Bexley decided she’d deal with Deputy Danks before deciding how to handle the situation with Tabitha and Jack. While it was slightly possible she had only imagined the boy’s resemblance to Jack, she had a sinking feeling that wasn’t the case. She didn’t want to think about how devastated her ex-husband would be to discover he had an older child he knew nothing about. The best course of action would be confronting Tabitha head-on—when she would least expect an ambush.

  The baby-faced deputy waved her down from a booth when she entered the quaint diner on the outskirts of Papaya Springs, where the ostentatious mansions and their mostly corrupt occupants resided miles away. She wasn’t surprised to discover him wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a ball cap pulled down to his bright green eyes since she hadn’t seen a cruiser in the parking lot. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one working off the clock.

  “Does your girlfriend know you’re here?” she asked as she slid into the booth across from him. “Or should I have come incognito, too?”

  “Angie knows I’m meeting with you,” he assured her, eyes darting across the diner as if worried someone was listening. “She isn’t too happy about it, but at least she likes you. I’m more worried about the sheriff getting wind of our meeting.”

  She nodded, agreeing he was absolutely right. If the sheriff found out his deputy was consulting with her, he make his life a living hell. He’d stoop as low as straight-up firing Danks and tainting his reputation.

  A waitress appeared to fill the coffee cup waiting upside down in front of Bexley. Despite feeling exhausted from the past few days’ events, Bexley pushed it away once the waitress was gone. The dark coffee’s strong aroma made her stomach churn.

  Folding her hands on the table, she met Deputy Danks’s gaze. “So what’s this piece of evidence in question?”

  “There was a note left at the crime scene. I meant to consult with you earlier, but I got caught up in the case and forgot about reaching out. Then I heard about the call the sheriff took to your neighbor’s house the other night involving a second dead mouse, and I began to suspect there could be a connection.” He retrieved something from his lap, then passed her a torn piece of paper inside an evidence bag. “I’d like to know your take on it.”

  Bexley studied the handwritten note.

  Your Next, My Little Mouse

  Blowing out a calming breath, her hands began to shake. The reference to mice shook her to her core. “My take is whoever wrote this most likely didn’t graduate high school. They didn’t use the proper spelling of you’re.” She held the note off to the side. “Has Forensic seen this?”

  “They only extracted a partial thumbprint from the victim. It would make sense she would’ve touched it as there was a notebook in one of her kitchen drawers with a piece torn out matching this one. The killer must’ve been wearing gloves.”

  “What did they say about the handwriting?”

  “Sheriff Blair didn’t think pursuing it was important enough to use taxpayers’ money.” The deputy removed his ball cap to scratch his dark hair. “Do you think it could be some kind of threat to another intended victim? Maybe even that neighbor of yours?”

  “Absolutely. I imagine the killer wrote this hoping it would be leaked to the media.” So Twila would get the message, she silently confirmed with a sickening feeling gnawing at her gut. She didn’t want to get the deputy too fired up until she knew more. “Do you care if I take a picture? I’d keep the image safe.”

  The deputy’s tongue slipped out to wet his lips. “I suppose that would be alright. Just as long as you remember my job is on the line.”

  “I know it is, and I appreciate your efforts.” Bexley angled her phone’s camera at the bag, first disengaging the flash. “I’ll protect it with my life.”

  Bexley raced home, cutting through traffic and breaking numerous laws that could potentially land her in jail for reckless driving. A part of her hoped the writing and the nickname on the note would both be unfamiliar to Twila, and it was merely a freak coincidence that someone was leaving dead mice on the kind old woman’s step. But Bexley knew better.

  Her heart plummeted when she saw Jack’s black Tesla pulling into their driveway mere seconds ahead. She’d been hoping to address the Tabitha situation after she’d had a chance to either confirm or deny that the child was Jack’s. Keeping the revelation from her old friend would be impossible.

