Eleventh Grave in Moonlight (Charley Davidson #11)(21)

She faced me again.

“She’s hot,” Angel said.

“Then what were you doing here?”

“I was just getting a feel for the place. You know, should I ever need a pediatrician.” I bowed my head and tried to ignore the fact that I would’ve been in need of one had I been able to keep my daughter. But she was safe. That was my mantra. Beep was safe. Safer than she would be around me.

“You’ll get her back,” Angel said.

I had one hand on the gearshift. He covered it with his. I turned mine up and laced our fingers together.

“You know, we could make out and she would never know.”

I rolled my eyes, then held up an index finger to the receptionist. “Excuse me.” I took my hand back and picked up my phone so I could pretend to talk on it, but first I had to set up my pretend conversation. “Hello? Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

“Are you going to do this all day?” Angel asked.

I cast him my evilest grin. And continued. “Seriously? No way. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

Angel laughed, then slowly leaned forward like he was going to kiss me. The little shit.

“You do realize my husband is not fifty feet away.”

And he was now watching us from beneath hooded lids.

Angel snorted and moved in even closer. “I’m not afraid of your husband.” When Reyes’s arm snaked around his neck and he pulled Angel back against his chest as he materialized, locking him in an inescapable chokehold, Angel added through a strained larynx, “Much. I’m not afraid of him much.”

Artemis pawed at them, wanting to play, too. Angel chuckled, ducked under Reyes’s arm, and lunged into the backseat to wrestle with her. Thank goodness the laws of physics didn’t apply. There was no way all three of them would have fit in my backseat had they been corporeal.

“Aren’t you supposed to be watching Uncle Bob?” I asked him.

“I have been. He’s perfectly safe. Swopes is on watch now.”

“Oh, okay.” I’d trust Garrett Swopes with my own life, so I felt Ubie was safe in his hands.

Angel let out a squeak that I assumed was a plea for help, but I ignored it.

“Sorry about that,” I said to the receptionist, pretending to end my pretend call.

“That’s okay.”

Reyes materialized in my passenger seat but stayed firmly planted in the supernatural realm. Otherwise she would have been in for quite the shock.

She kicked at the ground. “Well, I’ll let you go. I got off early and—”

“I guess Mrs. Foster did, too?” I asked, nodding toward the exit.

She lifted a shoulder. “I guess.”

“Do you know where she went?”

The girl narrowed her lids. “Why do you want to know?”

“No reason.” Either a paw or a foot landed on the back of my head. I coughed to cover up my sudden lurch forward, then refocused on her as Reyes shot a warning glare over his shoulder. “But if I did have a reason, is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

“Drop the case,” Reyes said.

But the receptionist’s reaction caught my attention. A sadness came over her. She looked down and took a long drag off an e-cigarette. “Not really. I just thought maybe you were, I don’t know, investigating or something. Like undercover maybe.”

Unless she knew what I did for a living, that was an odd thing to think. “Why would I be undercover?”

She shrugged again. “Because there was an investigation, but then nothing happened.”

“Really?” I was having a hard time hearing her over Angel’s screams. Apparently Artemis was going for the jugular.

“I’m not kidding, Dutch,” Reyes said. He leaned close until his mouth was at my ear. “Drop the fucking case.”

I tried to make my next move appear completely innocent, as though I were just looking around when I turned to face off against my husband.

His gaze sparkled with a mixture of interest and frustration. His expression hard. His full mouth set. Until I dropped my gaze to it and whispered the one question I knew he wouldn’t answer: “Why?”

He eased back, the muscles in his jaw working as he turned away from me, propped an elbow on the window frame, and rested a hand at his mouth in thought.

We had agreed a few days ago no more secrets between us. Ever. Funny how long that accord didn’t last.

“Besides, if you were undercover,” the girl continued, “you’d know more about copiers than you do. You would have brushed up on them so you didn’t look like you were undercover.”

“Ah”—I raised an index finger and turned back to her—“but maybe that was all part of my master plan. Maybe I went in without knowing that much about copiers to throw you off my scent, so to speak. If I’d known too much…” Okay, that sounded dumb, even to me. “Never mind. What’s your name, hon?”

“Tiana.”

“Tiana. That’s gorgeous.”

She shrugged and nodded a shy thank you.

“Can we go somewhere to talk?”

As she mulled over my proposition, I ignored Angel’s pleas for help and my husband’s sudden shift into a draconian style of domesticity. Thankfully, Angel’s cries were more laughter than agony. But Reyes’s mistaken impression that I’d actually comply with his ridiculous demands lay somewhere in that gray area between adorable and assault with intent to kill.