“Just a feeling.”
Her eyes fell to the dusting of freckles on his collarbones, and she dropped her hand to lean forward again, taking a deep breath. “Gage… there’s something you should probably know.”
His eyebrows pulled.
“When I got pregnant… it was against major, major odds.” Veda paused. “Before Penny Nailer went rogue and had me kidnapped, she called it a miracle. And it was.” When he continued watching her with tender eyes, she wondered if she was getting her point across. “What I’m trying to say is that… my womb… well… it’s not going to be hosting any raging baby parties anytime soon. My womb is more like that creepy old house at the end of the block that all of the kids are afraid to visit, so nobody ever comes to the birthday parties there or even bothers to knock on Halloween.”
Gage frowned, even as a small smile crossed his face.
“It’s damn near impossible,” Veda admitted. “Noah… Wyatt… He really was a miracle. A fighter that defied some pretty incredible odds. We might have to make our peace with the fact that he might’ve been the strongest fighter we’ll ever create.”
Gage let a long silence fall.
Veda swallowed thickly because the worst was over. The words she’d been dreading had been spoken. Her worried eyes searched his face, waiting for him to wrap his mind around what she’d just said. For his relaxed smile to disappear.
His smile did fall, but not for the reasons she assumed. “Does it have anything to do with the man who attacked you?”
After being taken aback for a moment, it hit Veda that she’d once told Gage about her “attack”. She’d told him a man had attacked her on the hill, Shadow Rock’s most poverty stricken area, and not his parent’s balcony. She’d told him it had happened while walking home from after school detention, and not at a party in his family’s house, amongst his friends and peers.
“Yes,” she said, giving him the best version of the truth she could. “As it turns out, the guy who attacked me gave me an infection. Curable, but reaps havoc on the uterus if left untreated. I didn’t start showing symptoms until it was too late.”
“I’m so sorry, Veda.”
“I’m sorry.” She shrugged one shoulder, eyes falling. “I know how badly you want kids. How important it is for you to be a father. God, you should see the way your eyes light up whenever you talk about it. And it tears me apart that… that I might not be able to do that for you again.”
He leaned forward, covering her hands with his. “If we made one miracle happen, there’s no reason why we can’t make another one. Perhaps Noah wasn’t the real miracle—”
“Wyatt.”
He craned his neck at the correction, suddenly needing a moment to digest the name he clearly despised with every fiber of him, before meeting her eyes once more. “Perhaps Noah, slash Wyatt, wasn’t the real miracle at all, but instead my herculean sperm.”
Veda burst out laughing, dropping her forehead into her hand as her laughter grew in volume and strength until it had stolen her breath.
“I’d even go so far as to say my sperm might be… magical. Otherworldly. Legendary.”
Veda dropped her hand and cocked her head at him. “Magical, Gage? Your sperm is magical?”
“You just said it yourself. It took a miracle to get you pregnant. I’m simply repeating what you’ve already said.”
“Not exactly the words I used, but okay…”
They played their fingers together on top of the table, searching each other’s eyes as their smiles slowly petered away.
“If it comes right down to it, and Noah slash Wyatt really was our only shot… then, okay.” His voice remained at ease. “We’ll adopt. Hell, maybe we’ll still adopt even if we do manage to make another miracle happen with my magical, herculean sperm.”
Veda’s chin trembled as fat tears filled her eyes, unable to wrap her head around how the hell she’d gotten so lucky. How the hell she’d hit the jackpot with a damn near perfect man.
“Gage, do you mean it?”
“Baby, I just want you. That’s all that matters to me. Of course, a child would bring us even more joy and excitement, but there are a ton of different ways to bring children into our lives. All I know is, whoever those children are, wherever they come from, they’ll be in the presence of the greatest love I’ve ever known—or will ever know—in my life.”
