Chapter Twenty-One
Two ambulances, followed by several marked patrol cars, went speeding past the shopping center a short time later, lights and sirens blazing.
One of the deputies brought Rhys out to them in the back of a marked patrol car. Nausea twisted Manny’s guts when she saw his injuries, but he was alive and other than his bruises, relatively uninjured.
She raced over to the car and engulfed him in a hug as soon as he emerged, with Korbin wrapping his arms around both of them.
“Did that fucker have anything to do with it?” she asked, glaring over at Don Aster. “Aster. Was he involved?”
“No, love,” Rhys said. “Don had nothing to do with any of this, as far as I know. Last night, his supposed girlfriend took great pains in telling me about her contempt for him, and how he was a chump, in her words. She accompanied the two blokes who abducted me from the house. But how did you know where to find me?”
She gently palmed his cheek, mindful of his injuries, and kissed him. “She had Aster pick up her baby from there last night. He recognized her voice on the video they put on the phone.”
He let out a harsh laugh. “Thank goodness for idiotic criminals, eh?”
“Yeah.”
They spent the next two hours being interviewed by the police. Kim Jones, the only suspect not injured, was brought out in another marked patrol car driven by a female deputy. Rhys positively ID’d her as one of the kidnappers and involved in the plot.
When she saw Cullen in Aster’s arms she started crying. Manny wanted to walk over and punch her but successfully managed to resist the urge.
She figured she was probably already in enough trouble as it was with Rob for not following procedures.
After talking with the deputies, they found out Baby Daddy was one of the shot, but surviving, perps. His wounds were serious but not life-threatening.
At some point, someone had called CFS when the deputies found out Kim was the baby’s mother, and that the father was one of the other suspects. The CFS worker offered to take the baby and place him with foster care.
Aster declined. “I’ll take care of him.” Manny’s respect for him shot up as Aster glared at Kim. “I’m the only stable person he’s got in his life.” He adjusted the baby on his hip. “As long as she promises to sign paperwork to give me custody of him.”
Kim nodded.
The CFS caseworker led Aster over to her car and started filling out paperwork there while Kim was loaded back into the patrol car to wait.
Manny returned her attention to Rhys. He was dressed in swim trunks and a T-shirt that looked three sizes too big for him. She knew hours of questioning lay ahead for all of them, but for this moment, she wanted to bask in the fact that he was alive and well.
She stared into his big brown eyes. He had two really good shiners that had started blackening, the left eye nearly swollen shut. “Next time I say go to a hotel—”
“Yes, love. I promise.” He managed a pained, lopsided smile. “But look on the bright side. Now we know who was behind the attempts and they’ll stop.”
By the time they were done on-scene nearly an hour later, Ormond okayed Korbin and Rhys taking the rest of the day off. Rob pulled Manny aside. “I’m guessing you’re going to need a few days off?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
He patted her on the shoulder. “See you on Monday.” He gathered up Aster and Cullen to return them to their apartment, but turned before getting in his car. “Oh, Croyle?” Rob called out.
She turned to her boss.
“Don’t forget to bring your iPad to work Monday.” He grinned as she shot him a bird.
“Hey, boss? You need to get our damn names and pictures off our company website.” She pointed at her guys. “These two brainiacs made me within twenty-four hours.” She stuck out her tongue at him, getting another smile from him before he climbed into his car.
The detectives now in charge of the case still had questions for Korbin, Rhys, and Manny, but they could wait until she got Rhys to the hospital to be checked out despite his protests that he was fine. Only after she had medical confirmation that he would be all right did they run by the men’s house, where deputies were finishing up their investigation there. With the crime scene cleared, Rhys was allowed to grab a shower and change clothes before they headed down to the sheriff’s office to answer more questions.
It wasn’t until late in the day, when they were able to make their way back to Manny’s apartment, that she finally had all the pieces of the story.
Kim had accompanied Don Aster to Rhys and Korbin’s house for a Super Bowl party earlier that year, and had been over for dinner a couple of times with him, so she knew not only where they lived, but the layout of the house. She had also overheard discussions the three men had during dinners out together a few times, as well as picking up a little information here and there from her discussions with Aster. While she wasn’t computer savvy beyond the basics, she guessed that Artemis was an extremely valuable project with a lot of potential attention from the Department of Homeland Security.
And when Baby Daddy, AKA Jose Carlton Martinez, was let out on parole for his gang-related drug crimes, she didn’t waste a minute bragging about her new boyfriend’s job and duties in an attempt to get Jose’s attention and make him jealous and win him back when she heard about him dating a girl she despised.
What she didn’t count on was Jose’s gang connections and his desire to catch up for lost time causing problems along with his homies, leading to them bringing in a hacker in an attempt to get Artemis for themselves. She also didn’t count on Jose being marginally smarter than her. He had zero interest in supporting or raising the baby he’d help create, but he did use her to get as much information as he could about Rhys and Korbin via Don Aster.
And Kim didn’t count on the gang’s hacker buddy having connections of his own with a Russian mafia group out of New York City.
