Shock Advised (Kilgore Fire #1) (18 page)

I cleared my throat and both Nico and Mia looked up.

Mia stiffened.

“I told you not to bother him so early!” She cried, shooting an accusing glare at Nico.

Nico held his hands up.

“It wasn’t me,
Chiquita
,” he said. “Promise.”

She harrumphed, then burst into a huge smile as she got a look at me.

“Did you get dressed in the dark?” She wondered, looking down at the shirt I was wearing.

It was the same one I was wearing yesterday, and so were the pants.

I shrugged as I entered the room, taking a seat at Mia’s left.

Jack followed me in, but I ignored him.

He wasn’t on my favorite people list right then.

“Tell me what the hell is going on,” I demanded.

Luke took up positon against one wall, and Jack followed suit on the other.

Nico shoved his phone back into his pocket and crossed his arms over his chest.

Mia bit her lip, looking first at Luke then at Nico, before she turned back to me.

“Someone is blackmailing my ex, I mean…Colt’s father…and trying to pin it on me,” she said finally.

“But not you,” Jack said.

Mia’s eyes went wide.

“Of course not me!” She cried. “I haven’t seen him, or spoken to him, in over a year and a half now.”

Jack shrugged unrepentantly.

Mia’s eyes turned to me.

“You never contacted him when your son was sick?” Jack continued.

She shook her head.

That was news to me.

Why hadn’t she done that?

“I had my doctor call him. I couldn’t call him since I had the restraining order out against me,” Mia explained.

Her face flushed as she said that, and Jack’s eyes narrowed.

“Why does he have a restraining order against you?” Jack asked.

Mia sighed.

“I slept with the father of the children I was watching. I had just started at the hospital, and I was still working for the man that hired me to watch his kids, along with another part-time job, while I waited for the hospital to finish the hiring process. I’d told him I was leaving to start full time with the hospital, as a nurse, and he decided to throw me a going away party,” she said to her lap. “I don’t know what happened. I guess I got drunk. I don’t know. The next morning, I woke up and I was in bed with him…and I left.”

She looked beyond embarrassed that she was having to have this conversation.

I was the only one surprised by it all, though.

Jack, Nico and Luke looked like they knew the entire sordid tale.

“And you got pregnant,” Jack confirmed.

“Yes,” she agreed almost unwillingly. “I went back to tell him about a month later, and he said to get rid of it. Said that he would have no part in raising Colt, and that if I knew what was good for me, I’d get rid of it while I still could.”

“You didn’t,” Luke said.

She finally looked up to him.

“I don’t even know how I did that…
got drunk
,” she said. “I haven’t had a drink in years. I wasn’t a big drinker to begin with. He kept handing me drinks, and I kept taking them. They tasted so good. I didn’t even realize that there was alcohol in them. What kind of stupid person doesn’t realize there’s alcohol in their drink?”

“A lot of people. There’s drinks out there that taste exactly like a candy drop in the form of a beverage. Seriously, you wouldn’t believe how many drinks there are where you can’t tell there’s alcohol in them,” Nico said, trying to help her out.

She shrugged. “I tried to go back to Edwin and tell him about Colt…about his leukemia. But he said if I came on his property again he’d sue me for anything he could think of…and he probably would have, too. He’s got the cash to do it. His wife is a millionaire in her own right. I’m sure the two of them together would make a formidable pair.”

“Fuck,” Jack said harshly.

She winced. “Yeah. It wasn’t my finest moment. I tried to contact him one more time, hoping that he’d reconsider, but he didn’t. After that, I was slapped with a court order to stay at least five hundred feet from him at all times. It was awesome.”

Jack knew all of this already.

Hell, I knew before he even said he’d done it that he’d run a background check on her weeks ago.

In fact, he probably knew more about her than I did.

“Why don’t we just cut the bullshit, Jackopa, and you tell Luke and Nico what you’ve found on your end? There’s a reason you showed up at my house, conveniently placed the paper exactly where I was sure to see it and woke me up so early. You know something, so enough already and just spill it,” I called him on his shit.