Veda’s chest heaved, unable to fight the tears any longer. He wiped away the first one that jetted down her cheek, and then the second, before he stood from his chair, bent over the table, and brushed a kiss on her lips. He stayed for a while, moaning into the embrace, before falling back into his seat and tilting his head at her with adoring eyes once more.
A moment later, he checked his watch. “Veda.” His voice grew fatherly as he pointed to her plate. “Please, eat. We’ve only got another half an hour before the car will be here to pick you up.”
Her heart fell. She couldn’t even tell if it had fallen at the idea of leaving him, or at the new question that was now on the tip of her tongue. “Can I ask you something?”
He leaned forward, resting his chin on his fisted hands. “Shoot.”
Veda considered him from the corner of her eyes before picking up her cell phone, which had gone largely ignored on the table next to her plate. Taking a deep breath, she pulled up a photo. A photo of the black and white jigsaw puzzle sneakers her number ten had been wearing on the night she’d been attacked. The sneakers that she’d once believed Gage had been wearing, which had driven her to break his heart by ending their engagement. The sneakers she’d been too frightened to ask him about, terrified that, if he were ten, asking him would tip him off and blow her cover.
She turned the photo to him. “Did you buy these shoes?”
Gage took in the photo. His eyebrows jumped, and then they tightened, creating a deep line between them. “Wow.” He chuckled. “Yeah. Less than twenty-four hours after my father first added my name to his money market account, actually. He was spitting fire, but he let me keep the shoes. Haven’t seen those in a long time.” He took a moment and then frowned softly at her. “How did you know about those? I bought them years ago.”
“I’m a bit of a sneaker buff.”
“Since when?”
“These are a collector’s items.” She shook the phone without answering, realizing her heart was moments from climbing out of her throat. She watched as he took a big bite of his own breakfast and nearly knocked the fork out of his mouth. Did he not realize what an important conversation this was? “Do you still have them?”
Gage took a swig of orange juice. “I gave them away.”
“When?”
“Years ago.”
“To who?”
He shot her a look. “Why?”
“I’m just upset that I’ll never get a chance to see them, is all.”
“Because you’re such a sneaker buff,” he repeated, clearly still skeptical.
She hesitated. “Yes. And I can’t think of a single person in your life who’s deserving of such a glorious gift. You’re, literally, surrounded by savages.”
“You’re so passionate about this.”
Her heartbeat tripled. “Who? Who did you give them to?”
“Some kid.”
“Some kid?”
“He loved the shoes so I offered to sell them to him, for half what I paid if he could write me a check on the spot. He said he only had twenty bucks but would do anything to pay me back. That’s when I realized he was from the hill. I’d grown bored of the shoes anyway, and I felt bad, so I just gave them to him.”
“When has there ever been a hill kid in your parent’s home?” Besides me?
“Poor kids used to crash parties at my house all the time. Sometimes hundreds of people would show up. It would’ve been impossible to weed everyone out, even if I wanted to.”
She nearly screamed. “So you gave the shoes away at a party?”
“Yes, Veda. Why are you asking me t
his?”
“What was the kid’s name?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember?”
“Like I said, he was some kid from the hill. We had no reason to cross paths again, and we never did.”
“You weren’t upset at him for crashing your party?”
“I was a 300-pound virgin nerd. At that point in my life, I was just happy for company. Any company. Regardless what tax bracket that company fell into.”
Veda licked her top teeth, making her lip protrude—unable to decide whether she was infuriated or relieved. “So you gave these sneakers to a complete stranger?”
“I did.”
“You have no idea what his name is?”
“I don’t.”
“What he looks like?”
“I don’t remember, baby. I was drunk.”
“That’s the real reason you were feeling so charitable. Because you were inebriated. Not because your heart bled for the poor kid eyeing a pair of sneakers at your party.”
“Perhaps…”
“Can you at least try to remember anything about him?”
“Sure. But only if you tell me why in the world this is so important to you. So important, you’re raising your voice at me during our last twenty minutes together. Twenty, not thirty, since you’ve spent ten whole minutes antagonizing and interrogating me.”
