Ask Me If I Care

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  “That’ll be thirty-two fifty,” he said.

  My brows rose. “I paid in the app. And tipped.”

  The kid shook his head as if he was trying to clear it. “Oh, yeah. That’s right.”

  My lips curved up into a small smile.

  “Don’t give her shit at school. Or I’ll hear,” I ordered.

  The kid’s face blanched as he took in my tattoos, my forearms that were as big as his thighs, and the mean mug I was aiming his way.

  “No, sir,” he immediately replied. “I would never.”

  I winked. “Good. ‘Night, kid. Thank you.”

  I took all the pizza and Ares’ Dr. Pepper, slamming the door closed behind me.

  Ares’ face was still as red as a cherry.

  “It’ll be okay,” I promised. “He’s not going to say a word.”

  She smiled at me, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

  “I highly doubt that, but okay,” she murmured softly.

  I placed the pizzas down on the coffee table, then reached over the couch and pulled her over it, tumbling her into my arms.

  She came willingly, falling into me as if she trusted me implicitly not to hurt her.

  And I never would. Not intentionally anyway.

  “He’s not going to say a word because I threatened him with bodily harm,” I told her. “And if he does say anything, just know that I’ll go up there and make his life a living hell.”

  She softened in my arms, her eyes going alight with humor.

  “Thanks, Hayes,” she whispered, grinning at me. “I didn’t think when I came out in your shirt. I just wanted to smell you.” She paused. “And, just sayin’, but if that had been a girl at the door, you would’ve given her the best eye-porn on the planet.”

  My head tilted in confusion. “I’m sorry, but why? I was wearing pants.”

  “You are wearing sweatpants,” she corrected me. “Which is way different.”

  If she said so.

  “Hungry?” I asked, using my fingers to play with a stray curl of hair that was bunching up around her eye.

  “Starving,” she said, her eyes once again heated.

  I shook my head.

  “We’re not going there,” I told her. “I have a limited stash of condoms. Literally, we used the only three that I had in the last week. I have to go restock before you come over again…or before I go to your place for that matter.”

  She grinned at me wickedly and swung her legs around, moving until she was seated on the couch beside me.

  “Let’s eat instead, then,” she grumbled.

  The pout was even cuter than any look she’d given me yet, that was for sure.

  Food was consumed, and eventually we got to the scary movie.

  And, it turns out, Ares not only loves scary movies, but they also don’t scare her. Not even a little bit.

  She’s that type that you see at the movies, watching the scary movie and smiling, all the while she pops popcorn into her mouth.

  Needless to say, the movie didn’t have the desired effect that I’d been looking for, and instead of curling into me, she was practically bouncing in her seat the entire time.

  I was highly amused, however, by the end of it.

  “You have to be the first girl I’ve ever seen that can watch a scary movie,” I told her.

  She shrugged. “My brother used to try to scare me when I was younger with them. It was either learn to love them, or let him see my fear. And that was something I wasn’t willing to do. Because he searched for my weaknesses and then took advantage of them.”

  I grinned. “That’s what a brother does.”

  Her smile fell.

  “Speaking of brother,” she said. “Have you heard anything more about Christiny?”

  I winced.

  “She saw the judge yesterday,” I murmured. “She agreed to sixty days in jail in exchange for a reduced sentence. And she gave up custody of her son.”

  “And Ryan?” she asked. “How’s he doing with the baby?”

  “Ryan already asked me to take him,” I murmured. “But the problem with taking him is that he’s more comfortable with Ryan than he is with me. And I just can’t see how that would be a good thing for him right now. So I told Ryan that I’d help when he needed it, but that the kid was his for the foreseeable future. It makes me seem like an ogre, but I just can’t take him right now. Once the kid gets to know me, then things will be different. Ryan’s pissed at me and told me he didn’t need my help at all.”

  She winced. “Ryan was always very dramatic. He’ll get over it. Unless he doesn’t convince your mother to move down here and take care of the baby.”

  “Stepmother,” I corrected for her. “And I highly doubt that’ll ever happen. It didn’t happen when Christiny obviously needed it. And if it didn’t happen with her, it’s not going to happen with Ryan. She likes traveling with my dad too much.” I paused. “Elisabetta has never been very motherly. She’s more like that really cool aunt that you see on the weekends every once in a while. The one that buys you really cool stuff, lets you eat like shit, and generally doesn’t care what you do as long as you don’t fuck up her house.”

  Her eyes sparkled as she leaned against the opposite armrest of the couch.

  “It sounds like you have some experience in that,” she teased.

  I grinned. “Ryan, Christiny and me pretty much raised ourselves once our parents got married,” I found myself telling her. “My dad is really cool and all, but he’s also a lot like Elisabetta. He doesn’t realize that having kids changes things. Or should, anyway. I think I’ve spent more of my life growing up in a police station, being taken care of by a random police officer, than I have by him.”

  Her face softened at my words.

  “You can have my parents,” she teased. “They’re really overprotective. And they insinuate themselves into your life and burrow in like a tick, constantly drawing information out of you that they seem to think is necessary to my survival.”

