Chapter eleven
Juan leaned against the counter in the kitchen as Amber and Daphne consulted on some soufflé—sweet or savory, he didn’t know. He only knew it had kept her busy for the past hour. Laundering the new baby clothes and setting up the portable crib occupied the ninety minutes before that.
Well, the activities kept her relatively occupied.
She still checked his phone every fifteen seconds, casting him anxious glances when no calls came in.
He couldn’t imagine the hell she was going through right now.
And for the last two and a half hours, he’d been inventing ways to make Anthony Ely pay for what he’d done.
The mental and physical abuse he’d inflicted on Amber was enough to send him deep into the depths of hell.
But telling his wife their baby died? Well, Juan had come up with the thirteenth and fourteenth levels of hell to send the man to.
Dissecting the man alive while covered with lye and taking him down to a depth of two hundred feet below the ocean surface with a scuba tank, then sending him skyrocketing up, were his two leading contenders.
He’d heard the bends were torturous. Not that Anthony’s body would survive that kind of pressure change for long enough to suffer.
Hmm, maybe he needed to revisit that one.
The facade of peace shattered when his phone rang, vibrating on the metal counter. Amber startled and nearly dropped the bowl, but Daphne was there to catch it. Her big brown eyes flickered to him, wild and panicked.
“You know what to say. Remember what we practiced,” he said, setting a hand on her back. Mantis, Lovell, and Dulcie walked in as it rang a second time.
“Amber?” She met his eyes again. “We’ve got this,” he said, keeping his voice firm and strong. A beat passed, then she nodded. Reaching out with a trembling hand, she connected the call.
“Hello?”
“Amber? Amber Ely. Murray,” a voice said. Judging by the tenor, he’d guess Clara Beverly sat on the other end.
“Yes,” Amber answered. “This is she. Me.” She paused. “Clara?”
“You know who this is?” The woman sounded relieved, which Juan took as a good sign. No aggression or threat.
“I…I do,” Amber said. “I have friends who can track those kinds of things. They told me this morning.”
“Told you that me and my daughter, Adrian, are looking for you?”
Amber nodded, then spoke. “Yes. And that, and that you have my—” She choked, another dozen tears spilling over her lids.
“Your daughter,” Clara said.
Nine seconds of silence followed while Amber took a steadying breath. “He told me it was a boy and that he died.”
Clara huffed. “Yeah, well, your husband is a piece of something, and I wasn’t going to say ‘work.’” A hiccuped laugh escaped Amber.
“My ex-husband.”
“Figured. Well, he lied. And we’ve been looking for you since the night she was born. She needs you now more than ever. We need you,” Clara said.
Juan glanced at his brothers, all three of them intently listening to the conversation, listening for signs of danger or deceit. He caught Mantis’s eye and his brother nodded, confirming Juan’s gut—the woman was telling the truth.
“Anything,” Amber said, her voice a hoarse whisper.
“You staying with those Falcons?” she asked.
Amber blinked, then glanced at him. He nodded for her to answer.
“I am. They’re good people.”
Juan smiled at her preemptive defense of them. They weren’t your typical motorcycle club, but they were still a club.
“I know. Adrian researched them before we rolled into town,” Clara said. “The thing is, we’re running from your ex, and we’ve been in the same place for nearly ten days now. It’s making us twitchy. You can come here—”
“Or you can come here,” Juan interrupted. Amber’s head jerked up. She studied him, then reached for his hand.
“That one of them?” Clara asked.
“Spencer Watson, ma’am,” he said, taking Amber’s hand in his. It felt right to be doing this together. “We can keep you all safe. There’s plenty of room. We even have a shed where we can hide the camper.”
“You know about that, too?” Clara said, more pondering the situation than asking. When he didn’t answer, Clara spoke again. “I’m glad you finally called, Amber. We were running out of options. I’ll tell you more about why when we see you.”
“You’re coming here?” she asked, her voice a painful mix of hope, fear, and longing.
“It’s safest,” Clara said. “Tell us how to get there, and we’ll leave in fifteen minutes.”
Amber started shaking again, and he wrapped an arm around her. “We’ll get some rooms ready,” Juan answered before giving her the address.
“You’re really coming?” Amber said.