He sighed and dropped his act.

“I just wanted to get all of my ducks in a row,” he said.

“And what’d you find?” Luke rumbled, rubbing his face.

He must’ve been up all night.

I would’ve normally felt bad for him, but he wanted this job, and it came with a lot of responsibilities.

Like keeping my girl here overnight.

“How long have you been here?” I asked shortly.

Mia looked at her watch.

It was then I saw she was already dressed and ready for work.

“About a half hour,” she said.

My brows furrowed.

“Then how in the hell is it already in the paper?” I asked. “How do they even know about this?”

“I can help with that,” Jack said, pulling out a piece of paper from his pocket. “You asked me to look into those articles that’ve been showing up on the firefighters and the calls y’all have run before any news is released to the public.”

Luke shot me a look.

I’d asked him to look into it, too.

But he’d been slower about it than Jack had.

I was just covering my bases, though.

“Same chick, I mean
reporter
, has written all the articles,” he said. “Ran a background check on her and her financials. Real interesting stuff. It seems that she’s been getting a weekly deposit. They conveniently started two days before the first article she published about the trailer park fire. And she’s been getting one a week since then, all from the same person. This person.”

He showed me the information he’d been able to dig up, and I groaned.

Wanda McCarty, the partial owner of Jenner’s Heating and Air.

“Mother. Fucker.”

“What?” Everyone asked at once.

Jack glared at me.

“Tai had the fire marshal give out a few tickets on an A/C business, and in the meantime, it seems that he managed to well and truly piss off the woman that runs the show there in the process,” Jack said reproachfully.

I winced.

Yep that’d been me. I had done that.

Me and my overreacting self.

But, really, that miserable bitch had it coming.

“I’m aware that she doesn’t like me, for some reason, and she’s refused to schedule an appointment for some A/C repairs in my old place. So what? What does all the rest of this have to do with me?” Mia asked glaring at me through narrowed eyes clearly telling me this conversation was far from over.

I grinned unrepentantly.

“She was also sending emails to one Edwin McCain from a Gmail account listed as
[email protected]
. McCain is the man you stated was Colt’s father, correct?” Jack questioned.

Mia closed her eyes and sighed.

“So were they both in on it, or was Wanda doing it all on her own?” I asked.

“Edwin wasn’t aware of Wanda. All he knew was that the woman he had a restraining order on was now threatening him,” he said. “He also told his wife about what happened, and she said he had to file a police report about it.”

I closed my eyes as I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“This is one big cluster fuck,” I said.

Jack snorted.

“You could say that again,” he said.

My eyes popped open to glare at my brother.

“Back off,” I said. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

He bared his teeth at me.

“How many times do I have to tell you to keep your nose out of other people’s business?” He snapped.

“Okay, here we go,” I said, throwing up my hands.

My brother still blamed me for
everything
, like I was still that fucked up mess of a teenage boy, and he clearly would never stop.

“What, exactly, would you have done had Winter been in this same situation?” I asked curiously.

Jack scowled. “Winter wouldn’t have been in this situation, because I would have taken care of it. It’s a moot point.”

My eyes narrowed.

“Boys,” Mia said softly. “This isn’t the time nor the place…”

I sat back in my chair and glared daggers at my brother.

Jack did much the same, and the other two men in the room who didn’t have the last name Stoker (who, I might add, were lucky bastards to not be related to the mother fucker who loves to make my life a living hell) both sighed.

“So…what now?” Mia asked softly. “Am I allowed to go to work?”

Luke nodded.

“Yes. With this new evidence that was conveniently brought to our attention, we now have other avenues to investigate. We’ll let Mr. McCain know about this development in the case and how we plan to proceed,” Luke said, moving to the door.

“And what about the other bitch?” I asked.

Luke’s eyebrows rose at my use of colorful language.

