Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Daphne looped her arm through her sister’s as they walked toward her car. “He knocked you up, eh?” she said, hip-checking Callie. Gently. She didn’t want to knock her preggers sister over.
Callie couldn’t have hidden her smile if she tried, and Daphne was thrilled she didn’t even try. She deserved this happiness. After their shit childhood, then throwing herself into work, then tracking her best friend’s killer. Yeah, both she and Gabe deserved some happiness.
“That he most definitely did,” Callie answered. “How’d you know?”
“Your body is similar to mine, but now your boobs are at least a cup bigger. When are you due?” Then, because she couldn’t help it, she did a little jig. “I’m going to be an auntie!”
Callie laughed. “I’m only eleven weeks along. Everything is looking good. Because I’m apparently geriatric when it comes to pregnancy, we’ve been to the doctor twice. It’s a single, and the heartbeat is strong. We haven’t told anyone else yet. You’re the first other than the two of us.”
They stopped at her car, and Daphne turned to face her sister, dropping her arm but taking her hand. “You’re going to be a mom.” And yes, she got a little teary-eyed, too. “You two will be amazing parents.”
Callie blinked away her own tears. Truly, standing out in subfreezing temperatures crying wasn’t the best idea, but they’d lived through worse.
“I’d settle for being decent parents. It’s not like either of us had good role models,” Callie replied.
“You did. Just not our dear mom and dad. Or Gabe’s father.
” Perfection was a weapon in their house and when Callie and Daphne didn’t meet the bar, they suffered all sorts of punishments, from starvation to being locked in closets.
Their parents were endlessly creative in dispensing discipline and exceedingly careful about making sure none of it visibly showed.
It wouldn’t do to have rumors going round about the family.
Gabe’s sire, on the other hand, had been a run-of-the-mill drunk, abusive asshole who didn’t give a shit about anything but his next drink.
“Gram and Gramps,” Callie said, a familiar fondness in her voice. Daphne nodded. “They were the best, weren’t they?”
Again, Daphne nodded. “We were lucky to have them. Our port in the storm of our home life. And as I’ve gotten older, every halfway decent thing about me I can trace to them. Or you. When you think about being a parent, think of them. Not the people who spawned us.”
Callie leaned forward, wrapping her arms around her. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“So am I,” she said, already planning to extend her stay. She had a few obligations lined up in the next year, but there was no reason she couldn’t make Mystery Lake her home base. She loved Paris, and would keep her apartment there, but she had no interest in being an absentee auntie.
“And thank you for saving Lovell’s life,” Callie said, releasing her.
Daphne snorted as she opened the car door and began gathering her things. She’d borrow something to sleep in from Callie, and she could wash her shirt and underwear overnight. She’d pick up the rest of her stuff from her rental tomorrow.
“Did Gabe tell you their theory?” she asked.
“About Daisy? Yeah. You don’t buy it?”
Daphne tossed the last of her personal items, a small makeup kit she always traveled with, into her tote. She rarely wore much more than mascara and a little lip gloss these days, but old habits died hard.
She shrugged. “From what little Lovell told me about the situation, this attack seems too impersonal for someone like Daisy.” She shut her door and faced her sister.
Callie had her lower lip caught between her teeth.
Something she did when thinking or unsettled.
Being pregnant didn’t make her an invalid, but Daphne was not going to cause her any worry.
“But what do I know,” she added.
“A lot more than people give you credit for,” Callie replied, looping her arm back through hers. The door to the clubhouse opened, and Gabe stepped out. He scanned the parking lot, then smiled when he saw them.
“You ready?” he called.
“Give me a minute to warm the car up, and we’ll follow you,” Callie replied.
Gabe nodded. “I’ll call in a pizza order on the way and have it delivered. It should arrive shortly after we do.”
“You are a prince among men, Gabe,” Daphne said.
“He does snore, though,” Callie said.
“Says the woman who gets up six times a night to pee,” he shot back, affection laced through his words.
“Do not tease these two about the need to pee,” she said, gesturing to Callie’s belly but keeping her voice low. No one was outside with them, but she wouldn’t take any chances.
Gabe’s grin spread into a wide smile before he tugged Callie into his arms. “They can be up a dozen times if that’s what keeps them comfortable,” he said, kissing her temple.
Callie groaned. “It was four times last night, and that was more than enough, thank you very much.”
“Well, you haven’t been to the toilet since you walked into the clubhouse. Let’s get home before anything becomes urgent,” Daphne said, tugging her sister back to her side. “Want me to drive? You look a little tired.”
“I’m fine. I am looking forward to a nice warm fire, though. And pizza.”
“Then let’s hop to, ladies,” Gabe said, opening Callie’s car door.
Daphne circled the front and climbed into the passenger side, setting her bag on the back seat. Gabe watched as they started the car. When the heat kicked in, Callie gave him the thumbs-up, and he headed to his truck.
Daphne had both driven and walked through downtown Mystery Lake, but everything took on a different flavor with Callie pointing things out.
Where she and her friends met for cocktails, before her pregnancy, of course.
The shop Mantis’s fiancée and her twin owned.
The hospital where she’d have the baby in just over six months.
The Dirty Boom, the bar and burger joint where Callie and Gabe ate their first meal after airing all the dirty laundry that had festered for decades.
And yes, she mixed her metaphors because sometimes, life required it.
The conversation continued over dinner. The casual warmth of Callie and Gabe’s home, and the knowledge that they weren’t constrained to phone calls any longer, pulled them into discussions about everything from how Gabe’s brothers got their handles to the neighbor’s dog that stopped by every morning to say hi.
The horrors of the day subsided as they talked; the memory of the gunshot echoing through the forest faded.
