before, but here’s one from today.”
“Wow,” I gasp as I struggle for the words. “She’s…she’s perfect. I can’t wait to meet her.”
“Me too,” Jade agrees.
“Stokes has to fucking pay before he can even think about hurting you or her again,” I tell Jade.
“I think I have an idea for that,” she says. “We may need Ivan’s help with manpower, though. Come on.” Grabbing my good hand, Jade pulls me into my bedroom where she urges me down on the mattress and then calls for Ivan to start plotting that fucker’s demise.
“You two have seen the Godfather, right?” Jade asks us before she launches into her plan.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jade
“God, I hope this works,” I whisper as we sit in Ivan’s car, passing around a pair of binoculars in the dark.
“It will,” Ivan says. “The guys tucked the body into bed with the phone just like they were supposed to. Any second now the wife is gonna find it and call the fucker to come home.”
“Or she could call nine-one-one,” I offer.
“Either way, he’ll have to answer questions,” Knox assures me with a squeeze to my hand.
The two of us are sitting in the backse
at with Ivan and Cain in the front, staked out in front of Chief Stokes’ house. Right in front of us are unmarked vans with a few local media organizations inside that I called in favors with, tipping them off to something big going down here tonight.
Other than Ivan having some guys steal the body of the intruder from the morgue, none of us have done anything illegal.
“Did you hear that?” Cain whispers.
“Hear what?” I ask him softly. Why we’re all trying to be quiet I’m not sure.
“It sounded like a woman screaming,” he explains.
A moment later, a light goes on in the back of the house, likely the master bedroom. Poor Mrs. Stokes. I hate scaring her, but it was necessary to take down the chief.
“I think she’s found it. Let’s see what she’ll do,” I say, practically holding my breath as we wait to try and listen for sirens. There are none, but the chief’s car comes speeding up within minutes. He doesn’t even turn off his headlights before he’s racing inside his house. His wife meets him at the door, and the two have a conversation before he pushes past her.
“Holy shit. He’s not gonna call it in,” Knox announces as more time passes and no other units show up to the house.
I wish I could be there to see his reaction when he finds the body.
The four of us sit in absolute silence until the chief appears again in the darkness. This time he’s coming from the back of the house, and he’s dragging something in a rolled-up carpet or rug. Something big and heavy, but the way he’s struggling to pull it along behind him…
“This is it!” I exclaim in a whisper as I send a group text message to everyone in the vans.
I barely hit send on another quick text to the police station asking for assistance here when the reporters come pouring out the vehicles. Their cameras land like spotlights on the chief, who freezes like a deer in headlights, or like a man dragging a dead body out of his house in the middle of the night.
Unable to wait any longer, the four of us scramble out of the car to hear what’s going on more clearly.
“Chief Stokes, could you show us what that is you’re dragging?”
“Is that a dead body you just dragged out of your house?”
Question after question is hurled at the man, who is still frozen in shock for several long seconds before he starts yelling.
“This is personal property! Get out of my yard before I have you all thrown in jail!”
What he hasn’t realized is that none of the reporters are actually standing in his yard or on his property. They’re staying back on the sidewalk, well aware of the rules. The chief looks even more surprised when marked cars come pulling up with sirens flashing, drawing more attention from all the neighbors. How embarrassing.
It’ll be even more embarrassing when it makes the front page of tomorrow’s news.
“It’s a body, isn’t it?” the rabid reporters yell when the uniformed cops get out of their cars, most newbies on the graveyard shift.
“Don’t be ridiculous! Of course there’s not a dead body in the chief’s yard,” one of the young officers says as he walks past the chief, who actively protests the move and then unrolls the carpet, revealing…no other than the naked body of Steward Chapman, the guy the chief hired to attack me.
Everyone gasps loudly, including myself, even though I knew and warned the reporters it was a body. Until that moment, I didn’t know if this crazy plan to embarrass the chief would work. But it did.
With a squeal of delight, I turn and hug Knox, so glad to see the horror on the chief’s face as he realizes how fucked he is. He may not have killed the man lying dead in his driveway, but he didn’t call it in when the body showed up in his bed. He’ll also have to explain why his number was on the dead man’s phone. That was added by us after the crime, but it won’t matter in the end. It’s enough to raise suspicions about a connection between the chief and Chapman, the intruder who attacked me, an RPD officer, at my home. Stokes will have no choice but to resign.
Poor Mrs. Stokes comes hurrying out of the house in her pajamas, looking more frazzled than the chief, who is scratching his head, trying to figure out how to weasel his way out of this with four cops in his yard that owe him zero loyalty for promotions like some of the other higher-ups.
That’s when the cherry bomb on top is thrown by a reporter.
“Mrs. Stokes, are you aware that your husband had an affair with a fellow officer when he offered her a promotion in exchange for sex?”