Kim thought she’d made a chump out of Don. In reality, her ex had made a chump out of her. Rhys related how Jose had told Kim that much just that morning, when she’d mentioned her and him and the baby going off somewhere and he told her he wasn’t going anywhere with her or the “snot factory,” as Jose had called Cullen.
Apparently, they were minutes away from a royally hellacious lover’s spat when the police barged in.
And, unfortunately for Kim, her willing participation in the planning and execution of the armed kidnapping would ensure her incarceration for a while, even if she did turn state’s evidence against the others.
Not that Manny felt any particular sympathy for Kim. In fact, with Rhys now safely home, she felt a bit of sadistic satisfaction that Don and Cullen would, hopefully, go on to have a good life and that Kim would be stuck in prison, knowing she threw away possibly the best relationship she could have ever hoped for.
Manny called in an order for pizza after they got Rhys settled on the couch. She made him take one of the pain pills the doctor at the ER prescribed for him.
As she turned away from the couch, he caught her hand and pulled her back to him, kissing her. “Thank you, love.”
“For what? Almost letting you get killed?”
“No. For taking care of me. And you didn’t almost get me killed. That was my own stupidity.”
She carefully sat on the edge of the couch and took his hand in hers. “You guys were my responsibility. I’m trained, and I let my emotions get in the way of that. I’m just grateful it didn’t cost you your life.”
He squeezed her hand and gave her another pained smile. “I’ll let you make it up to me for the rest of our lives. How about that?”
She smiled and leaned in for another kiss. “It’s a date.”
After dinner they helped him up and to the bedroom. She knew sex wasn’t in the cards that night for any of them, between stress and worrying about jostling Rhys. She was happy to roll onto her side and lay there pressed against his back, spooning him as he quickly succumbed
to the pain pills and exhaustion and fell asleep, while Korbin spooned her from behind.
Korbin nuzzled the back of her neck. “You did good, baby,” he whispered, giving her a little hug. “Real good.”
She tipped her head back enough to kiss him. “I don’t feel like I did good.”
Korbin pressed another kiss against her cheek. “What he said. You can spend the rest of our lives atoning for it. Fair enough?”
The thought of spending the rest of her life with them not only sounded like a great idea, it sounded like the best idea she’d ever heard. “Fair enough.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Late on the Sunday afternoon after Rhys’ rescue, Manny parked in the same spot she’d parked in on her last two visits to the apartment complex. It still looked as dingy and run-down as it had on the previous visits.
Don Aster answered her knock, this time with the little boy on his hip. “Oh. It’s you.” He left the door standing open and turned away from it.
She took that as an invitation to follow him in, and did so, closing the door behind her.
“What is it this time?” he asked as he headed for the tiny kitchen. “Did they decide they need to toss me in jail, too, for being a kind-hearted fucking dumbass?”
“Dumbass!” the little boy cheerfully squealed.
“Great,” Aster muttered. He looked at Manny through the pass-through. “Just bippy.”
At least the apartment looked far tidier now than before. He apparently proved the old messy bachelor myth wrong.
“No other relatives to take him?” She already knew the answer to that, but didn’t want Aster to know just how deeply she’d already dug into the situation.
“Baby Daddy’s family is a bunch of druggie losers up in Pennsylvania somewhere. Kim’s family’s not much better. Her mother’s a drunk. I don’t know where her father is and neither does she. No aunts and uncles that are worth two cents on either side put together.”
He looked down at the little boy’s face. “I’m all he’s got. Not that I’m very much. The caseworker from CFS is really nice. She got an emergency custody hearing for me appointing me his guardian. I couldn’t stand the thought of them putting him in foster care with some stranger. They’re going to check in periodically just to make sure everything’s going okay. I’m applying for WIC and a bunch of other stuff for him. He’s had enough upheavals in his life. No reason for him to keep paying for his parents’ dumbassery.”
“Dumbass!” Cullen happily squealed again.
He rolled his eyes but didn’t respond to the boy’s swearing. “My sister said the daycare she uses will take him and give me a reduced tuition rate because of the situation.” He glanced around the apartment. “I’ll need the public assistance to keep him fed, because every fricking penny I have to spare will go toward paying for that. They told me if I wanted to apply for adoption after their cases go to trial, that I could probably get both their parental rights revoked. There’s no way either one of them will be out in less than fifteen years, probably a lot longer. Armed aggravated assault, armed kidnapping, and even though they were the bad guys, two men died in the process, so they said that bumps it up to a capital crime because they used guns.”
She didn’t miss the sad look in his eyes as he stared down at the baby.
It tugged at even her hardened heart.
“Well, there’s another option,” she said.
“What other option? I’m not exactly made of money these days. I’m already going to be pulling every extra shift I can just to keep the rent paid and the lights on.”
“You could make use of the free employee daycare at Ormond. He’s young enough. They take kids four and under.”
“That’s a laugh. That’s…” It finally seemed to sink in what she’d said. “What?”
She smiled, glad, at least, to be able to deliver some good news for a change. “Charles Ormond sent me over here to ask if you’d like your job back. Same pay as when you left. With flexible hours, considering your new parental status.”