Veda let her phone-clad hand fall to the table, mouth agape. She sputtered. Then, she realized, that she’d gotten as much out of him as she was probably going to get.
“I like the sneakers. I really wanted to see the sneakers,” she mumbled.
“I still have no clue how you even knew I’d purchased those sneakers in the first place. Why don’t we start with the answer to that?”
“You know what? I’m hungry,” Veda said, shooting him a look while picking up her fork, filling it with food and taking her first bite that morning.
Gage smiled around his own bite of food, kicking her leg under the table. “Why are you so crazy?”
“You’re crazy,” she grumbled, her mouth full.
“You’re crazy,” he mumbled back, this time deadly serious, eyebrows raised with a smirk on his face. A smirk that wondered how the hell he’d managed to fall in love with her crazy ass in the first place.
Unable to help the smile on her own face, Veda decided to drop the topic of the sneakers, opting instead to enjoy what little time she had left with her boyfriend before he continued risking his life on the cruise ship that awaited his arrival at the docks downtown.
19
“Got another one.” Linc scratched another name off the extensive list on his desk at Shadow Rock Precinct. The precinct buzzed with non-stop activity that morning as civilians flooded in with emergencies and bad news. Linc and Sam, however, their desks directly across from each other, were oblivious to the madness as they frowned into their computers. The only civilians they cared about were the girls smiling seductively at them as they navigated profiles on Rawmoon.com.
Just a few hours of scouring the site’s various categories, and they’d already found the profiles of three girls who’d gone missing from the island. Two of whom had been pregnant patient’s of Penny Nailer’s days before they’d disappeared. Linc’s heart lurched as he scratched another name off the list.
“Chrissy Spencer,” he said to Sam. “Under the alias ‘China’. Patient of Penny Nailer’s. Went missing three months ago. Found dead two months ago. Aztec bird tattoo on the shoulder.”
“Unbelievable,” Sam mumbled, cradling her cheek in one hand, brown eyes dashing across her own computer screen. “What the absolute fuck is going on here? Why sell these girls just to kill them? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Linc shook his head in response, unable to answer.
Sam slammed her pointer finger on her mouse a little harder every second. “Ebony, Asian, Pregnant, BBW, Barely Legal. They literally have a category for every imaginable perversion. How does something like this go unreported for years?”
“I’m guessing the five thousand dollar membership fee has something to do with it,” Linc said. “With that kind of money to throw around, these people have the resources to keep anything under wraps. Good old boys club, through and through.”
Sam cursed under her breath. “We’re gonna be here all fucking night.”
A moment later, the click of Lieutenant Chavez’s heels alerted Linc to her presence long before she set a manicured hand on top of his desk from behind. She leaned in, the flap of her suit jacket falling open as she did.
“Where are we on Raw Moon?” she asked, so close her breath warmed the back of his head. “Do we know who owns the server?”
Linc didn’t look up from his computer. “Still working on it. Cross-referencing the women’s profiles with Penny Nailer’s patient list. We’ve found three matches so far, two of whom have been found dead.”
“Good. Keep digging,” Chavez said.
Linc nodded, waiting for Chavez to exit stage left.
She didn’t, instead, clapping her hand on her hip. “And where are we on The Shadow Rock Chopper?”
He clenched his teeth as her breath made his hair—which he’d opted to leave down—move along with her words. “Still working on it.”
She must’ve sensed his clipped tone. “Well, I certainly hope so considering all the money we lost on those DNA screenings at the hospital.”
He licked his lips as his stomach flipped, the sickness lingering and tightening his abs.
Taking his silence as surrender—which was apparently all she’d been looking for—Chavez went to walk away, but doubled back, facing him sideways. “The Chopper investigation is ice-cold and getting colder. So is Jax Murphy. That promotion is looking further away than ever, Detective Hill. If I were you, I’d do everything in my power not to screw this one up. Find out who killed Kathy Richardson and do it fast.”
