And no man could fight a war and win without information.
He thought he knew Millie Cross twenty years ago, but he didn’t.
He didn’t know dick about her now.
So he reached into his back pocket, pulled out his phone, went to his contacts, and touched the screen to connect.
He put the phone to his ear.
“Tell me you’re callin’ to set up a game,” Shirleen Jackson said into his ear.
“Take your money any time you want,” he replied.
She drew out her, “Please.”
But she was all bluff. This was why she was always losing. That and the fact he could read her hand by looking at her face.
Hell, the woman used to run poker games in Denver and she was the worst player he’d known.
But now she was also the receptionist at Nightingale Investigations, the premier private investigation firm in the entire Rocky Mountain region.
And she was a friend.
Shirleen and High had history. She’d do anything for him and he’d return the favor.
It wasn’t about markers.
It was about bond. The kind circumstances in life can make that can’t be broken.
She’d been dirty.
He had too.
But she’d been dirty when she’d had only her nephew at her back.
He’d been dirty when he’d had all his brothers at his, but the Club was broken.
He still had his brothers and she’d only had Darius.
Darius was loyal and he was smart but he was only one man, one man Shirleen felt the need to protect.
So there was a time when there was no one to protect Shirleen.
Except High.
He’d done it.
She’d never forgotten it.
And she was the kind of woman who never would.
“Need somethin’,” he told her.
“Hit me,” she invited like he knew she would.
“Anything and everything you can dig up on Millicent Anna Cross. Female. Forty-one. Lives in Denver. I’ll text you what else I got on her that’ll make it easier on you. But first, I’ll need an address.”
“You got it,” she replied.
“Boys aren’t in this, Shirleen,” he told her. “Nightingale or any of them. You keep this on the down low. Only you know. Yeah?”
“Yeah, High,” she agreed, then asked probingly, “You good?”
He didn’t hesitate to give it to her.
“In a game I don’t wanna be in but I’m in it, and this time, I intend to win.”
“Right,” she said quietly. Then, quieter, “Met you after it was over, boy, but anyone who was a player in Denver back then knew you had a girl named Millie.”
He drew in a deep breath.
Then he said, “Just get me what you can get.”
“Okay, High.”
He rested back against the cushions of the couch. “We’ll set up a game soon.”
“Just don’t bring Hound. Sure that boy’s a cheat,” she muttered.
With anyone else, that kind of slur against a brother would invite retribution.
But for High, Shirleen was family, so nothing invited retribution.
“Hound sniffs out a game, no stoppin’ him from showin’.”
“Whatever,” she muttered. “Now, we gonna shoot the shit or you gonna let me get my beauty rest?”
“Wouldn’t dream of disturbin’ your beauty rest.”
“Already did, boy.”
After delivering that, she hung up.
High took the phone from his ear and grinned at it.
Then he tossed it on the cushion beside him and saw the stack of dishes in the sink where he’d left them that morning telling himself he’d take care of them that night.
He wasn’t going to wash dishes.
He was going to hit the sack.
This he didn’t delay in doing.
The RV was a mess.
But his sheets were clean. He’d made sure of that in order to wash Millie’s scent away.
Unfortunately, in the dark, lying in the bed where he’d had her ass in his hands, his tat on her back inescapable so he’d eventually had to cover it with his hand so he could concentrate on coming instead of fucking her for as long as he could, even if he managed to do it until his last breath, he couldn’t keep his mind off her.
Cleo and Zadie.
Deb had picked his oldest girl’s name, High had picked his baby’s.
Neither of them were anywhere near the ten names he and Millie had picked out.
Five for boys. Five for girls. That way they were sure to be covered whatever happened.
Her two top picks for girls were her two grandmothers’ names.
Katherine and Ruth.
Katy and Ruthy.
He wondered if her girls were with her now or with some ex.
He clenched his teeth at that idea but that didn’t stop the thoughts, which included wondering, if she’d instead had boys, if she’d picked the top names they’d decided. Flynn and Chance.
He wouldn’t put it past her, even though giving another man’s kids his boys’ names would be beyond the pale, even for her.
But she’d been rabid about picking the right names. Three fucking years they went over it. It was like a game, one they both enjoyed, going from the bizarre to the sublime in choices, trying to make each other laugh, but also being serious, settling in on some, rearranging favorites, until they were sure.
But they never quit talking about it, running a name by the other just to see if it’d make the cut.
Until a couple months before she sent him packing.
Then she’d quit doing it and any discussion they had about it when he did was stiff and forced, like she wanted him to think she was still into it when she absolutely wasn’t.
He hadn’t really noticed at the time.
Like Zadie, he was living in a dreamworld.
Then Millie booted him out.
And now here he was, forty-four years old and he’d fucked up huge along the way. He’d had a loveless marriage that lasted for thirteen years. He’d had so many close calls of so many different varieties that could have bought him a different life, or an early death it wasn’t fucking funny.
But out of his life he still had his brothers and he had his two girls.
And he’d had three years living a dream.
A dream that was a lie.
But at least it felt like a dream before he found out it was a lie and he’d take that.
In High’s life since he’d lost Millie, he’d take it.