  She parked her Expedition and sprang out onto the driveway before Jack could start for the house. She sensed it would be better if Brewer wasn’t around to witness Jack’s reaction to her revelation.

  Jack was dressed for a leisurely day in a crisp white polo shirt and khaki shorts. His lean and muscular calves and feet inside leather sandals were so ghostly white that Bexley doubted he’d spent any casual time outside since moving to California.

  When he smiled, the gleam in his blue eyes and the flash of his perfectly spaced teeth made Bexley experience a new layer of guilt for the news she was about to break. With a pang of nostalgia, she remembered a time when those teeth had been encased in braces.

  “Can’t be a successful sports broadcaster without a perfect smile,” he once declared back when they were broke students attending NYU. He had sold the classic, albeit rusted-out Mustang his grandfather had willed to him in order to cover the expense of tuition—and the braces.

  “Guess where I’m headed?” he asked. “I’ll give you a hint—it has everything to do with a beautiful Latina. We’re keeping it casual for the first date…playing tennis at her place, then having ice cream with her daughter afterward.”

  Bexley couldn’t force a smile in return. She almost regretted leaving Brewer out of the conversation as she could’ve drawn on his strength at that moment. “Jack, we need to talk.”

  “You don’t have to worry, Bex. I promise to be a perfect gentleman⁠—”

  “Jack,” she interrupted in the most gentle voice she could muster, “I think you might be a father.”

  He leaned back against the side of his Tesla and paled, chin dropping to his chest. For a moment, Bexley was worried he might pass out cold. She prayed she was right and wasn’t putting him through the shock for nothing.

  “I followed Tabitha this morning,” she explained, moving in closer in case she had to catch him. “She picked up a blonde little boy, probably around ten years old. I didn’t have a chance to see him up close, and he only looked my way for a moment, but…Jack, he looked just like you did as a kid. I wouldn’t tell you this if I wasn’t certain of the resemblance.”

  Jack slowly drew his head back upright before his troubled gaze landed on hers.

  “I was hoping it wasn’t true.”

  8

  Attempting to wrap her head around her ex-husband’s shocking disclosure, Bexley blinked several times before she was able to speak. “You knew you may have fathered a child with Tabitha?” It was hard to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Don’t you think you should’ve mentioned that when you first hired me?”

  Jack combed a hand through his dark hair. “I think a part of me wanted to pretend it couldn’t be true. Verbalizing my suspicions to you only would’ve made the possibility more tangible.”

  Huffing, she leaned against his car beside him and crossed her arms over her chest, glancing down at her feet. “Ignoring the possibility wasn’t going to make it go away.”

  “I had an inkling back in the day,” he said, sounding as sad as she’d ever heard him. “One of the friends I’d interned with said she’d put on some weight after I left. When I ran into the network’s field producer, she told me Tabitha had been let go because she called in sick at least once weekly. That’s around when she stepped away from the spotlight for a while. At one point, I guessed she had disappeared long enough to have a child and that it might even be mine. Then, she was held captive by her sister’s husband, and her story went nationwide. If there had been a kid in her life, they would’ve mentioned it at some point, but they kept referring to her as a single woman. I don’t know if you watched any of that unfold, but extensive interviews were given, and she left nothing on the table. I watched every last one to ensure I didn’t miss anything.”

  “I don’t get it,” Bexley told him. “My assistant dug into Tabitha’s history. There wasn’t any mention of her being pregnant or having a child.”

  Jack winced. “Do I want to know what other felonious means you’ve used in my case?”

  Ignoring the question, Bexley focused on an idea. She turned to face her first husband head-on. “There are some career women who don’t have time or interest in a child—she’s vain enough to think it would tarnish her image. She’s devious enough to hide something as monumental as childbirth. She could’ve paid off a doctor—delivered the baby privately and falsified the birth record with a bogus name.”

  “If that were the case, don’t you think she would’ve given it—him—up for adoption? Why would she pick him up from a public gym ten years later?”

