“Honestly?” I said. “I don’t know. It seems so surreal when yesterday everything looked so dire.” I paused. “Though, from what Captain Mickey said to me as I was leaving to meet with IA—Internal Affairs,” I said when Audrey started to look confused. “He told me that we had three officers out with the flu and that he’d given IA a ten-day window to work under.”
“That, and they got some help from a third party,” Ghost said as he walked into the restaurant and sat down, dragging a chair over from another table. We just watched him in surprise at that statement as he did.
Once he was seated, he plopped a thick file folder down in front of me.
“I was able to get some new information to them on these girls, or more specifically, the con that the parents of these two girls have been running all over the country using the girls. At least eleven separate incidents—that we know of—all very similar to the one involving you. Although, this was the first time they’d taken drugs—that was obviously the girls’ spin on this fucking scheme.”
“Language,” Mina said almost casually as she gestured for a kiss.
Ghost gave her one, then looked at his daughter.
“No hug?”
She grinned and got up to give him a hug, but she turned around and came right back to my lap as soon as she was done.
“Replaced,” Ghost pantomimed stabbing himself in the heart. “Anyway, I was also able to pull the dash cam feed. Apparently…”
“Wait, how did you find that?”
He grinned. “I hacked into…”
I held my hand up in disagreement. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
He shrugged. “When I was able to obtain the feed, I sent the video—the complete video—to the station and to the IA director personally. That’s probably why she was through with you in two hours instead of eight.”
Wasn’t that the truth.
“Thanks, man.”
He didn’t respond.
In fact, he didn’t respond for so long that I looked up at him, not realizing I’d dropped my gaze to his daughter, the smaller of the two, until the silence had overtaken the entire table.
“What?”
He was staring at me.
“Oh, dammit,” Audrey interrupted. “I spilled hot sauce on my crotch.”
I looked up to find a wide red splotch on her jeans as she stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
I snorted and watched her go, not realizing that the silence had continued after she left until I looked first at Mina and then to Ghost.
“What?” I repeated.
“You fixed her.”
My brows rose.
“Although I want to beat your ass for crossing that line…I’m glad that you did.”
My heart stuttered in my chest.
“So you’re saying you approve?”
He shrugged. “I’m saying that I can live with it because it’s obvious that she adores you. I don’t know how you did it, and honestly, I’m not sure that I want to know. But she’s happier than I could’ve ever made her on my own. And, for that, I owe you more than just my gratitude.”
Something in my chest loosened at hearing those words.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Do you think fish can get cancer?”
I looked down at Ghost’s daughter, Sienna. “Maybe? I’m not really a fish expert.”
Sienna and I had formed a bond during our time together in the panic room. We’d been in there while Ghost, his wife and Audrey fought off armed attackers.
We tried to keep each other calm, and even though she’d been a young child, she’d been so strong.
I had been shot in the neck, and I had blood all over me. I was bleeding steadily, and I was trying very hard not to pass out from the blood loss. I didn’t want to pass out and not be able to tell the others what had happened, so I’d teased, joked and told stories to Sienna all while I was in so much pain that I very much needed to throw up.
You don’t live through something like that with another person, adult or child, and not form a bond, and it was very clear that she favored me over all the others.
Not that I minded. I liked Ghost’s kid. I liked that she was warm to me, and especially now that I was seeing her aunt.
It just gave me another leg up.
I was paying attention to Sienna’s next reply, so I missed the first half of what Ghost said.
“What?”
Ghost stood up in answer, his body vibrating with tension.
My gaze moved in the same direction where I now heard a commotion coming from, and my stomach dropped at what I saw.
The Shaws were in the same restaurant as me.
We’d managed to avoid seeing each other lately. I’d even gone as far as to avoid going into a restaurant if I saw that they were there. Sometimes it was just easier to avoid them. It went against the grain to do so, but my blood pressure needed a break every now and then.
But by the look on their faces as they glared at Audrey, I realized that it wouldn’t be happening today.
No, something had changed and likely, that was the fact that their little plan had backfired. If they’d hired those girls and their parents to do something to me and my career, then it was only a matter of time before Ghost would eventually get to them.
Now they were here to cover their asses, and to do that, they’d found Audrey alone, and had started to fill her with lies.
Fuck!
Patting Sienna’s back I said, “Get up, honey. I need to go over there.”
Ghost started striding across the room before I’d even made the pass off from myself to Mina with her younger daughter.
By the time I got across the room where Audrey was now angrily yelling at the couple about ‘an innocent girl who didn’t deserve to have their filthy, fucked up son touching her,’ I was no longer worried that the Shaws were telling lies about me. I knew it.
I arrived just in time to hear Ephraim Shaw Jr. tell Audrey that his son was a model citizen.
“Jay was a good person,” Ephraim bellowed in Audrey’s face.
Ghost pushed Ephraim back until there was more than two feet of space between them, but that only gave room for Brenda Shaw to step in.
“He was my baby and that monster killed him by beating him to death.”
Audrey took a step forward, but I caught her around the waist before she could get closer to the vile woman.
“You think that your son didn’t deserve that?” Audrey asked, deceptively calm. “Let me tell you something, had my brother been there when I was raped, he would’ve done the exact same thing.” She was shaking in anger at that point. “Then again, maybe it’s okay in your book that your son raped a young girl for years. A girl around the same age as your daughter.” Audrey pointed to the side of the room.
That was when I noticed Krisney in the corner of the room. Her face was pale, and she looked like she’d rather be anywhere but where she was.
Ghost grunted in approval at Audrey’s words.
I looked around when I heard all the gasps from the other diners, and I almost missed the way that Brenda stepped forward and tried to slap her hand across Audrey’s face.
She would have, too, since Ghost was still blocking Mr. Shaw’s path, and I was looking the other way.
Krisney, however, did not miss it.
She was across the space so fast that I barely turned my gaze back to her when she caught her mother’s hand in an iron grip… and flew with her mother’s momentum.
Krisney was a small woman. Much smaller than her father and mother.