His eyes widened as he rushed out of the kitchen and over to her, the boy still on his hip. “Really? No shit?”
“Shit!” the boy squealed before bursting into amused laughter.
She smiled. “No kidding.” She reached out and touched the boy’s chin. “I asked him to let me deliver the news myself since our last two encounters didn’t exactly give you or me warm fuzzies.”
He reached out and engulfed her with a one-armed bear hug. When he stepped back, he wiped at his eyes. “Holy cra—crumb,” he said. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“Sorry about the gun and duct tape the last time, by the way. But I didn’t know if you were involved.”
“No, I get it. If I was in your shoes, I would have, too.”
“No hard feelings?”
He laughed as he hugged the baby. “No, no hard feelings.”
“Good. You start tomorrow. I already checked with the daycare, and they said no problem bringing him in. They have plenty of room.”
She pulled an ID badge out of her pocket and handed it to him. “It’s your same picture from last time. If you want it changed, HR will do it for you when you go in. Stop by there first thing in the morning to get your paperwork handled, then back to your old desk working on Artemis with Rhys and Korbin. And you’ll get back on the company health insurance so you can keep this guy up to date on his vaccinations.”
“Well, he’s eligible for Medicaid, but yeah, thanks.”
He looked from the ID badge to the little boy. Apparently sensing how emotional this moment was, Cullen reached out and touched Aster’s chin. “Da?”
That finished the man off. Tears rolled down his face as he let out a harsh laugh before kissing the boy’s forehead. “Yeah, buddy, I guess I am your dad now.” He tightly hugged him. “And I think life’s about to get a lot better for both of us from here on out.”
* * * *
She drove home to her apartment in a melancholy mood. Before she’d left, she’d also given him a $500 gift card to use to buy things he needed for the baby.
Hopefully, after a few paychecks, he’d be able to afford to move to a better location.
At one point in her life, she thought she might want kids. Then after losing Andy, she wasn’t sure she’d ever love anyone enough again to want to have one or more kids with them, much less be in a position to have kids.
Or feel emotionally stable enough to have kids.
For the first time in a few days, she realized she hadn’t thought about Andy, hadn’t thought about the explosion.
Hadn’t thought about grieving.
Maybe this is progress. Maybe I’ve finally found acceptance. And here I’d thought Doc Greene and everyone were just full of shit.
She had no doubts Don Aster would make a good life for the boy, as long as the two biological bubbleheads didn’t try to challenge him to get custody back at some point in the future. Not that she suspected they could, considering they would be guests of the Florida Department of Corrections probably until Cullen was eighteen, at least.
It could be a well-needed fresh start for both Don and Cullen.
Now she had her own fresh start. Rhys and Korbin had somehow snuck into her heart and taken it over before she realized what had happened. The thought of losing either of them, much less both of them, terrified her.
That they were so deeply entrenched in her soul this soon also terrified her.
But, for once, it was the good kind of terror.
And if nothing else, at least I get free tech support for life.
On that note she laughed as she let herself into the apartment.
The men had spent the night at her apartment again and gone home that morning to take care of chores around their house. She’d already taken a short run, grabbed a shower, and had dinner started by the time the men arrived a few minutes after six. The sight of Rhys’ battered face still saddened her, but she knew it could have been worse.
&nbs
p; Much worse.
The bruises would fade in time. How long it took his mental injuries to heal had yet to be determined. He’d been in fear of his life, as well as watched men get shot, two of them dying in front of him.
She carefully hugged Rhys before gingerly brushing a kiss across his lips. “How you feeling?”
“I tried to get him to call it a day at lunch, but the stubborn Brit wouldn’t listen to me,” Korbin groused as he dropped his messenger bag onto the couch.
“I’m all right, love,” Rhys softly reassured her. “Truly I am.”
“You don’t get out of putting up with me that easily, you know,” she teased. “I’m stubborn. I’ll track you down no matter what.”
He managed a lopsided smile she could see from the look in his eyes caused him pain. “I’ll hold you to that promise.”
Korbin stole a kiss from her. “Dinner smells delicious.”
“Thanks. Fettuccine Alfredo with chicken. I cut up boneless breasts and broccoli into small pieces.”
Rhys managed another smile. “Thank you, love. I appreciate the consideration.”
“Don will be in tomorrow, by the way,” she said. “I stopped by today and gave him the good news.”
Korbin frowned. “I wish he’d told us what was going on before. I feel kind of bad for the guy. We would have gone to bat for him with Ormond if he had.”
“I feel worse for the child,” Rhys said.
“No,” Manny said, “I don’t feel sorry for Cullen. Not anymore. I really think he’s got a good chance, being with Don. I think it’s a good thing for both of them.”
“It’ll be good to have him back,” Korbin said. “I was tired of Ormond riding our asses about not hiring in another programmer to work on Artemis with us.”
“But bloody hell, now he wants us to hire on an administrative assistant for real.”
“And that’s such a bad thing?” she asked.
“Yes,” Rhys grumbled. “I don’t want an administrative assistant. I’d rather have you back.”
“Who the hell will put up with us, anyway?” Korbin asked. “Besides you, I mean.”