In their place, the sense of rightness she felt flowing between Callie and Gabe filled the space around them, wrapping her—them—in a protective little cocoon.
It wouldn’t last, not with someone out to harm Lovell, but for now, she’d take in every shred of information about her sister’s life the two were willing to share.
When Callie started yawning, Gabe offered to tidy up, and Daphne followed her to the couple’s room.
After snagging a set of pajamas, she lay on the bed while Callie washed her face and did all the little things she did before sleeping.
And when she finally slipped under the covers, Daphne stayed stretched out beside her.
Their conversation drew out, the silence between each comment stretching longer and longer until Callie drifted off to sleep.
Rising quietly, Daphne let her gaze rest on her sister.
They’d lived too far apart for too long.
It shouldn’t have taken a baby for her to realize that.
Then again, even if she’d moved to DC, where Callie had lived before moving to Mystery Lake, they wouldn’t have seen much of each other.
Callie had been an inveterate workaholic.
She pushed aside the regret and acknowledged that maybe it hadn’t happened before because it wasn’t meant to. But it was now. She felt it to her bones.
With another backward glance at her sleeping sister, she exited the bedroom, shutting the door softly behind her.
She needed to change into her pajamas and start a load of laundry, but she wanted to talk to Gabe first. And judging by the way he sat at the table reading on his phone, he wanted to talk with her, too.
“I can’t stay here,” she said, taking a seat. “We both know it. Callie won’t like it, but I won’t put her or the baby in danger.”
“The chances of anyone coming after you are low,” he replied. A half-hearted statement at best.
“But there is a chance. I don’t think they’ll find me, and even if they did, silencing me won’t net them any advantage. They’d be stupid not to think I haven’t already given their description to someone. Still, the chance isn’t zero, and it’s not one I want to take.”
“You going to stay at the club?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I have a friend who has a cabin up here. On the east side of the lake. She doesn’t use it often, and before you start protesting about being so far from town and out on my own, my friend is Harper Miller.”
He blinked. “You and Harper Miller are friends?”
She nodded. “Instead of texting the personal security firm I usually use when needed, I reached out to her. Her cabin is secure, but she agreed that the HICC people can come out and have a look. If they think anything else is needed, she’s given me the go-ahead to have it installed.”
He stared. “How do you know Harper Miller?”
Daphne chuckled. Harper was a famous recluse—the only child of a couple who’d made billions in the early days of the computer industry.
She’d become a household name at the age of nine when four men abducted her on her way to school.
It had taken two weeks to find her, but they’d found her—in a hole in a cave deep in the desert of Arizona.
Three of the four men died in the altercation that led up to her discovery, and the fourth was still in jail.
And would be for the rest of his life. Harper and her parents disappeared from public life after that, and other than the occasional “where are they now?” podcast or show, very few people spoke their names anymore.
Only that wasn’t entirely true. Daphne had met Harper fifteen years ago at the first writing retreat she ever attended—both of them there to explore, to potentially foster, their urge to create something.
Now Harper published under the name Peter Ramsey, her paternal grandfather’s first name and her mother’s last name, while Daphne published under the name DL Callahan, Daphne Louise Callahan, the last name a nod to the grandparents she’d loved so much.
Neither she nor Harper had known then where the journey would take them, but they’d stayed in touch since that first retreat, cheering each other on with late-night phone calls, sending flowers and champagne and chocolates for every success as well as every release that hit snags.
They’d only seen each other a dozen or so times since that first meeting, but sometimes, friendship didn’t need physical proximity.
“I just do,” she said, protecting her friend as she answered Gabe’s question. He wouldn’t breathe a word, but trust was fragile, and she wouldn’t break what she and Harper had.
Gabe rolled his eyes but didn’t press. “And she has a cabin nearby?”
Daphne nodded. “I can grab my stuff from my rental and head out there tomorrow night. That will give Callie’s HICC colleagues a chance to do what they need to before I move in.”
His lips twitched. “I don’t think I want to be around when you tell Callie you aren’t staying here.”
Daphne laughed. No, it would not be a pretty conversation. “Coward.”
“Definitely.”
Her laughter faded. “I’ll spend as much time with her, with both of you, as we’re able, but I won’t sleep here. It’s when we’re most vulnerable.”
“I could ask some of the guys to stay, too,” Gabe offered. “Maybe beef up my own security.”
“Where? You have three bedrooms, but one is an office. And the work you’re planning to finish the walk-out basement hasn’t started yet.
Besides, with HICC on the job and every one of the Falcons on the lookout, I don’t think it will be long before you either figure out why those two guys were hired to kill Lovell, or they try again and get caught. ”
Gabe tilted his head. “You really don’t think Daisy is involved?”
She shrugged, repeating what she’d told Callie earlier. “To be fair, though, the odds of him having two people who want him dead are pretty small, so maybe I’m off base.”
“You’re not going to go down the rabbit hole of it being some conspiracy from his—from our—past? From when we were all serving?”
Now it was her turn to roll her eyes. “How long has he been out? Six years? Not after all this time and not only him. If he’s being targeted for something back then, then my guess is at least one of the rest of you would be, too. Didn’t you all serve together at one point or another?”
He nodded. “Not all fifteen of us at the same time, but yeah, Lovell was on the same team as Superman, Wesson, and Einstein. The rest of us all worked with him at some point as they rotated our deployments and missions.”
“So it’s unlikely something from his time in the military.” She paused, then exhaled. “Occam’s razor says it should be Daisy. My writer brain might be getting away from me.”
“We’ll see,” he said, rising. “Callie has a load of clothes ready to go in the laundry room. Why don’t you change, and I can throw your stuff in with it and start it tonight.”
She smiled and rose, too. “I don’t care what my sister says, you are a prince among men.”