Linc paused in the midst of perusing the website, not because he was hearing her, but because it was taking every ounce of his control to stop himself from saying something he’d regret. He didn’t respond or even move his eyes from his computer. Just when he was sure that Chavez was gone, she leaned on the back of his chair.
“Oh, and Hill?”
He closed his eyes, begged for peace, and then looked over his shoulder at her, eyebrows raised in question.
She stood tall and crossed her arms. “Why were you at the forensics lab, in the middle of the night, on the 14th?”
His eyes expanded as he slowly shook his head. “I… wasn’t.”
“Your keycard was swiped. It’s been logged in the system.”
“Then there must be an error in the system, because the only place I’m at in the middle of the night is in my bedroom, asleep.”
She considered his answer, eyes falling.
Silence.
Then, she snuck a look up at him, squinted, turned on her heel and walked away, heels clicking as she released her crossed arms, surveying the bustling precinct in her retreat.
“Fuck was that about?” Sam asked absently, still squinting at her computer.
Linc turned back to his desk. “No idea.”
In the next second, Sam dropped the pen she’d been clutching and scooted closer to her desk. “Shit. I just found Zena Jones' profile.”
Linc left his chair and circled around Sam’s desk, placing a fist on top of it while leaning in, peering at the screen over her shoulder. Sure enough, there was Zena, her profile logged under the “Pregnant” and “Barely Legal” categories, her big blue eyes staring back at him.
“‘Barely Legal,’” Sam spat. “How about ‘Not At All Legal’. She was only seventeen here.”
Like most girls on the site, Zena didn’t smile widely in her photos, instead, giving the faintest upturn to the corner of her lips. It was a knowing, come-hither smile that didn’t belong on any underage girl’s face. Her shock-red hair had been tied in a ponytail on the top of her head, so long it stretched we
ll past her shoulders and beyond the frame.
“I don’t understand,” Sam said. “Why keep the dead girl’s profile up?”
“Guess they haven’t gotten around to taking it down.”
“Why allow a john to fall in love with her profile only to be told, ‘whoops, sorry, she’s dead—find another’? Why disappoint the clientele? Can’t be good for business.”
Unable to answer, Linc stood tall as Sam made a checkmark on her notepad, indicating that they’d found another victim of Penny Nailer’s. With a disgusted sigh, she continued clicking through the profiles and cross-referencing the names.
Just as Linc was about to move back to his desk—seconds after he’d torn his eyes away from the screen—a flash of horror chilled his veins. As a gasp raced through him, flaring his nostrils and swelling his chest, he doubled back, slamming both fists onto Sam’s desk so quickly it caused her pen and notepad to tumble to the floor.
Startled, Sam’s eyes flew up to him, mouth agape. One good look at his face—which had gone ghost white—and she bit back whatever quip had been on the tip of her tongue. Her alarmed eyes begged the question her parted lips couldn’t speak.
“Go back,” Linc demanded, green eyes riveted to her computer.
Recovering, she chuckled softly. “Only if you say pretty please, motherfucker—”
“I said, go back,” Linc spat.
Sam craned her neck in shock, but seeing that Linc was visibly shaken, she took hold of her mouse without another word, navigating the website back one page. Due to the precinct’s slow Internet connection, there was a small lag before the browser left the profile of a young Asian girl and returned to the profile that had caused Linc’s about face.
Once the previous profile finished loading, Sam looked back up at him.
But Linc didn’t look at her—his widened eyes were glued to the profile dashing across the screen. The profile of a beautiful brunette woman with ice blue eyes, high cheekbones, and the same come-hither smile as every other woman on the site. His mouth slowly fell open, chest heaving faster every second, and eyes glistened with the beginnings of an emotion he couldn’t put into words. Red-hot heat rose up his neck and filled his cheeks. He shook his head softly as if losing a battle with the thoughts in his head, his breathing growing strangled as if on the verge of an asthma attack.
Raw (Revenge Book 6) Page 13
