“Wow,” I said to Bailey. “That was new.”
“Baba?” She offered me another strawberry bit in her palm, which I accepted and plopped in my mouth.
“Thanks,” I told her, “but I’m much harder to impress. Poop in the potty; then we’ll talk.”
I wiped the red strawberry film off a sleepy baby and carted her upstairs. She drifted off to sleep after the fourteenth verse of “Hush, Little Baby.” And thank goodness too. I’d already promised to buy her a tutu, a tricycle, and a host of other things well beyond her pay grade. Not that Colin would mind. He’d probably buy her a castle if she crooked her pudgy little finger at it.
I shook my head. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand about spoiling her. He wanted to spoil her. It was like some little-boy-lost redemption drama playing out in our own home. The worst thing was that I was probably part of it. Somehow his white-knight radar had settled on the two of us. We made a quaint picture, this family, and I only hoped it would last. However it had started, on a whim or just an accident of fate, I liked to think we’d built something real by now.
Things were good, very good.
Chapter Fifteen
Back downstairs, I prepped the strawberry-rhubarb filling and crumble topping and set it to bake. Then I pulled the clothes from the dryer and into the basket, the warm scent of spring filling the laundry room. A shuffle behind me caught my attention, but before I could turn, I was spun around and slammed into the wall. Struggling to gasp for air, I saw the sneering face of a cop. One of the cops who’d come around earlier, poking around about Colin. Shay, Shat, Shaw—that was it. Detective Fucking Shaw, the asshole.
How did he get in? The front door. I probably hadn’t locked it after Linda left. Too damned complacent. Should’ve known better.
“Hi, Allie.” He smiled an ugly smile.
“Where’s your partner?” I gasped. Despite his quiet intensity, I’d trusted the other guy much more.
“Oh, just on a break,” he said. My mind flashed to Bailey sleeping upstairs, and I prayed she kept sleeping. “Thought we’d just have a little talk, you and me.” He waved a manila folder that I hadn’t noticed before in my face. “Take a look.”
Hesitantly I accepted the folder from his hands.
A picture of Rick leaving, swinging loading doors behind him. The next one was me pushing Bailey through that same door in an overfull grocery cart, glancing behind me. The last picture was me and Andrew sitting across from each other, the broken blinds of the diner window behind us.
My mind latched onto inane details first. How had they even known about these meetings? I suppose they were following me. Where had the photographer been sitting in the diner? From that angle it looked to be a booth across the restaurant. Maybe a cell phone camera, although I’d been so wrapped up in the conversation, I probably wouldn’t have noticed full-fledged paparazzi.
But none of that mattered, because it was clear what these were—leverage. They’d wanted information on Colin and Philip, and I’d refused. Now he was back, bringing pictures that threatened to tear Colin and me apart.
“That’s right,” he said, nodding approvingly like I’d done a neat trick. “Your little sugar daddy wouldn’t be too pleased to see these, would he? Doesn’t allow you to sleep around, does he?”
It didn’t matter that Colin meant so much more to me than a sugar daddy; that actually made it worse. And it didn’t matter that I hadn’t slept with these guys; if Colin saw them, he would be extremely and rightfully pissed. I damned myself a million times for not telling him. Rather, for not telling him again, when he was sober and awake. And still I thought I should do just that. I had some hope that it wouldn’t mean the end of us. Maybe he could understand why I’d had to meet Andrew and why I’d kept it from him. It was worth a shot and definitely better than whoring for this guy.
He must have taken my silence for acquiescence. “I need information on shipping routes,” he said. “Only Philip Murphy will have that, understand? I need you to get close to him and give me the dates and locations of the drops, see?”
I handed the pictures back. “No.”
“Now, now, don’t be stupid. I could have you written up for conspiracy, drug trafficking, anything I fucking want. Hell, I could even say you propositioned me and arrest you for prostitution.”