Page 63 of Look at Her and Die

Laney was his late wife.

She’d died in a car accident a month or so ago along with Apollo’s son, Tavi.

A kid had been driving his car way too fast and had not only sailed off his side of the highway going over a hundred miles an hour, but he’d also ramped the median and plowed into oncoming traffic.

The senator’s kid had killed three people—two of which were near and dear to the Truth Tellers—that day, and had injured over a dozen more.

He kept talking before I could ask anymore.

“My problem,” Audric sighed, “is that Laney’s parents want to sue for partial custody.”

I blinked, then straightened. “And you let them have her today?”

“I didn’t want them to know that I was aware of what they were doing,” he said. “I came here because Malone was coming here. She said that we could just meet at your place.”

I nodded. “What are they thinking?”

“Apollo caught wind of it because the lawyer is on his radar for something else he wouldn’t talk about,” Audric explained. “From what Apollo was able to figure out, Laney’s parents want partial to full custody because of ‘who I am as a person.’”

I gritted my teeth. “You mean an Army National Reservist, or a plumber?”

“Exactly,” Webber grumbled. “But they’re using his Reserve status as a bone of contention, that no one will be able to watch her when he is forced to leave once a month. Or those two weeks during the year.”

“Like he doesn’t have friends,” I grumbled.

“That’s their other problem,” Audric murmured. “They’ve never liked me. They don’t like that I’m a biker, and a ‘bad one’ at that. They think that I’m a bad influence, and they’re pissed as hell that Laney’s not here anymore for them to control. So they’re going to try to control Lottie.”

“Well, that won’t happen,” Jasper said. “Hey, didn’t Gunner tell us once that his best friend was a nanny?”

“Oh, yeah.” Webber frowned. “What’s her name?”

“Sumner,” I answered. “She’s coming back home from abroad, isn’t she?”

Gunner talked about his best friend a lot.

Honestly, she was the only positive thing he talked about other than his uncle, his uncle’s wife, and his niblings.

I remembered her name because I kept calling her ‘Summer’ when Gunner got impatient with me and informed me that it was Sumner, and not to fuck up her name ever again.

“Maybe she’d be willing to help out,” I said. “If you have an established nanny for those times that you can’t be with her, then they’ll have no leg to stand on with that.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Audric admitted.

It was bullshit that he even had to think about it.

“If worst comes to worst, we’ll just take care of it the Truth Tellers way,” Webber said. “But let’s hope that it doesn’t come to that.”

Laney’s parents better hope that we didn’t have to solve it the Truth Tellers way, because they probably wouldn’t like how we solve our problems.

Sixteen

Peer pressure from dead people.

—Tradition

SEARCY

I was exhausted.

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