God, she was killing me.
“Three times over then. He’ll be part yours and if anyone deserves a hero, it’s you,” I told her honestly, unable to keep the words in my mouth.
“I’ve got one already,” she said, glancing up quickly before looking back at Hero. “But with the life I live? I could definitely use two.”
I left Farrah as soon as I could, but the brothers were still in church so I drove home to Danner’s without him and let myself in using the code for the door and the other for the alarm that he’d texted to me on the burner phone.
Hero was waiting by the door when I walked in, his pink tongue lolling out of his mouth as he gave me a wide doggy smile then stood up on his back legs to give me kisses. I let him out briefly, too on edge to take him for a walk, and then, dressed in one of his RCMP tees, I settled in Danner’s bed with Hero and my laptop to do some digging on Jacob Yves’s brother.
I remembered very little about Jacob from the two years he lived in my father’s house with my mother. He was a good man, taken in by Farrah’s wiles until she was pregnant and it was too late to turn back. I recalled him making us pancakes some mornings when mum was passed out or hungover in bed, how he’d let King sit on his lap one time in his huge work truck so he could yank the horn. Farrah was only negligent instead of cruel when he was around, but unfortunately, that wasn’t often because Jacob was a long-distance trucker, so our life wasn’t all that different with him in it. It wasn’t even all that different when Farrah got knocked up either, because she only cut back on injections and still hit the bottle hard every weekend at her parties.
It was a wonder, really, that Honey only arrived with her little heart on the wrong side of her chest instead of brain damaged or dead.
Even at six, I’d told my mum Honey was a stupid name to give a kid, but she’d insisted it was sweet. She hadn’t had much of a choice in naming King or me, because Zeus decided our names soon as he knew our genders, and I think she believed giving “Honey” such a bubbly name would help her be a bubbly girl.
Born the daughter of that woman, there was no way Honey was going to turn out that way, and it was obvious given her current predicament, that she hadn’t. I felt a brief flash of guilt grip my heart that I hadn’t tried to find her after Jacob had taken her away, but until now, I’d always assumed she’d stayed with him and she was better off without us.
I searched Jacob Yves on the internet, found his obituary and then found mention of his brother “Grant.” I typed in his full name, found his Linked-In account and discovered he was a transport operative for the Port of Vancouver.
Ding, ding, ding!
I’d successfully found Reaper’s newest drug smuggling connection.
“Fuck yeah!” I said, shooting my hands in the air, laughing because it was appropriate that Johnny Cash’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” started playing through the stereo.
Hero let out a soft whoop of encouragement then panted into my face when I grabbed him by his soft ears and bent close to say, “We’re gonna cut them the fuck down, Hero. You with me?”
He whined in response, which made me laugh again.
“Why the fuck isn’t the alarm on?”
I gasped, spinning around to face Danner, Hero moving to straddle my lap and growl at his master for scaring me. “Jesus, Danner its three o’clock in the fuckin’ morning and we’ve had a tense fucking day. You couldn’t have warned a girl you were there a little more gently?”
“Good boy, Hero,” he said to his dog, completely ignoring me. “Now, bed.”
The golden retriever jumped off the bed and trotted over to his plush cushion in the corner then lay down with a happy groan.
The music changed and suddenly the band Glass Animals was playing, their smoky, beat-filled music filling the room.
I looked back at Danner to find him suddenly looming over the end of the bed, his brow knotted into a fierce tangle, his hands white-knuckled against the cushion as he leaned down into my face to clip, “You bought my displeasure today, Rosie. You ready to pay the consequences for it?”
My breath left my body in one fell whoosh, my nipples tightened into painful points hard enough to cut diamonds and my pussy clenched.
This was dirty Dom Danner and he wanted to punish me for my recklessness.
“Are you going to spank me?” I asked, trying to keep the excitement from my voice.