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He clicked the green circle. Up popped the app to locate her phone. Bingo.
Seconds later, the system prompted him for a password. Shit.
He clicked until he found a list of her passwords. The one to find her device was dangphone1. With a grim twist of his lips, he typed it in.
Within seconds, he had her location. An apartment building on the north end of Lafayette. Why the fuck was she wherever this was?
One-Mile zeroed in until he had an address, then he cross-referenced that with her contacts.
Cutter’s place. Why would she go to the Boy Scout’s apartment in the middle of the night? It wasn’t for a booty call since the son of a bitch wasn’t there.
One-Mile jotted the address and was about to shut down the device when another icon caught his attention. Pictures. They were worth a thousand words, right? Maybe they would tell him something…
She hadn’t snapped any images since Friday morning. The last few were of a client’s freshly auburned hair with a cascade of reddish curls down her back. That’s it. The afternoon before was more along a similar theme.
Yesterday morning, however, she’d taken a forty-two-second video. It seemingly started on a small, sterile room. A doctor’s office?
He clicked on the clip.
“You ready?” The camera reflected a young, professional blonde in her early thirties, dressed in a pair of pastel scrubs.
“I think so.” That was Brea, and she sounded nervous.
“This is going to be cold.”
The camera jiggled and jostled for a second until it panned down to Brea’s belly. She’d pulled her leggings down to her hips and lifted her T-shirt up above her ribs.
And he saw the slight bulge that hadn’t been there before.
One-Mile’s entire body pinged electric. She was pregnant—and not just a few weeks. He’d fucking been right.
Heart racing and palms sweating, he watched as the blonde in the video smeared some clear gel all over Brea’s little bump, then set a rounded implement low on her belly.
A crackling noise filled the air, followed by a sound that seemed like something in a vacuum. Then…he heard it, a faint but rapid whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
His breath stopped.
“Is that it?” Brea sounded on the verge of tears.
“Yes, that’s your baby’s heartbeat. He or she sounds strong.”
“Oh, my gosh.” Brea sniffled, then fell silent and listened.
That soft sound was the best fucking thing he’d ever heard. That was his son or daughter, conceived with the woman he loved.
“Amazing,” Brea breathed, her voice catching on emotion. “Wow…”
The electronic heartbeat filled his ears for a few precious moments more, strong and reaffirming his will to claim all that belonged to him.
Then the video ended.
One-Mile played it again. He wanted to memorize every sight and sound. He wished like fuck he’d been there with Brea, holding her hand as they’d listened to their baby’s heartbeat together.
All too soon, the video quit, jolting him back to her empty bedroom.
With a curse, One-Mile texted the clip to himself, then deleted the electronic trail. Next, he shut down her computer and stood.
Resolution burned in his veins.
He’d had plenty of reason to fight for Brea before. But now that she was having his baby? He would stop at nothing, burn down the world—whatever it took—to remove the obstacles between them until he called her his for good.
One-Mile tucked himself in the shadows outside Cutter’s door less than twenty minutes later, the visible puffs his breaths created in the chill the only sign he was there at all.
Just before he’d trekked up to the apartment’s second floor, he’d spotted a white compact in an assigned spot, double-checked the VIN matched Brea’s, and continued up.
She was at Cutter’s tonight for a reason. Since her father wasn’t home, she hadn’t run here simply to be alone. One-Mile had to wonder if she was avoiding him.
I’ve got news for you, pretty girl, and it’s all bad…
Fuck giving her the opportunity not to answer the door. She was not wriggling out of his grasp tonight. He would do whatever necessary to extract the goddamn truth from her.
From an earlier glance down the side of the building, he knew every second-story apartment had a balcony. Cutter had chosen his unit well; it was the most defensible of the bunch. No one could reach his second-story terrace without equipment.
Good thing that, even though One-Mile had never been a Boy Scout, he always came prepared.
After a quick dash back to his Jeep, he found what he needed. Then he hustled back to Cutter’s door and tossed a grappling hook over to the nearby balcony. He secured his end of the rope to the landing’s wrought-iron railing, tested it with a strong tug, then climbed over. Dangling from the line, he worked his way, hand over hand, toward the jutting ledge.
Less than a minute later, he stood facing French doors that led to a darkened room, probably the master. Would he find Brea asleep in that bastard’s bed?
