Page 79 of Songbird: Black Kite
“Alex!” Gavin barked, punching him in the shoulder hard enough that Alex whined. “Shut the fuck up, man. Not one single thing you just said is in any way accurate, so stop talking. Can’t you see you’re stressing Hawk out.”
I was going to be stressed regardless, but Alex didn’t need to know that.
“So who’s the baby mama, then?” Alex asked, his voice quieter but still excited; fuck, he loved drama.
“Wren,” I said, and they all turned to look at me.
“Your letter girl?” Alex asked, and I nodded. “That Wren? She’s pregnant?”
“Hold up,” Gavin said, lifting the image and holding it close to his face. “It would be more accurate to say Wrenwaspregnant. This ultrasound is dated almost fifteen years ago.”
And that was the real kicker to the entire fucked-up situation.
Because not only had Tori somehow found the letters and opened them, she’d also hid them from me.
For fifteen years.
Of all the shit Tori had pulled in the time I’d known her, I’d never have expected something like this. Not in a million years.
“Jesus Christ, Hawk,” Gavin breathed, passing the ultrasound photo back to me while he picked up the letter that went with it. I held the photo gently, staring down at the tiny gray blob that may or may not have been my child. “How the fuck did Victoria Castor, of all people, find out about this before you? And how has she managed to keep it from you for so long?”
“Those are really great fuckin’ questions, Gav. And I don’t have an answer for either of them. But you can bet your fuckin’ ass I’m gonna be askin’ her.”
“Okay, hang on.” Charlie turned away from the desk, lacing his fingers behind his head as he stretched his back, his classicthinking about shitpose. “We can’t just go off half cocked here. We need a plan.”
“We?”
“Yes, Hawk.We.” Charlie spun and stared at me, his expression telling me he thought I was an idiot. Alex and Gavin mirrored him in a way that was eerie. “You’re not in this alone, you know? I understand that as an artist, your natural inclination is to descend into a pit of despair or whatever, but that’s not how this is gonna go.”
“Damn fuckin’ right, it’s not,” Alex piped in, then paused and turned to Charlie. “So, how’s it gonna go, then?”
“First thing is, none of this information leaves this room. There is no way that Victoria can find out that we know about this before you’re ready to confront her. That would just give her time to cover her tracks, and if we’re gonna figure out just how deep her bullshit goes, we need her comfortable. She has spent the last fifteen years thinking she got away with whatever the fuck it is she pulled off. We need her to keep believing that for a few more weeks.”
“Fine, but what about the baby?” I asked, then froze as I realized that if the date on that photo were accurate, that baby would be fourteen years old right now. “Holy fuck,” I breathed, rubbing my chest where a large pit of fire seemed to have opened up. “That baby is a goddamn teenager.” If that kid was mine, I’d fucking missedeverything.
Every milestone. Every late night, and birthday, and whatever else went with having a kid.
My kid probably thought I was a terrible fucking father.
I thought again about my own dad, absent since the two pink lines had appeared. He’d caught wind of me and high-tailed it out of L.A. so fast, you’d have thought his ass was on fire.
I’d hated him for a long time, longer than I’d cared to admit, anyway.
The thought of my own child feeling toward me even a fraction of the anger and resentment I’d felt for my dad sent a jolt of crippling pain through my chest, and I rubbed at the spot a little harder.
“We don’t know anything yet, Hawk,” Gavin said, his steady voice reassuring. “Charlie, what’s the plan?”
Yes, that was good. Charlie was head of my personal security. He’d have a plan. Charlie always had a plan.
“I need a few days,” he answered, pulling his phone out of his pocket and firing off a text to someone. “I have a few contacts that might be able to track down this girl and get us some information.”
“I tried to find her online, but she has like, zero social media presence. Not even an old Myspace account,” I said, and Charlie gave me a pitying look.
“My contacts have a little more skill than a Google search, Hawk.”
Hackers. Charlie was talking about the people he knew that looked into people through less than legal means.
“Alright,” I said, agreeing because finding Wren was the most important thing.
