“You’re fucking pregnant!”
“And I wish I wasn’t,” I retort, walking away.
“Hey!” He grabs my arm to stop me, and on complete reflex, I send my elbow sailing back.
Into his nose.
“Motherfucker,” he chokes, staggering back, blinking, his free hand holding his face. “Control that fucking elbow of yours.”
I wince. Shrink. Shit. I didn’t mean to do that, but I’m not glass, and he’s not making me glass so he can put me in his glass house with his glass things. I roll my shoulders back, standing my ground, refusing to apologize. Not out loud, anyway. Mentally, I’m throwing him apologies left and right.
Grabbing a towel, he wipes the blood from his face. “You . . .” he says on an exhale, his eyes raging, his bare chest vibrating. Fuck, he looks savage. But I will not back down. He slowly lifts the gun and aims it at me. What the fuck is he doing? Proving a point?
“The safety is on,” I point out, and he releases it, jaw rolling. I step forward, my eyes narrowing, daring him. This is fucking ridiculous. “Do it,” I push.
“Don’t fucking tempt me.”
He growls.
And I smile, stepping back.
Then perform a perfectly executed roundhouse kick, knocking the gun right out of his hand. I land softly on my feet, my arm safe, close to my chest, and the gun flies across the bathroom and hits the wall, dropping to the floor.
Bang!
The mirror above the sink shatters, I flinch, and James jumps, his eyes darting to me, checking me over. And he stares at me, stunned, his hand still in position, except now he’s unarmed. I throw him a filthy look, turn, and walk away.
“Not glass,” I call back.
With every minute that passes, James’s mood declines more. I’ve asked him two questions and got no answers. Not because he’s ignoring me. Not because he doesn’t have the answers. He just can’t hear me speak, his mind elsewhere.
I’m sitting on the bottom step, watching him pace up and down in front of the window, turning his phone over in his hand repeatedly. The air is thick with tension. No conversation. Hardly any breathing.
Hearing movement behind me, I look over my shoulder up the stairs. Otto appears, carrying two bags, which I know will literally be loaded. I shuffle to the side, giving him room to pass, my eyes glued to them until he sets them down on the floor by the elevator. He flicks eyes to me. I don’t like the uncertainty I see.
The elevator doors open and Goldie appears, tossing a look I also don’t like to James. She’s fiddling with her suit jacket, fastening it and unfastening it, and Otto is spinning the piercing in his lip constantly.
James goes to the bags and crouches, pulling the zipper of each one open and checking inside. I get up from the stairs and go to him, slowing when my cell rings. The name on my screen has me rejecting the call without thought, and James slowly lifts his head, giving me his attention for the first time in an hour. Of course he would hear my cell. And very quickly, the bastard thing rings again.
“Who is it?” he asks. He knows damn well who it is. Who else would make me this uncomfortable?
“No one.”
“Answer it.”
“Why?”
“So you can say goodbye,” he grunts, nothing but pure hatred marring his face. I’ve already said goodbye. Numerous times. “A final goodbye,” he adds, and because I’m not completely stupid, I take the call. James looks like he could pull one of those guns at any moment and go on a shooting spree. Ollie’s timing is the worst.
“Ollie,” I answer, turning away, unable to see James looking like he’s about to kill something, which is irony at its best. “Now’s not a good time.”
“You’re pregnant,” he says, his tone loaded with disgust. “And by the man who killed your mother?”
“Ollie,” I whisper, stunned by the condemnation in his words. “James had nothing to do with Mom’s death.”
“Explain why he was there then, Beau. I saw him with my own eyes in that footage Nath had. Come on, you were a smart cop.”
“I can’t do this, Ollie.” My shoulder rises to my earlobes, feeling three sets of eyes aimed at my back.
He sighs over a curse. “Beau, please, come to me. Let me help you. I can’t sit back and watch this happen.”
“Ollie—”
“Remember the good times, Beau. We can have that again. Jaz would want that. She’d turn in her grave if she could see this. Who the fuck is he, anyway?”
“Goodbye.” I quickly hang up and turn off my phone, my hands shaking terribly. And suddenly they’re not. Suddenly, James is holding them. I look up at him.
“We need to go,” he says, motioning to the elevator. “Ready?”
Ready? For what? What’s going to happen? What’s his plan?
When I don’t answer, he pulls me along behind him as Otto and Goldie lift the bags from the floor.
Those bags. How many weapons do they need?
And, more to the point, who’s going to bear the brunt of James’s mood?
James rides up front with Otto driving, and I get the pleasure of Goldie’s company in the back. James remains glued to his phone, and numerous times Goldie catches me staring at her. “You never did tell me how you and James know each other.”
She smiles, and I notice out the corner of my eye James moving for the first time since we got in the car. He looks up to the mirror in the sun visor, his eyes on Goldie. Waiting. Or is he warning?
“He saved me,” she says, simple as that, no elaboration.
“How?”
James looks at me before returning to his cell. “Rape,” he says, all too casually, almost detached. “She was being raped.”
I turn my stunned eyes Goldie’s way, and for the first time since I’ve known her, I see emotion on her face. Raped. I can’t imagine any man would be crazy enough to take Goldie on. Frankly, she’s frightening. “I’m sorry,” I murmur, at a loss. What does a woman say to another woman who’s faced that kind of horror?
“Don’t be. He’ll be dead before I leave this world.”
“Amen,” Otto pipes in, and my eyes turn onto him, finding his grip of the wheel turning his knuckles white. Goldie isn’t a woman who needs protection. Not now, at least. But she’s got it. I settle back in my seat and turn a small smile onto Goldie, but it falls when I find her still staring at my stomach.
And it hits me. Oh God. A baby? She must sense my change in persona, the increase of my sorrow, because she snaps out of her daydream and looks at me with sad eyes. My hand is on hers in a second without thought, squeezing, telling her I’m sorry again without words. She looks away, but her hand turns and accepts mine, squeezing in return. Abortion? Miscarriage?
“You ready for that ten-bedroom villa full of women?” she asks, but only after clearing her throat.
“Damn straight I am,” Otto replies, pulling off the main road into a street. My street. “Beats ice cream in the park, you pussy.”
I frown through my increasing anxiety, as Goldie laughs and drops my hand, reaching forward and smacking him over the head. “Fuck you, Dino Dick.”
The car has stopped outside Lawrence and Dexter’s house. I have to get out and face my uncles. I have to see if that bottle of Krug is hiding something. “I think I should go alone,” I say, trying to sound assertive but only achieving a whisper.