Clara didn’t answer right away, and Juan’s muscles twitched with tension. Then Clara cleared her throat, and again, he relaxed. He had no idea what her story would be, but she wasn’t unmoved by the thought of reuniting Amber with her baby.
“You just hold on, sweet girl,” Clara said. “We’ll bring you your baby and tell you everything you want to know.”
A gasping sob shook Amber’s body, and Juan pulled her against his chest.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said.
Clara exhaled. “It’s a hell of a story. I’m assuming y’all got some good whiskey around there, ’cause we might need it.”
“We’ll have the tumblers ready,” he said.
“We’re packing up now,” Clara said, then hung up.
He ran a hand up and down Amber’s back until Daphne stepped in.
“Why don’t we head to your room, and you can wash up and change before they get here?
” Daphne’s eyes flickered to his as she spoke.
He got the message loud and clear. Amber needed a little time to collect herself, and he and his brothers needed to plan.
Clara Beverly sounded genuine, but none of them would take any risks with Amber and her little girl.
“Go with Daphne, sweetheart,” he said. “We’ll get things ready down here.”
Amber gave a vacant nod, then stepped away. Daphne’s arm wrapped around her waist as she led her friend away.
They waited until the women’s footsteps echoed on the stairs.
“Christ,” Juan said, running a hand through his hair. His brothers each exhaled as well and relaxed their stances. “Anything from Leo yet?” he asked.
“Texting him now,” Lovell replied, phone in hand.
“There has got to be some fucked-up story behind all this,” Dulcie muttered.
Mantis inclined his head. “Between the notes, the proximity of Clara’s home to Amber’s, the age of the baby, and the fact that she looks exactly like Amber, there wasn’t much doubt who the little girl’s mother was, but at least they’ve confirmed it.”
“Clara Beverly,” Lovell said, reading something off his phone.
Juan focused on him. “Age sixty-four, retired nurse, has lived in the same house for forty years. No priors, no run-ins with the law. She’s involved in a few charities, including knitting hats and blankets for newborns.
She was born in Atlanta but moved north for school and stayed.
Adrian Mills is not her biological daughter, but her niece.
Adrian’s mother—Clara’s sister—got into some trouble, drugs, addiction, that sort of thing, and when Adrian was three, Clara adopted her and raised her as her own.
As we know, Adrian, age thirty-eight, is also a nurse.
She married young, at twenty-two, but her husband died eight years later from a heart attack.
Never remarried. Interestingly, both are NICU nurses, or Clara was. ”
“Newborn intensive care?” Juan asked. Lovell nodded. “Amber said she was nearly seven months pregnant when she thought she lost the baby. Who better to keep a preemie alive than two NICU nurses.”
“I didn’t even know a baby could survive born that early,” Dulcie said. Juan hadn’t either. Then again, what he knew about babies he could write on the palm of his hand. Guess he’d be learning fast.
“And how the hell did they end up with her?” Mantis chimed in. Juan didn’t bother echoing that question.
“Like you said, Dulcie, I think we need to brace ourselves for some fantastical fucked-up shit,” Lovell concurred. They all nodded.
“How are you holding up?” Mantis asked.
Juan shrugged. “I hate this roller coaster she’s on, but damn, I can’t even imagine what she’s going through. To have thought you lost your baby only to find out she’s alive? To have a chance at something you never thought you’d have?”
“I asked about you,” Mantis said. “How are you doing?”
Juan slid his brother a flat look. “I’ve orchestrated a few additional levels of hell today, but I’m still not sure I’ve found the right one for Anthony Ely yet.”
Lovell snorted, a ghost of a smile curled Mantis’s lips, and Dulcie rubbed his hands together, as if preparing for a fight.
“We won’t let him get away with it,” Dulcie said.
“Not sure what kind of choice we’ll have,” Juan said.
Three sets of eyes landed on him. “I don’t know enough about how these kinds of things work, but Amber may just want to ensure she has sole custody and he’s permanently out of the picture.
She may not want to press charges, whatever those charges might be, if they will kick up even more of a storm than the situation itself.
And I don’t know what kind of case can be built if she doesn’t participate. ”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Lovell said. “We have today to get through.”
Yeah, today. Felt like a lifetime had already passed, and it wasn’t even two in the afternoon. By the time night fell, he had a feeling he’d sprout a few gray hairs.