He eased onto the hardwoods inside and closed the window behind him. On silent footfalls, he crept through the house. Without a floor plan, he wasn’t sure which direction he’d find Brea’s room.
His first trek took him to the master. Empty. That didn’t surprise One-Mile much. He thought he’d seen Brea’s father’s practical brown sedan parked at a house a few blocks over. Jennifer Collins’s place? That was his guess. At this time of night, that probably meant the preacher was banging the lonely widow…
So where was Brea?
Through the dark, he doubled back to the living room to investigate the other side of the house. Behind the last door, he found another tidy bedroom. It had to be hers. It, too, was empty. Since her room wasn’t visible from the street, he flipped on a small desk lamp and gave it a visual scan.
The walls were a pale lavender. A simple white quilt covered the bed, accented by gray sheets with little white flowers. She’d tossed a purple and gray throw at the bottom, over the simple white footboard. The furniture looked like a relic from her childhood. An area rug that matched her walls warmed the floor beside her bed. On the other side, gray curtains that matched her sheets gaped wide open, overlooking their small but meticulous backyard.
The room looked like Brea. Smelled like her.
But where the fuck was the woman herself?
Her absence prompted more questions. It incited panic. He wanted some goddamn answers.
He booted up the computer sitting on her desk. While he waited, he prowled through her drawers to see if she kept a calendar or list of appointments.
Maybe he should feel guilty about invading her privacy. He didn’t. This was about her safety, his sanity, and their future. Scruples weren’t going to fix any of that shit.
His search dredged up only notes from her beauty school days, a small stack of bills with due dates written neatly on the front, and a few pictures of years gone by, mostly of her and Boy Scout Bryant.
With a scowl, One-Mile replaced everything where he’d found it, then did a quick dive through her dresser across the room. He found prenatal vitamins under a stack of her very modest underwear—and had to tell his suddenly pounding heart to take a rest. Not every woman who took these horse pills was actually pregnant. She might have them merely because her body needed a major supplement.
He felt behind the dresser and found a gap in the cardboard backing, toward the bottom. Tucked inside was a large envelope with the name and address of an ob-gyn in Lafayette, along with a reminder card for an appointment a month from now. More circumstantial evidence, not proof. After all, women often saw a doctor for female-related things at least once a year.
The rest of the room netted nothing except to give him a sense of what her life within these four walls was like. She’d been coddled, adored, and sheltered. She’d grown up quiet and dutiful and kind.
As far as One-Mile could tell, falling into bed with him was the only time she’d ever done anything her father would disapprove of.
For her to defy what she’d been raised to believe, what would her feelings for you have to be?
Unless he missed his guess, she’d loved him. Since she wasn’t flighty, he’d bet some part of her still did. But she’d gotten spooked when he’d told her they needed to take a step back.
More and more, Brea being pregnant fit. He just needed to find her to confirm.
After righting the rest of her room, he sat at her desk. Her computer wasn’t password protected, so with the touch of a button, he was in. He did a quick prowl through her emails, but they netted nothing of interest. Ditto with her electronic calendar. But one other icon in the dock along the bottom stuck out.
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