  “Good point,” Bexley agreed. As she tapped a finger against her chin, a new idea clicked into place: “Or maybe she forged the birth records so the child legally belonged to someone close to her—someone she could visit on her own terms, someone she could claim to be a relative without bearing the responsibility of motherhood.”

  One of Jack’s eyebrows curved. “You mean like a nephew?”

  “It’s a possibility,” she decided with an enthusiastic nod. “First thing Monday morning, I’ll arrange to speak with the sister. She may not be willing to spill any tea on Tabitha, but I’ve become a pretty good lie detector. I can feel her out…hopefully even get a glance of her ‘son’ and see if it’s the same boy.” Unable to look him in the eye when she asked her next question, she glanced down as her fingers picked at imaginary lint on her shorts. “What if this kid really is yours? Do you think you’d want to be involved in his life?” It was a highly personal question to ask someone she hadn’t been close with in a long time.

  “You know what? I think so,” he decided. “I mean, it would suck that I missed out on watching him grow up for the first part of his life, but I’m in a good place right now. I could provide him with everything he could ever want or need.”

  “If you mean financial support, I think Tabitha would already have that covered.”

  “I’m talking about giving him a real family. At the very least, I could be a father figure. Considering Tabitha’s brother-in-law is in prison, there might not be any male influences in his life.”

  Bexley gently nudged him in his side. “It blows my mind to think you might be a dad. Next thing you know, you’ll be sporting New Balances and outdated cargo shorts.”

  He chuckled. “I’ve always wanted to have kids. I was just waiting for the right woman to come along.”

  “Not me,” she said to him. “You know my childhood was less than ideal. And the thought of being responsible for another human’s well-being is suffocating. Brewer and I are happy with the way things are. I know he’d make the best dad if I changed my mind, but he says he doesn’t want kids either.”

  “Bex,” Jack replied, his voice soft, “It’s obvious that man worships the ground you walk on. Are you sure he isn’t merely going along with the decision not to have kids for your benefit?”

  Her throat tightened. Even though Hawk had assured her endless times that children weren’t on his radar after seeing him interact with their niece and nephew, her greatest fear was that he’d been lying. He had been worried that he wasn’t enough for her. What if it was the other way around? There was very little she wouldn’t do for the man she loved unconditionally. Still, she didn’t think she had it in her to start a family only to appease him.

  She cleared her throat. “If that boy is yours, it still doesn’t explain the lawsuit. Even if she wasn’t independently wealthy, it’s not like she needs child support.”

  “Like you’ve said before, maybe she’s just bitter.”

  “I’m convinced there’s something bigger at play,” she insisted, shaking her head.

  “I’m certain that you’ll figure it out, whatever it is.” Jack moved away from the vehicle, so Bexley followed suit. “I better get going. I just wanted to stop by and let you know about my date with Temperance before you hear it from her. I know you have a lot going on these days, so I wanted to assure you there’s nothing to worry about regarding my possible involvement with your friend. At this point, we’re merely getting to know each other. I’ll let you know if and when that changes. And I sure as hell won’t let my intentions with her go beyond you and Hawk until Tabitha backs down.” He dropped a kiss on her cheek before he slipped into his car.

  Bexley stood in the driveway, throwing him a little wave as he pulled into their street. It was touching that he’d thought it necessary to stop by and fill her in on his date, and she was relieved that he’d taken the news of his suspected offspring so well. More than anything, however, she was unnerved by his question.

  “Are you sure he isn’t merely going along with the decision not to have kids for your benefit?”

  Behind the cottage, Brewer, wearing nothing more than a wet suit hanging from his hips, chucked the ball to Cap while ankle-deep in water. Brewer’s hair and Cap’s coat glistened with moisture from a recent dip in the ocean, and Brewer’s surfboard was wedged upright in the sand behind them. Bexley stopped to watch them momentarily, breathing in the brine of the saltwater while battling her conflicted feelings. She was the luckiest girl in the world to have won the former bad boy’s heart when he could’ve had his pick of any woman. Shouldn’t she feel obligated to make him happy with his choice to be with her, no matter the cost?

