I smiled, knowing all too well there were a million worse places to be. "What did your doctors say about your bones setting? Are they happy with everything?"
She nodded enthusiastically. Her wrist was still bandaged heavily from a recent surgery to correct the way it was all healing. "Going as good as anyone could have hoped. The only concern now is my stupid placenta. They have to keep giving me transfusions for baby, but they seem confident it will sort itself out soon. I'm quietly hoping they'll let me go home for the rest of the pregnancy. I really don't want to be stuck here for another five months."
"Yeah, fair enough." I sat down in one of her guest chairs with a groan. Whatever show she was watching had super catchy music, and I watched it for a minute. "What's this? You finished Gilmore Girls?"
"Yup," she replied. "This show is my new obsession; it's about this chick and her ghost band, who—" She broke off and narrowed her eyes at me, tilting her head to the side. "Fucking never mind what I'm watching. What the hell happened to you?"
I exchanged a look with Kody, but he just shrugged. The message was clear. It was entirely my call what I wanted to tell Bree about all that we'd done in the past few days. How many people we'd killed. Fucking hell.
Biting my lip, I agonized over what I'd actually come to ask her. Then I gave myself a quick mental slap to get it over with.
"Hey Bree, I want to ask something a bit left field," I told her, ignoring her question about how I'd ended up so battered.
She frowned in confusion but nodded. "Anything at all," she said. "What's up?"
I shifted in my seat and tightened my grip around my coffee. "Uh, I wanted to know... did you ever meet any of our new security guards?"
Now she looked even more confused. "Yeah, I did. I mean, not at the house; the last time I was there was... I don't even remember. Your boys sort of made it clear I wasn’t welcome at the house, remember? They tried that BS with your dad threatening you to stay away from me.” She snorted a laugh, because we’d just taken to hanging out in the library at SGU instead. “But I met the bearded guy, Sampson?" I nodded. "Right. I met him when you were visiting Steele. And a couple of the other guys. Wade and Bill?"
"Gill," I corrected but nodded again. "Right, yeah, that's what I thought. I just... fucking hell." I chewed on the edge of my lip, really not wanting to keep going down this line of questioning. Kody was frowning at me, too, like he had no idea what sort of thread I was picking at.
Bree gave a nervous laugh. "Okay, you're kinda freaking me out, girl. What's going on?"
"Bree, do you happen to have a photo of that guy you were seeing last year?" I let the question out in a rush, and she blinked back at me, more confused than ever.
"David?" she repeated with a squeak of alarm. "Why?"
I cringed at the name, cursing myself. Kody clued in there, too, and cursed profusely under his breath.
"Just... do you have a picture? It's kind of important." I didn't want to go jumping to conclusions if I was wrong. It was a pretty common name, after all. "You mentioned he was older and pretty firm on keeping your relationship quiet."
Bree's cheeks heated, and her eyes shot to Kody. She was clearly embarrassed, but... fucking hell. This was bigger than her bad taste in men.
"Kody's not judging you, girl," I told her in a gentle voice. "Please just tell me?"
She rolled her eyes skyward, blowing out a long breath. "Yes, he was older. Like... dad-age old. And he was a cop. So like, yeah. That would have been a bit of a fucking scandal if his wife had found out, right?"
My chest ached. He had a wife? This got worse and worse. I really, really hoped it was a coincidence and he wasn’t the same Dave. Or maybe that his wife was a total fabrication.
Bree reached for her phone, looking depressed as fuck as she unlocked it and opened her photo gallery. "He never wanted me to take pictures of us," she mumbled. "I figured he was just super paranoid about his job or something. But I took one when he wasn't looking one day... I don't know why. I was just really in love, you know? Or I thought I was."
Tension sang through me so hard it was everything I could do not to snatch the phone out of her hands. The photo had to have been from almost a year ago, though, so it was going to take her a bit of scrolling to find it.
Kody cleared his throat. "He was a cop?" Bree nodded, still scrolling. "He's not anymore?" He clarified.
"Uh, I don't think so," she replied. "I saw him a couple of months ago in the grocery store downtown. He was in some kind of private security uniform, and last I knew SGPD didn't allow moonlighting. I just assumed he'd done something to fuck up and got fired. Maybe he was screwing other teenage girls and got caught." She shrugged. "I didn't exactly approach him to chat. Dallas was with me, and I didn't want to point him out, you know?"
I nodded my understanding. Dallas would have slaughtered him. Hell, that might have done me a huge favor if he had. But Bree couldn't have known. No one had known.
"Here." She expanded an image and passed it to me. "Not the best picture, but it's all I've got."
I took the phone and held my breath as I looked down at the screen. The man in the picture had his back to the camera, his face in part profile, but there was no doubt in my mind. That was Dave. Declan. Whoever the fuck he was. He'd targeted Bree, made her fall for him, gotten her pregnant, and all for what? To leverage her for information? For access?
I swallowed heavily and offered the phone to Kody.
He took one glance at it, then tightened his fist around the phone like he wanted to hurl it at the wall. A venomous curse fell from his lips, and Bree's brows shot up in shock.
"Guys, what the fuck is going on right now? Why are you asking all this shit about David? Did something happen?" She gasped, her eyes taking in all my bruises again. "Did he do that to you?"
I grimaced and gave a slight headshake. "No, most of this was from Zane." It was just my broken wrist that her ex-boyfriend had given me, but she didn't need to know that. "He was... David, I mean—he was one of our security guards at the house that was killed last night."
Bree gasped, covering her mouth with her fingers as her eyes swam with sadness. "Oh my god, that's... Holy shit." She shook her head in disbelief. "What happened?"
I met Kody's eyes, then sighed. "My stalker," I replied, keeping the details vague to spare her the inevitable guilt. She didn't need that burden added to her shoulders on top of everything else. She was innocent in Dave's scheme; she shouldn't have to suffer the guilt of knowing he'd used her. "He, uh, he tried to abduct me. It didn't end well."
She blinked rapidly, like she was fighting tears. "I can imagine."
"Bree, you mentioned he had a wife. Can you tell us anything about her? We'd like to inform her first, but his employment records never listed a spouse." Kody was a smooth liar, I'd give him that. I was in a weirdly quiet state of shock now that my suspicion had been confirmed, and any bullshit I tried to spin would have fallen all kinds of flat.
Bree shook her head. "I, um, no he wouldn't tell me anything about her. But I know his home address, if that helps?"