  “Sounds like heaven,” I told her truthfully. “My dad cares and all, he really does. But he also doesn’t realize that he even did anything wrong.” I gestured to her half-filled bottle of Dr. Pepper. “That’s also why I rarely eat out. And when I do, I try to go healthy. Because I was raised on this shit. And a home-cooked meal means more to me than anything you could ever imagine.” I grinned then. “When you meet my grandmother, you’ll know how I was raised to be a halfway decent human being. Even talking to me nightly on the phone, she managed to shape me into something people don’t mind being around.”

  An alarm went off on her phone, breaking the spell.

  She sighed and turned it off with a flick of her finger.

  “I have to go,” she muttered. “That was my daily ‘take your multivitamin before you go to bed’ alarm.”

  “Stay.”

  She smiled tiredly. “As much as I wish I could, I can’t. I have to put hair product in my hair before it totally dries. I have to be at work early to deal with bus drop-offs, and tomorrow’s wear camo day at school. I have to stop by the store and go buy a shirt or something.”

  I got up and walked into my room, going to my closet and reaching onto the top shelf for a vest that I wore when I was in bootcamp.

  Grinning, I pulled it down and walked back into the living room and tossed it at her.

  “It’s smaller than I wear now, so it might not swamp you,” I told her as she unfolded it.

  She ran her finger over the embroidered pocket that sported ‘Romine’ on it. My last name.

  And she smiled.

  “I love it, thank you.”

  And as I watched her drive away after walking her to her car, I had this irrational urge to call her back. To tell her not to leave. To make her stay.

  But I didn’t make her stay.

  I didn’t call her back.

  And that night, when I got the phone call from my dad like I did, I wishe
d that I had.

  Chapter 15

  Just tell her when and where, and Ares will be there twenty minutes late.

  -Hayes’ secret thoughts

  Hayes

  “Hello?” I answered the phone, even though I’d rather do anything but.

  “They have a confirmed match to the killings you’ve been looking into. The Highway to Haughton Killer,” my father, Vlad, said.

  It took me a few long minutes to understand what he was talking about, and for my brain to come back online from the dead sleep that I’d finally fallen into after hours of thinking about Ares. But when it did, my heart started to fucking pound.

  I blinked, then sat up in my bed. “Where? When?”

  Trigger, sensing my anxiety, placed his nose against my hand.

  Just a touch, but it was enough.

  “About an hour ago, now. They found her on the highway at mile marker seventy-one,” my father said. “Same as all the others. Only, this one looked a little more beaten than the rest.”

  That made me sick.

  “Young girl still?” I asked.

  I could practically see my father nodding, even though I wasn’t there.

  “Yes,” he said. “They’re notifying her next of kin now.”

  I frowned. “They knew who she was already?”

  “A missing person’s report blasted social media last night. The girl’s brother came home from a deployment and surprised her at school. It went viral. Then she went missing only hours after he came home. Never came home from the library. The brother went to social media and her picture was everywhere,” Dad explained. “We’re not one-hundred-percent sure as of right now, but it’s close. They’re going to take the brother down to the morgue to confirm.”

  I felt sick to my stomach.

  The girl that’d gone missing was one of Ares’ students.

  “That girl was a mother,” I said softly. “She had a three-month-old. She went to Ares’ school.”

  My father gasped. “She was?”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “She was.”

  There was another gasp, then my father sounded like he’d stood up so fast that his rolling chair hit the wall behind him.

  “Honey!”

  I pulled the phone away from my ear, surprised and a bit startled to hear my father shout so loudly into the receiver.

  “Honey,” Dad said more quietly this time. “Google this first girl. See if she was a teenage mother.”

  My heart started to pound as my father’s brain started to work on a different wavelength than mine, but I had a feeling that the wavelength was the correct course.

  “Dad…”

  My stomach started to fill with acid as it boiled.

  “Shh,” he ordered.

  I shushed, but I was already up and moving, too.

  Going to my computer, I started searching for another name. This one in the middle of the lot, so to speak, to be murdered.

  The first article to pop up was a photo of the girl on the highway. Or, at least, a sheet covering a body that was said to be her.

  But as I went through the pages, I found a particular link that led to a hospital birth announcement/article in the online paper for Gun Barrel, Texas.

  Katrin Dobbs, 17, welcomes 7-pound 1-ounce baby boy. Adoptive parents, Davy and Remina Horne adopt beautiful boy and thank teenage mother for giving them such a perfect gift.

  “They were all single mothers,” I breathed. “That’s the connection, isn’t it?”

  My dad hummed as he listened to my step-mother speak in the background.

  I moved on to the next girl. And the next. And the next.

  And found one thing in common with them all. They were all, indeed, single mothers.

  “None of them kept their babies,” Dad said after a while. “That was why we never put it together before now. But all of them had babies at one point in time. The six that I’ve searched through all gave them up for adoption except for one, who gave her baby to her sister.”

  “I’ve gone through three. Three for adoption and one to the father if we’re counting Abilene,” I murmured.

