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This was going to get messy; I could tell.
I walked the entire store three times before giving up. I didn’t want to summon Angel to help. He needed some time. Surely I could handle hunting down one mother and a baby without him. Or not. I’d missed them, or so I thought. As I headed out of the store, I spotted a dark blond woman with a baby in the store’s tiny cafeteria. She was drinking a soda and reading a book as the baby nursed a bottle in his stroller.
I walked up and ordered a coffee, chancing the occasional glance over my shoulder. She was a very pretty woman, and yet for some reason not what I figured Garrett would go for. She just looked like a mom. Probably because she had a baby. Maybe that was what was throwing me. Imagining Swopes in a domestic capacity was a little more than my brain could handle.
She tucked a long strand of hair behind her ear as I sat in a booth across from her. Clearly a woman of good taste, she was reading a historical romance. I loved historical romances. And contemporary romances. And paranormal romances. And young adult romances. Pretty much anything in front of the word
romance
would do it for me.
“Is that good?” I asked her, referring to her book with a nod when she glanced at me.
“Oh, yeah, it is.” She closed it and offered me a better view.
“It looks awesome. I love that genre.”
She turned to her son when he cooed at her. “Me, too.”
“And your baby is adorable.”
A brilliant smile brightened her face. “Thank you.”
I rose a couple of inches for a better view into the stroller. Garrett had been right. Her son was clearly multiracial. I wanted a better peek at his eyes and was just about to ask for one when the store manager walked over to her.
“Hey, little guy,” he said, pretending to steal the boy’s bottle until he laughed. Then the man turned to me, and the resemblance to Garrett Swopes was unca
* * *
I called Garrett on the way home. “So, I just saw your ex and her adorable baby. Clearly you are not the father.”
He was not amused. “Did you get the samples?” he asked.
“No, I did not. It’s going to be a little difficult to just walk up and swab her baby’s mouth. And even more awkward when I start swabbing hers. What am I going to say, Swopes? ‘Excuse me while I take a DNA sample for my paranoid friend’?”
“Did you even look at him?”
“I did,” I said, “and I agree. He is multiracial and has your eyes, but guess what.”
“What?”
“So does her boyfriend.”
“What?”
“Yep. Her boyfriend looks very much like you. As in, same skin tone, same eye color, same facial features. Do you have a brother you never told me about?”
“No.”
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’d bet my bottom dollar that baby is her boyfriend’s.”
“Charles, you did not see the way she looked at me that day. He’s mine—I know it.”
If anyone could read people, it was Garrett Swopes. “Okay, what if you are right? Then what? She clearly has a thing for guys with dark skin and sexy silvery eyes.”
“But what if there’s more to it than that?” he asked.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but the way she looked at me, Charles. Like she was scared to death I’d make the co
“Fine. I mean they seemed tight. I didn’t sense any stress coming off her when he walked up. They looked really happy, in fact.”
“Something’s not right. I know it. You’re not off the hook.”
“Seriously?” I whined. “I still have to get their DNA?”
“Yes. And sooner rather than later. Now I’m even more curious about what she was hiding.”
“Maybe she was hiding the fact that she finds you paranoid and delusional.”
“I don’t think so. That wasn’t the vibe I picked up on.”
“I’m sending you a vibe right now. Are you getting it?”
“That’s not nice, Charles,” he said before hanging up.
I’d never had to steal someone’s DNA before, but I was sure I would suck at it. He was going to have to give me a damn good reason for taking such a risk.
* * *
Before I got too close to home, my phone rang again. It was Agent Carson.
I answered excitedly. “Well?” I asked, hoping for good news.
“Meet us at the Crossroads Motel in half an hour.”
“What? You’re keeping her in that dive?”
“No, we’re meeting you in that dive. Do you really think I’d reveal the location of the safe house?”
“Oh, okay. Never mind. I’ll be there.”
When I pulled up to the Crossroads, Agent Carson got out of a parked SUV. “We are risking a lot, here, Davidson. If Emily doesn’t testify tomorrow morning, Phillip Brinkman walks.”
“I understand,” I said, pretending to be working toward the same goal, the successful prosecution of Emily’s boyfriend.
We walked up the stairs to room 217. Carson used the key. I was half expecting a secret knock or a password or something. Nope. She just used the key. It was all rather anticlimactic.
As we sat around the table, Emily explained what happened through a sea of unending tears. I sat stu
“He just got so mad,” she said, sniffing into a tissue. “I think he forgot I was there. He was mad at one of his men and he beat him to death with a tire iron while his other men just stood around and watched. Don’t get me wrong. I could tell they were very uncomfortable, wondering if they were next. Something went wrong with a shipment, he said, and he just lost it. I’ve— I’ve never seen him like that.”
I fought the urge to applaud.
After using every pleading word in my repertoire, I finally convinced Agent Carson to let me speak to Emily alone. She was not happy about it, and I got the feeling Emily wasn’t either.
“Look, Emily, I spoke to Phillip. I know what’s really going on.”
She didn’t trust me. Her gaze darted to the door, toward the FBI agents on the other side of it, as though wondering if I were setting her up somehow.
“They say they have someone from my i
“We didn’t know what else to do. They will kill him, Ms. Davidson.”
“I know, hon. You’re very brave for doing this. For risking your life for your boyfriend.”
“I love him, Charley. He’s a screwup, but he’s my screwup. He never thought it would come to this.”
“I understand, but if it’s found out that you lied under oath—”
“I’m not worried about me.”
“Well, that makes one of us. Can you stall?” I asked her. “Can you just hold out, don’t testify tomorrow, but don’t back out. Just—” I didn’t have a clue what to tell her.
“Get sick?” she asked. “Because if I’m sick, I can’t testify, right?”
That was perfect, but would they buy that? “It would have to be both severe and completely believable.”
One corner of her mouth twisted up into a smirk. “Trust me, it will be both. I have an excellent gag reflex.”
I nodded. If her puking-on-demand skills were anything like her acting skills, she’d nail it. “Okay, if you think you can get away with it, do it. Just try very hard not to get on that stand tomorrow without recanting anything just yet. If my plan works, you won’t have to testify at all, and we can tell the FBI that you had to do it. I’ll try to get you out of any charges.”
“I’m not worried about me,” she said again, and I realized just how much she loved Brinkman. “I can handle anything they throw at me. Just get Phillip out of this. I want him alive and well. That’s all I care about.”
“You’re a good person, Emily.”
She shook her head. “No, he is. He just got in over his head, said yes to the wrong people. But he is a very good person inside.”