“He’s going to pay.”
“Did he admit to defiling my baby?”
“Not yet, but he will.” His tone takes on a new edge. “If it would be easier, I could swing by now and pick it up.”
Panic sets in, and I rush to say, “You can’t.”
He goes quiet, and I think about how brash that sounded.
“I mean, you can’t swing by now. I am literally still in bed. I work from home and don’t log in until eight-fifteen, so my mornings don’t really get started until about eight o’ five.”
Great, now I sound like a lazy ass.
“I’m not lazy, but I have a relaxed schedule that allows me a lot of flexibility.” I keep rambling.
The sound of his laughter flows through the phone, and I smack my forehead for not shutting up.
“I get it. Not everyone gets up as early as me. I was offering to make it easier on you.”
“That’s really nice.”
“When you do get up and moving, you can send it over to me.”
“Okay.”
The quiet stretches out, and I search for something to say. “Did you have a nice weekend?” is all that comes to mind.
“Depends on what you consider nice. Marcus shot an eight-point, which means he took the record of kills for the season, something I won’t hear the end of for a while.”
“Who’s Marcus?”
“Good friend of mine. We were at the hunting camp.”
“That sounds fun. Where’s your camp?”
“Summerville, where I grew up.”
“That’s not far at all.”
“No, it’s convenient during hunting season.”
“I bet.”
“How was your weekend?”
“Uneventful. Maren and I hung out, watched movies, the usual.” I leave out the part that we had a total military movie marathon where I drank copious amounts of liquor while toiling over my one face to face meeting with Walker, analyzing every look, movement, and action until Maren threatened to tape my mouth shut.
“Girls’ weekend.”
“Yeah, kinda. She’s going through a rough patch.”
“Heard about that even before you mentioned it to me.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who would be involved in the small-town gossip scene.”
“If you only knew. I swear, Marcus could run his own version of TMZ.”
“I didn’t take you, the Army man, as a TMZ follower.” I suck in a breath and realize my mistake the instant the words are out.