Yes, I told them everything. Coming clean to the public about my mistake is worth seeing the chief lose everything, his wife, his job, his career. It’s all blowing up in his face tonight. He may not be going to jail, but his punishment is almost as bad. Every day from now on he’ll have to face his friends, family, neighbors and coworkers, who will know all his dirty secrets.
“It worked,” I say to Knox, who keeps his arms around me and places a kiss to the top of my head.
“It worked,” he agrees. “So, what do you think you’re going to do now?”
“Good question,” I reply since I obviously won’t be welcomed back on the RPD. “My stepbrothers in Emerald Isle can probably get me a job with the sheriff’s department.”
“Oh,” he mutters. “That’s three hours away from here, right?”
“It is,” I agree with a smile. “And if you wanted to follow me out there, I bet they could get you some fights…”
“If I wanted to follow you?” he repeats. “Woman, I would follow you anywhere.”
“You would? You’ll pack up and come with me?” I look up at his face and ask him with the red and blue flashing lights illuminating it. It’s just the way I pictured it from the first day we met, except Knox hasn’t done anything wrong. In fact, he’s done everything right.
“In a heartbeat,” he answers. “Come on, let’s go home, so I can start packing,” he says as he grabs my hand and pulls me back toward Ivan’s car, calling for the guys to hurry and catch up.
“Let’s pack your clothes first,” I joke as I tug on the front of his t-shirt.
“Yes, ma’am,” he agrees with a quick kiss and the promise of more to come. “But we should probably leave out your handcuffs for last.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Knox
May
“Where are we going?” I ask Jade as she drives us through some country roads in the middle of Virginia.
She smiles but doesn’t take her eyes off the road. “It’s a surprise.”
It took us a few weeks to pack up Jade’s house and my apartment, but we finally made the haul to Emerald Isle. Her family is great, and her stepbrothers are awesome, even though they scare the shit out of me. I always thought that the Italian mafia was badass, but they’re a bunch of pussies compared to the Savage Kings MC.
Jade was able to get a job working for the sheriff, and she starts whenever she’s ready to go back to work after the baby is a few months old. She warned her stepbrothers that just because they’re family doesn’t mean they’ll get any special treatment from her. Those guys better watch out.
With the flip of her hand, Jade puts on the right turn signal; and then we’re pulling up in the gravel parking lot of a…
“The surprise is a stuffy old Catholic church?” I ask her in confusion as I stare out the front windshield.
“No, silly. The surprise is inside,” Jade replies when she kills the engine.
“Need help getting out?” I tease her since her bump is now so big it’s almost touching the steering wheel.
“Watch it,” Jade warns me with a grin when we climb out and walk up to the front doors that are unlocked.
There’s creepy organ music playing, and the place smells like dusty books.
“Seriously, Jade. What’s going on?” I whisper to her.
She ignores me, taking my hand and pulling me down the aisle to a man wearing glasses dressed in a black suit and a white collar. Oh shit, I guess he’s a priest.
“Excuse me
, sir. We’re looking for Madeline Lawrence. Is she around?”
Pushing up the glasses on his nose as he examines us, the man finally says, “Sister Madeline is meditating in the gardens, down that hallway, out that door and to your right.” He points in the direction behind him.
“Thank you,” Jade tells him sweetly before she tugs me in the right direction.
“Jade, who the hell is Sister Madeline?” I ask after we’re outside because I didn’t want to curse in the house of God.
“Guess we’re about to both find out. I could be wrong,” she mutters under her breath.
“Wrong about what?” I ask, but she ignores me as we come to an archway covered in greenery that leads to a garden with cement benches. There’s a woman sitting on one of them, dressed in the traditional black habit with a veil over her hair.
“Sister Madeline?” Jade calls out.
“Yes? Can I help you?” the woman says as she stands and spins around to face us. I was expecting a woman in her sixties or seventies at minimum, but this lady is young, in her thirties at most.
“I hope you can,” Jade tells her with a squeeze to my hand. “Could you tell us…well, I don’t know how to ask this, so I’ll just come out and say it. Did you give birth to a son and give him up sometime during the week of April ninth in nineteen-ninety-seven?”
“Jade?” I whisper in confusion since that’s the week of my birthday, and I’m starting to have a really bad feeling about what we’re doing here.
“How…how in the world did you know?” the woman asks with wide, shocked, blue eyes. Eyes so similar to mine we have to be related.
Turning to me, Jade says, “I made a big donation to the boys’ home in exchange for them going through all the old birth certificates looking for your birth parents, because I think you deserve to know why.”
A sharp inhale draws our attention to the nun before I can even begin to process this shit.
“Is this…are you him? Are you my son?” she asks.
“Apparently so,” I mutter through clenched teeth, not sure how I feel about this being sprung on me by Jade without any notice.