Chapter 13
Thirteen
That awkward moment when you sing the wrong part of the song with confidence.
—Boone’s secret thoughts
Boone
Anger was my constant friend the rest of the day.
That anger morphed to rage as I pulled into my driveway and saw the text message from my mother.
I didn’t bother looking at it until I got inside and collapsed onto the couch, exhausted and soul weary.
I wanted nothing more than to delete that message from my mother, but the thumbnail of the video had me frowning and clicking on it despite my better judgment.
Terror clawed its way through my veins as I sat watching the video from our past as Nettie stood with her body in front of the players. Protecting them from a gunman with the only thing she could wield—her body.
What had started out as a scrimmage had turned into something so much more.
A soccer scrimmage for high schoolers.
It should’ve been nothing more than that.
Only, one dumbass parent came to the game drunk off his ass and sporting a chip on his shoulder. He’d taken offense that his kid had gotten a red card and had barged onto the field like his kid was in danger when she most certainly was not.
Words were exchanged between the refs and the coaches, then the parent was pulling a gun out and waving it around at the players and coaches.
“What are you doing?”
I looked up at the woman who’d come walking around the corner of the guest bedroom where she’d taken up residence since she’d moved in.
It felt good to have her in my home.
It felt worse that she was in my home and not in my bed.
“Watching a video that was sent to me by my mother,” I grumbled.
She came to stand behind me and looked at the video over my shoulder. “At the time,” she said quietly, “I didn’t know that I was pregnant.”
But she had been.
I was so freakin’ tired of the love of my life’s life being in danger.
What did I have to do to make sure that she was protected and safe?
“I love that little commentary, though,” Nettie drawled.
I glanced at the follow-up message from my mother. “How embarrassing. Can you get it taken down? I don’t want this associated with the Windsor name.”
Embarrassing?
First off, Nettie had nothing to do with that.
That was a crazed parent.
Second, if I were to ask for anything to be associated with our name, it would be a famous soccer player putting herself in front of a loaded gun to save children.
But maybe that was just me.
“She’s such a bitch,” I said. “How do you feel about moving to Norway?”
“Don’t they make their babies sleep outside in the freezing cold?” Nettie asked.
I paused. “That might be Norway…”
She plopped down on the couch next to me and propped her feet into my lap.
I took one foot, slipped the two socks off, and started to massage.
“Want to tell me what you were thinking?”
“You mean when I was getting a gun aimed at me, or when I was at Koen’s place watching Ida Bell today?”
Both.
I wanted to know every thought that crossed her mind, important or not.
“I know what you were thinking with the other incident,” I said. “Let’s talk about what you were doing with my grandmother watching Ida Bell.”
She sighed and dropped her head to the couch arm.
“I’m thinking that y’all are sitting there with your thumbs up your asses, and nothing is being accomplished,” she grumbled. “Sorry that I wanted to make sure that your sister knows your grandmother before she dies!”
“Whoa,” I said as I stopped, placing one of my hands on her knee. “She’s not going to die.”
She was going to die.
But maybe if I spoke it into existence, she would live forever.
Out of my entire family, Grams was my favorite.
I loved Sawyer so much it hurt to think about him not here one day. But Grams? It would be like having a slice of my heart and soul forcibly ripped away, never to be found again.
She was my one supporter over the last decade of my life when Nettie wasn’t around. My one and only true confidant that never judged, never pushed, and never, ever let me down.
“Not today, perhaps,” she agreed. “But she definitely doesn’t have much longer to live. And, just sayin’, but if I didn’t get the chance to meet and know Margery, I would be so pissed.”
She had a point but…
“She’s really close to the man she calls her father.” I hesitated. “And I don’t want Margery hurt.”
“You hurt her by not sharing about Ida Bell,” she pointed out. “She literally spent the last how many ever years dealing with Felicia, thinking that she had the worst granddaughter in existence. And literally, Ida Bell is awesome, and it’s not fair to keep them away from each other, Bart.”
“Don’t call me Bart,” I grumbled as I dug my thumb into her arch. “And we had a breakthrough today.”
“You did?” she asked, pulling one foot away and shifting the other into its place.
“Yeah,” I answered. “Apparently, Gail saw you driving out of the estate like a bat out of hell with Grams, and made a phone call.”
“Your dad has the place bugged, doesn’t he?”
“To the nines,” I promised. “She called Felicia, and the two of them talked for a solid twenty minutes. My mother charged Felicia with getting you out of my life. Then, when she was done with that order, she called Kurt and asked him to start looking into your financials. I’m sorry, but she knows about the baby.
Kurt pulled your bank statements and saw a charge for the doctor’s office.
He then hacked into the doctor’s office patient portal and found everything. ”
The foot in my hand tensed. “We knew it was only a matter of time.”
I swallowed hard, panic slowly rising inside of me.
“Boone.”
I resumed the massaging, but my heart wasn’t into it anymore, which she knew.
She pulled her foot away, then shifted up onto her knees and crawled into my lap. I didn’t hesitate to maximize the opportunity she’d just given me.
I hugged her tight, burying my face into her throat, and said, “I don’t want her to know.”
Both of us stayed still for a long moment before she said, “We’re doing this the right way, Boone.”
I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against Nettie’s.
A small bump against my abdomen had me squeezing my eyes tighter.
“She fucked up, though,” I said. “When she found out you were pregnant, she admitted on the camera feed that she wants you dead. Even told Kurt to handle it ‘how he saw fit.’”
She clutched at my neck. “Maybe they can arrest her.”
“They can,” I agreed. “Dad’s already turned the video over to the FBI agent handling the case. She’s actually working on an arrest warrant now.”
“Just like that?” She pulled herself away from me. “Will it stick?”
“Conspiracy to commit murder?” I shrugged. “The only money she has is my dad’s. Unless she wants to access the money in her offshore accounts, but I have a feeling Kurt won’t allow her to do that. He’ll promise to take care of it on his own, and then I think he’ll try to disappear.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because he was booking a flight when he was on the call with my mother.”
Just as I said that, the phone in my pocket rang.
Nettie leaned back and pulled it out of my pocket, smiling when she saw it was Denver.
“Hello, Sinclair.”
“Don’t call me that, girl,” Denver growled.
“Sure,” Nettie agreed, even though we all knew she wouldn’t abide by it.
“Where’s your man?”
My heart leaped when Nettie said, “Underneath me.”
Denver gagged. “That’s my nephew.”
“That’s practically your brother, and you know it,” she pointed out. “And not like that, either. I’m literally just in his lap.”
“If you say so,” Denver sighed. “Kurt Pruitt just got on a flight to Panama.”
Speak of the devil…
“You just let him go?” Nettie screeched.
“What was I supposed to do?” Denver snorted. “Take him out? That’s the FBI’s job now. They said they had it covered, so I chose to trust them. And the hot FBI agent seemed very determined to nail their asses, so I didn’t argue.”
“You’re sleeping with the FBI agent, aren’t you?” Nettie wondered.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
Nettie sighed. “Just don’t break her heart and make her not want to solve this case. I don’t want to have to marry a murderer.”
My heart leaped all over again.
Marry a murderer.
Was she talking about me?
“You’re marrying Boone?”
Nettie inhaled so loudly that even Denver heard.
Then, with her eyes on mine, she said, “Margery had some good things to say today. Mainly that I had no promised days, and I was making Boone and me miserable for no reason. Not to mention I’d be a dumbass if I let him get away.”