I was normally pretty careful about using profanity in a professional setting.

There was just something about this whole situation that was really bothering me.

I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I had a really bad feeling about it. And it was making it hard to control my emotions.

I really,
really
wanted to punch my brother in the face.

Granted, I wanted to do that a lot. But usually I was able to hide it better than I was able to do at this moment in time.

Mia stood up, too, and started for the door.

She grabbed my hand on the way, though, dragging me along with her.

I flipped my brother off as we went, and he had the nerve to laugh.

Fucker.

Nico followed me out, and my brother followed behind him.

I kept Mia’s hand in mine, tugging her back slightly to walk next to me.

“Don’t wait for me to wake up next time, okay?” I asked.

She smiled, her pretty white teeth gleaming.

“Yeah, I’ll call you next time.”

“Promise?” I said.

She nodded.

“Promise.”

I turn beer into pee, what’s your superpower?

-Beer Mug

Mia

This had been the week from hell.

Three days ago, that darn newspaper article about me ran in the paper

Today, people I knew, people who knew me, treated me like a leper.

People I didn’t even know treated me that way, too.

“What the fuck is her problem?” Masen asked, staring at the charge nurse like she’d grown a second head.

A woman who I’d worked well with for over a year, now, looked at me like I was shit on the bottom of her shoe.

I sighed.

“It’s the newspaper article,” I said. “I don’t even know.”

You would think people would get their facts straight before jumping to judgment.

However¸ this situation proved to me just how judgmental people could be with the way that my coworkers and even random people in the grocery store treated me.

Right now, I could seriously use a freakin’ day off from dealing with all of this shit.

“Well, she needs to chill the fuck out,” Masen said. “Or I’m going to stick my foot out and trip her next time she comes waltzing by with her big ass hair and ugly ass face.”

I smacked Masen on the arm.

“Shut up,” I hissed.

She smiled.

“So, back to our earlier conversation before the she-cow interrupted us,” she turned her glare back to the charge nurse for a few long seconds before returning her gaze back to me. “I got a hit on my dating profile.”

My mouth dropped open.

“You did?” I asked excitedly. “Who is it?”

She grinned and nodded her head in excitement.

“He’s a firefighter,” she whispered.

My mouth dropped open wider.

“For Kilgore?” I asked, really getting excited now.

She nodded.

“Yes. And I said I’d go out on a date with him, but he had to go on a double date first, so I could make sure he wasn’t a serial killer,” she continued.

I rolled my eyes heavenward.

“You’re kidding, right? You didn’t say those exact words, did you?” I pleaded.

She picked up the lunch that the cafeteria worker handed her and headed to the cashier while I got my own tray.

I met her in the check-out line, but she waved me off when I attempted to use my badge for payment. “I got it. You can get it next time.”

I nodded and stopped by the drink counter to fill my cup up with Dr. Pepper, before walking to the table that Masen had picked out in the far corner of the room.

“Thank you,” I said as I sat.

Masen smiled.

“You do it for me all the time,” she said.

I did.

“No, but really. You didn’t really say those words, did you?” I asked her, picking up my fork and digging into the red beans and rice I’d gotten for lunch.

She nodded. “I did.”

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Bowe.”

My mouth popped open in surprise.

“Oh, Masen,” I said. “You’re in for it now.”

Masen had a thing for men’s voices.

She loved deep, growly ones. She was so in love with Chris Young and Josh Turner because of how low their voices were. She also was known to dismiss a potential date if he didn’t sound a certain way.

It was vain, but that was Masen.

And I couldn’t wait to see how she reacted tomorrow when she heard Bowe’s voice.

I smiled for the first time since I’d arrived at work and had to deal with the charge nurse’s shit.

Oh, this would be so good!

The next night

Tai’s eyes trailed down my body, taking in my tight jeans and halter-top.

“You look beautiful,” he said.

I grinned.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m ready when you are.”

He nodded, and his eyes went behind me.

“Bye!” He said to my mom.