  Cap spotted her and came leaping through the sand, greeting her with kisses. Grinning, Brewer came right behind him to do the same. She swooned on her feet with her husband’s talented lips sweeping against hers.

  “You said you’d only be gone for a short while,” he scolded as he wrapped his strong arms around her head, making Bexley feel like a teenage girl crushing on the school’s bad boy. His bare chest was still cool from the water, and the neoprene was still damp. “We had an agreement, Squires.”

  “You’re going to have to come up with a new nickname for me now that we share the same last name,” she teased, wiggling her eyebrows. “If you start calling me Hawk, I’m going to assume you’re simply conversing with yourself. And that would only fuel my theory that you’ve hit your head one time too many.”

  His face lit with pure joy as his eyebrows shot upward. “About that…we never got a chance to talk about it. Did you only say that for that reporter lady’s sake?”

  Shaking her head, she could not help but match his wide grin. “I sent an application in to get it changed a few days ago. I’m not entirely convinced I’ll use Hawkins for work, though. Whether good or bad, I’ve made a name for myself in Papaya Springs.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “I decided I wanted the bragging rights,” she teased, rising on her toes to steal another kiss. “Or maybe it’s the human equivalent of a dog marking its territory…who knows. I can’t seem to think straight when I’m around you.”

  “You’re still not off the hook,” he grumbled, removing his arms from around her head to brush away strands of hair that had blown around her face. “You know I’d never tell you what you should or shouldn’t do, but I hate to see you slip back into the habit of working too hard like you did when I was away. And a part of me is worried you’ll be too exhausted to spend quality time with your husband at the end of the day. Especially when it seems you’ve been more tired than usual. Call me selfish, but I enjoy every minute we spend together.”

  Her expression softened along with her heart. “I do, too, Hawk. You know that.” She glanced down to trace the elaborate “B” inked over his heart. “I realize we’ve talked about this ad nauseam, but is what we have enough for you? I mean, are we enough?”

  “Did you hit your head?” he asked, biting back on a smirk as he mocking rubbed the back of her skull. “Where’s this coming from? Is this because I was holding little E-man the other day?” He framed her face in his hands. “You and me…babe, it’s more than I could’ve asked for. When Izzy and the baby died…” he paused when his voice cracked with pain. “It nearly destroyed me. I didn’t think I’d ever recover.”

  “I know, babe,” Bexley whispered, stroking a hand over the stubble on his jaw.

  “It’s enough that I’m always worrying about you getting hurt while on the job. I don’t think I’d have the strength to worry about losing another child. And I agree with you—I wouldn’t want the kind of responsibility that comes with being a parent. I like our carefree lifestyle. I would resent the kid for being saddled into teacher conferences and endless hours in a gymnasium.”

  “It’s just…Jack was just here a minute ago. I may have discovered he’s a father, and we got into this whole conversation about being parents. He put this idea in my head that maybe you only agreed with me because it’s what I want.”

  Brewer shook his head and winced. “First off, the guy should mind his own business because he couldn’t be more wrong. And secondly, what?”

  “Part of the reason I’m late is because I followed Tabitha Torres for a little while this morning,” she confessed. “She’s behind the sexual harassment suit against him.”

  Brewer stepped back to run a hand through his wet hair. “That’s…wow.”

  “Wait, it gets better. I saw her with a young boy this morning who resembled Jack. When I told him about the kid, he confessed he knew it was possible. We talked it over, and I have a sneaking suspicion that Tabitha hid the fact that she had a kid by giving him to her sister to raise.”

  His eyebrows rose. “That’s messed up. But what does any of that have to do with the ridiculous claims against him?”

  “I’m not sure. I told him I’ll be looking into it on Monday.”