“She manages the resort on Blakely.”
“Does Nat have a last name?” Wren asks.
“Not one I know.”
Ryker’s brows shoot up. One lifts a little higher than the other. Half of his face looks like a jigsaw puzzle. The other half…he was a handsome man once. “Doc?—”
My chest constricts, the tube and the broken rib lending a rasp to my voice. “Doyouknow the name of the guy who bags your groceries? What about the hotel clerk at the last place you stayed? Your house cleaner?”
The big man levels me with a frosty glare. “Yeah. I do. All of them.”
Wren reaches for his hand and gives his gnarled fingers a quick squeeze. “You’re not exactlynormal, Ry. You know all of their names because you’re obsessive about our safety. Doc’s a civilian.”
The term hurts. Even if it is true.
A muscle in his jaw ticks Once. Twice. Three times before he releases a long, slow breath. The baby picks that moment to wake up and let out a wail worthy of a banshee.
Ryker cringes and starts bouncing on the balls of his feet, making desperateshhhingnoises and…cooingat her.
How can the man go from lethal as fuck to doting papa so quickly?
Wren glances down at her watch, then digs in the diaper bag. “She’s hungry. Can you feed her so I can keep looking for Nat?”
Ryker plucks the bottle from her hand. The only other chair is across the room, and his massive frame barely fits in the damn thing. I watch, mesmerized, as he unbuckles the harness and has Harlow cradled in the crook of his elbow, bottle in her mouth, in under thirty seconds.
“We have her leaving the hospital,” Wren says. “Caught her on the camera outside the ER. But after that, she disappears.”
“West better be ripping Graham a new one,” Ryker grumbles. “How hard is it to keep an eye ononewoman in a hospital room? He’s not allowed to babysit Harlow once she starts walking. She’ll slip right out the door under his damn nose.”
Wren rolls her eyes. “Our daughter isn’t going to yank the leads off an unconscious man’s chest to summon a trauma team and slip out in all the confusion. And Harlow loves her uncles.”
The ache in my chest grows the longer I watch the two of them together. Their love is a physical presence in the room, filling every look, every touch, every good-natured barb.
I thought I was happy alone. I’d accepted my solitary existence. It was better than risking the pain of loss again. But seeing this hard-as-nails man with love in his gaze makes me want what I can never have.
It makes me wantNat.
“Back to business,” Wren says. “I pulled Nat’s number off your phone, Doc. But it’s registered to the owner of the resort. Clancy McNamera. Also, it’s a freakin’ flip phone. No GPS. I’m working on getting the text messages and call log from the carrier, though.”
“You hacked my phone?” I glare at McCabe—as best I can since exhaustion is threatening to pull me under again. “What the fu?—”
“I’d stop right now if I were you,” he says quietly. “I’ve never punched anyone in a hospital bed before, but there’s always a first time.”
“You had…no right.” Breathing—simply existing at this point—hurts. If he weren’t holding his kid, I’d tell him to go fuck himself.
“I hadeveryright.” He sets the bottle down, puts Harlow over his shoulder, and starts patting her back gently. “Wyatt spent two hours in the water this morning scouring the bottom of the harbor. The guy you claimyoukilled? We disposed of his body. And his rifle. You were right about the body armor, by the way. He and Inara wiped Nat’s house clean. They even found some plywood to nail over the broken door. But do you know what theydidn’tfind?”
I don’t bother trying to come up with an answer. He’s going to tell me anyway.
“Anything that would tell us who thefudgeshe is. There wasn’t a goddamn thing in that house with her name on it. No paperwork. No driver’s license. No passport. No bills in her name. Not even a single photograph. So yes. We hacked yourfucking phone. Because whoever this woman is, she’s eitherina mess of trouble or sheisa mess of trouble.”
The very idea of taking a breath deep enough to speak exhausts me. But as I close my eyes, I manage seven words. “Introuble. Bet…my life on it.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Natasha
“Clancy,the man is a doctor. He clearly needs his phone. Just give me his damn address so I can return it to him.”
