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How the hell did you tell a man you’d slept withone timethat there was now a baby on the way? And how had she become the terrible statistic mothers warned their teenagers about?
The small voice in her head encouraging her to keep the baby news to herself piped up again. “No.” She resisted the temptation and affirmed her decision. “He deserves to know.”
Telling him was the right thing to do. Too bad doing the right thing felt damned awkward as she continued testing out opening lines in the privacy of the car. She paused, swore, and kept trying as she drummed her fingers against the steering wheel.
At the time, the morning after their one-night stand had felt awkward, but compared to the cloud looming over her shoulder now, it seemed like the fondest of memories.
What would he say? What did she want him to say?
Her left knee bounced impatiently. That was the answer she had yet to sort out. Working the cartel case had been a valuable distraction from watching the calendar and waiting for her period to arrive. When it hadn’t, when Krystal and her baby had been taken, her mind seemed determined to race in circles with no intention of finding a solution.
Bart was her friend as well as a colleague. Their friendship had been working just fine until they dove into the uncharted territory of friends with benefits. Did failure on that front automatically mean they couldn’t be reasonable parents?
“We won’t be parents with benefits,” she said, testing the words as well as her resolve.
Her resolve was useless against the memories that plagued her over the last six weeks. His dry sense of humor, his big, hard body hot against hers, the strength and tenderness of his touch. They’d had a great time, but in the morning, the regret had been obvious in the set of his shoulders, the hard line of his square jaw.
“That experiment is over.”
They were adults and they would figure this out. If she was lucky, he’d be too busy when she arrived to dive right into the personal stuff. She could get a read on his mood while they worked out the issues with the cartel and then she’d be able to come up with the right approach to share her pregnancy.
Chapter 3
Patriot Plaza Truck Stop
Bart’s phone shivered in his pocket. He ignored it. There was too much going on since he’d called the sheriff’s office. He’d barely completed the cursory check of the kitchen and Tim’s work station. There’d been no time to look at the recorded surveillance footage.
Now his parking lot resembled a law enforcement convention with cars and vans emblazoned with every legal logo in the county. So much for keeping Tim’s death low-profile.
His regular customers gratefully settled for the limited menu of egg and sausage casserole and an endless supply of coffee. A good thing too, since there was no way to keep a grill going with all this extra activity.
Jenny and Maria handled the chaos and curiosity seekers with more patience than he could muster. Maria had been systematically working her way through the employees, notifying them of Tim’s death as well as the schedule changes for today.
He didn’t know how she did all of that and kept the customers happy in the diner. He scrawled ‘flowers’ on the white board in the kitchen, not knowing of anything else he could send them to say thanks for their help today.
Stationed behind the counter, he kept the casseroles heating and the coffee brewing while answering the constant flow of questions from Sheriff’s Deputy Steve Wallace. The deputy had stationed himself in the most inconvenient place, a move designed to be sure the deputy maintained Bart’s attention and could see most of Maria’s reactions.
Catching the high sign from Maria, Bart filled a to-go cup with black coffee and set it on the counter.
“You said you didn’t hear anything last night?”
Bart looked at the deputy, struggling to hang on to the fraying edges of his temper. “No. I was in the office most of the night working through the fleet billing.” It was the cornerstone of his business and required constant maintenance.
“And you went upstairs around twelve-fifteen.”
“Steve, you know I did. I saw you write it down.” He pointed to the small notepad in Steve’s hand. “Look back about two pages.”
“I’ll find it.” He sipped from the mug of coffee Bart had poured for him. “Just hard to believe you didn’t hear them,ah, dump, theumm…”
“Body,” Bart finished for him. “I believe that’s the correct term.”
He wasn’t any happier with his lack of information than the deputy. Wallace’s first request after the scene was secure was to visit Bart’s office for a look at the video. Shoulder to shoulder they’d watched that monitor when Bart pulled up the security feed from last night.
Bart had found it useless even before the lens had been painted, but Wallace had taken the file for the computer techs to work with. Maybe by some miracle they would identify thegrainy shadow of a person who appeared out of the woods to spray the lens. It was the only hope they had for getting a lead on the killer.
Tim was a friend to Bart and the entire Patriot Plaza staff. The whole team behaved more like a family than random employees and he hired carefully to make sure people fit into his system.
“Bart, line one,” Jenny’s voice sounded over the intercom.
