Page 33 of Lawson & Jill

Chapter 10

“Do you ever plan to answer that?” Jill asked at one point.

“No. Not when it’s my brother.” Law had to keep his phone on and accessible because he never knew when he would be called to base, but Ash? He could wait. For God’s sake, he’d already texted him a back-off message. The bastard should know enough to fucking back off!

This time, Law threw his phone onto his wadded-up pair of jeans beside the bed. Hopefully, Jill wouldn’t hear it vibrate when it went off again—that way, he could keep her totally focused on the important things.

“Are you sure? Maybe Asher needs you.”

“He has Eden.” Law laughed. “Let him concentrate on her, while I concentrate on you.” Law’s hands skimmed over Jill’s silken flesh and soon all thoughts of his phone were forgotten.

A long and wonderful time later, Jill rested across his chest while Law contemplated life.

His house alarm shrieked one sharp blast. Law jumped out of bed and swiped his Glock from the nightstand drawer.

He stood between the door and Jill.

“Law, answer the fucking phone.”It was Ash’s voice coming through the speaker on his security system out in the living room.

“What the fuck? Goddammit, what the hell are you doing violating my privacy like this, you asshole?” Law yelled.

“He sounds grumpy. That’s what happens when you interrupt a delicate mission.”

And that was definitely Cullen Lyon’s voice. Just what he needed, one of Asher’s teammates who was a smartass.

“Jill, stay right here, Honey. I have to deal with some immature asshats.” Law swiped his phone and jeans off the floor and stalked into the living room. He’d pulled on his pants by the time he stomped over to the alarm system.

“Don’t turn us off before you tell us the name of the woman,”Cullen whined. “She sounds—”

Law quickly overrode the system, which effectively cut the motion detectors and—thank the Lord—the speaker. This had to be Kane McNamara’s work, because he was only supposed to be connected to the alarm headquarters and the police department.

The phone in his hand vibrated but he ignored it again, then heard the distinctive sound of an incoming Zoom call coming from his home computer. He double-timed it to his office.

Kane and Asher’s faces were on the screen as soon as he joined the call. He saw part of a shoulder and figured it was Cullen. Ash had the same ‘worried grandma’ look Law had been seeing for a month. He couldn’t get any kind of read off of Kane.

“What is so goddamned important it couldn’t wait until morning?” Law snarled.

“It is morning. It’s six o’clock,” Ash answered.

“In Virginia,” Law said sarcastically.

“I’m eighty-four percent sure I’ve found Jill’s friend Angela.” Kane McNamara said.

“You found her?” Jill asked excitedly.

Law had heard her as she came into his home office. He turned and saw that she was wearing her dress. How she’d managed to get out all the wrinkles from laying on the floor all night was beyond him. But she was sporting swollen lips and sex-hair. Law was definitely keeping her off-camera.

He reached out his hand to her so that he could draw her to his side, while at the same time tilting his monitor to the left.

“Let him explain how he tracked down her last name and where she came from first,” Asher said.

“You did?” Jill asked Kane excitedly as she moved in front of the damned monitor. Law saw Asher checking her out in the same way he had looked Eden over when he’d first met her. It was assessing, making sure she was good enough. He needed to stop it.

“I ran a couple of searches. The chances were good that Angela hadn’t changed her first name, most people on the run don’t. With that in mind, I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell that she would have used a fake name when talking about her dead son. So, I plugged in the name Angela with a dead child named Richard. Unfortunately, I got more hits than I wanted to see.”

Law felt Jill stiffen beside him. He felt the same way. It was heartbreaking to think of all the children who had died.

“I realized my fuckup at midnight—I hadn’t narrowed it down to Michigan, since the guy who visited Lesley said he was from there. That’s when I got a hit that fit. In Detroit, a toddler died, and the mother went missing. It even made the papers. An Angela Goshen was wanted for questioning in the beginning, then it died down.”