Chapter 8
Ryan
On the dashboardof the car, my phone rang. “Callie, grab that for me,” I said, as I drove. We were driving back from gathering all the video surveillance on the streets right outside the dentist’s office. From what Callie and I could see, it was the same masked figure, dressed all in black that was caught leaving the buildings where the cadets were executed in. These cases were somehow tied together.
“Who is ‘Future Baby Mama’?” Callie asked, laughing. She held the phone up in one hand. “Do you have names like this for all your special friends? What am I? I better be ‘Badass Bitch’, or something.”
Shit. It was Brooke. It was about an hour or so since she left the office. She’d probably had enough of Cameron and couldn’t handle him. I knew she couldn’t be as perfect as I thought she was.
I grabbed the phone out of Callie’s hand, and winked at her. “You’re ‘Hot Pop Tart’.”
“What the hell? Why?” she sneered in my direction.
“Because you eat a hot Pop Tart every morning,” I said, laughing and holding up a finger at her. “Hold on and let me take this call.”
I hit the answer button and brought the phone to my ear. “Everything okay?” I asked, without any hellos.
“No,” Brooke’s voice cracked on the other end.
“Brooke? Babe, what happened?” I said, yanking the steering wheel to the right and turning the car in the direction of Brooke’s house.
“Someone broke into my house,” she choked out.
“Are you okay? Is Cameron okay?” I asked, stepping on the gas and hitting the car’s lights and sirens. “I’m on my way.”Is the perp still there? Was someone trying to scare her? Hurt her?
“Cage,” she whispered into the phone. “They wrote the word whore all over my house. It’s on everything.”
“Is the house clear?” I asked, slamming my foot all the way down on the gas pedal.
“Cage, I’m a cop. The first thing I did was make sure your brother was safe and checked the house,” she snapped.
“Okay. Okay. I’m on my way. Do you need me to stay on the phone?”
“No,” she said, and ended the phone call. I threw the phone back on the dash, angrily.
“Wanna tell me what’s going on?” Callie said, next to me.
“Brooke’s house was broken into.”
Callie’s head slowly turned toward me, and she leaned back against the car door, crossing her arms over her chest. “Brooke Fury?”
“Yes,” I growled, swerving across a lane of traffic to get through a light.
“Brooke Fury is your ‘Future Baby Mama’ and I’m a freaking ‘Hot Pop Tart’?”
“Shut up,” I laughed, “You want to be my future baby mama? I’m sure we could—”
“I can’t have kids,” Callie said, turning her head away from me and looking out the window.
“Wait what? You’re like twenty-eight or something, what do you mean you can’t have kids? You’ll meet a nice guy and it’ll happen.”
“No, it won’t, asshat. Stop talking about what you know nothing about. For starters, I’m thirty-two,” she snapped, poking her finger into my forearm. “And, I can’t have children. I had a complete hysterectomy when I was younger. I’ll never have a family. Ever.”
“Shit, Callie, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
“Just shut up,” she said, quietly. “There’s nothing for you to be sorry about. Just drive, okay?”
I nodded, focusing on the world outside the windshield, and stomping down the anger I felt for Brooke. She was somehow involved in the middle of one hell of a clusterfuck and she wasn’t telling me things. I had to find out why. And Callie? Callie and I were definitely going to talk about what was going on with her. She was hurting, and there was no way I was going to let her do that shit alone.