  Dad snapped his fingers so loudly that my ear popped.

  “I have to call Bruno,” Dad said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  Without another word, he hung up, leaving me sitting there stunned.

  Single mothers.

  Why would that matter?

  But, in the killer’s mind, it did.

  I just wish I knew who and why.

  Shoving away from my laptop, I quickly got dressed and headed for my kitchen where my truck keys and wallet were sitting from the night before.

  After going back into my bedroom for a change of clothes, I headed to Ares’ apartment with Trigger in tow.

  What I didn’t expect was to be pulling up at the same time as her father.

  “You heard?” he asked, eyeing Trigger.

  I nodded once.

  “I did,” I confirmed. “My dad called.”

  “Same.” Downy paused. “Well, my dad didn’t call. I don’t have a dad anymore. Your dad called.”

  I snorted as I shut my truck door and headed for the stairs.

  “So you and my girl,” Downy said. “That’s official.”

  I stopped on the landing and turned, my arms crossed over my chest.

  “Yes.” I didn’t see the point in bullshitting him. “As official as official can be. I love her.”

  Downy’s eyebrows rose. “That’s fast.”

  I winced at his accusatory tone. “It’s easy to love her.”

  His brows rose high.

  “I didn’t say anything about loving.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You didn’t ask. But I told you.”

  Trigger leaned against my leg, and I placed my hand on his head.

  “You didn’t need to tell me,” he mumbled. “Can see it from here. Knew how she talked about you that it was serious. Not to mention the fact that it’s three in the morning, and you’re here to talk to her just like I am because you’re worried about her waking up and seeing it on social media or something. And you not being there to hold her when she breaks down over a student that she’s been worried shitless about for the last year.”

  That was exactly why I was there.

  My brows furrowed. “Do you want me to leave?”

  He rolled his eyes. “That’s what you got out of what I said?”

  “What are you weirdos doing talking on my porch at three in the morning?” Ares asked, opening the door so hard that the both of us startled.

  Downy ruffled Ares’ hair. “I like the hair natural, baby. It’s my favorite.”

  Ares rolled her eyes, them going from me to her dad and back.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked now.

  Trigger walked inside as if he owned the place.

  Downy pushed past her inside, and that was when I realized that she didn’t look as if she’d been sleeping.

  “You weren’t sleeping?” I asked curiously.

  She scrunched up her nose. “Couldn’t sleep,” she admitted. “I thought about coming over but…I didn’t want to wake you up.”

  I pulled her into my arms and pressed a kiss to her neck, causing her to shiver.

  “You should’ve come,” I replied huskily. “I wanted you there anyway.”

  She squeezed my hips, then leaned back and frowned at me. “What’s going on?”

  I sighed and pushed her lightly, telling her without words to go inside.

  She did, but not without giving me a ferocious frown first.

  Downy was sitting on the coffee table with his head in his hands.

  “Shit,” Ares said. “What is it? Just tell me.”

  I closed the door and cleared my throat.

  I made eye contact with Downy and realized he was allowing me to take lead on this.

  Which sucked, but it was also an honor. He realized tha
t Ares was mine now. Not his.

  “Sweetness, sit down.” I sighed.

  She did, looking from me to her dad and back.

  “I got a call tonight from my dad,” I said softly. “There’s no really easy way to tell you this but, they think Abilene was murdered last night.”

  At first, I don’t think it quite registered with her what I said.

  She stared at me, dumbfounded for a few seconds, then shook her head.

  “But…what?” she asked. “Why would they think that? I just got a message from her…”

  My stomach clenched. “You what? When?”

  She walked to her phone that was sitting on the edge of the couch and picked it up. Walking over to stand between her father and me, she opened her phone and then showed me a text message that was received about an hour ago.

  About two hours after her suspected murder.

  I called my dad immediately.

  “When did the call come in that the body was found?” I asked curtly.

  Dad was silent as he made sense of what I just said.

  “Umm.” He paused. “Around midnight. The girl went missing somewhere between two and four. The librarian saw the girl leave at two and that is her last known whereabouts. She never came home and the brother got worried and called it in. Blasted it all over social media after that. Body spotted by a motorist at midnight.” He paused. “Called you at two-thirty…”

  I rolled my eyes at how specific he was being. But my dad was all about specifics.

  “Ares got a message that says, ‘hey, just wanted to let you know I’m okay’ at…” I trailed off as she pointed the phone in my direction. “Two-thirty a.m.”

  Two and a half hours after her death.

  What the absolute fuck.

  I hit the information button above the name, then pressed the phone icon.

  Downy looked at me with worried eyes when he saw the call button pop up.

  Without another word, I hit dial.

  The phone rang twice before there was a maniacal laugh at the other end of the line and a man said, “Took you long enough to figure it out.”

  My eyes met Ares’ gaze, and it was no secret that she was freaked.

  “Not going to talk?” the man said. At least, I thought it was a man. His voice was distorted. Likely he was using some sort of electronic device to disguise his voice. “That’s okay. I got a lot of things to say.”