Six Single Dads' Nanny (Love by Numbers 5)

“Can you come to my place? I have the other guys on the way over, apart from Ethan who is going to watch the kids,” Harrison explained. “You know how you always thought there was something I wasn’t telling you? You were right.”

“I fucking knew it!” I barked, and the other few cops hanging around the squad room stopped what they were doing and looked at me. “What is it?” I asked, quieter.

“I’ll explain everything when you get here. It’s an emergency, so please find any excuse you can think of and come now.” The resonance in Harrison’s voice was frightening. “We may have lost Jordan.”

My heart thudded. What the hell did that mean? What happened to Jordan?

“I’m on my way.” If it was about Jordan, there wasn’t a moment to waste. I hung up my phone and looked over at my captain attempting to slurp a cup of coffee for energy, but mostly failing and dozing off. I grabbed my phone, keys, and wallet and approached him. “Captain.”

He sat up, snorted, and rubbed his eyes. “Hunt. What’s up?”

I decided to roll the dice and play on the odd circumstance with Harrison and the fact that my captain knew more than he let me know. “You remember Harrison.”

He sat up a little straighter. “Yes. How are you two getting on?”

“Great. We’re pretty close these days; one of the five guys I hang out with, and we all support each other as single fathers,” I explained.

The captain sat back a little bit. “Oh, good. So everything’s okay?”

I tilted my head. “Well, he just called me and told me that he’s pretty sick and needs someone to take care of his kid. None of the other guys are available because it’s so late, and he’s hoping I can go and help out.” I raised an eyebrow. “He’s never been sick since we met. I don’t really know much about him at all still, do you?”

The captain was quiet for a really long time, and then he looked up at me. “If he’s sick and his kid needs you, you should go help.” He waved his hand off, not answering the latter of my questions. “Go. It’s not like there’s much going on here anyway.”

I didn’t mind that he didn’t give me an answer to my curiosity. It was mostly a diversion tactic anyway. “Thanks, Cap. I’ll see you later.”

“See ya,” he said.

I quickly left the department and made my way to Harrison’s house where I could see most of the other guys’ vehicles were parked out front, excluding Ethan’s. I let myself inside, and everyone was sitting in the den, each working on their own drink of choice. I noticed, to the right of the door, there was a huge, gaping hole in the drywall. I entered the den and everyone had a tension hanging about them.

“Hey, what the hell happened here?” I said.

Harrison walked over to me, and shoved a glass of scotch into my hands. “Thank you for coming so quickly. Please find a spot to sit and I’ll explain now that we’re all here.”

I did as I was told, picking a spot on one of the couches next to Cade, and knocked back my entire glass. Harrison stood in the entryway to the den where we could all see him.

“Well, I guess I’ll just start,” Harrison said. “First of all, I must apologize. I haven’t been totally honest with you all, and I feel horrible, because you’ve all been open books to me. You’ve shared parts of your lives with me that were very personal and intimate, and I fear that most of what I’ve told you about myself and my son has been vague at best.”

“What’s going on, Harrison?” Lowe asked.

“Well, that’s the first, and probably most important thing.” He took a deep breath. “My name is not Harrison.”

The room became eerily still and silent. No one moved, no one drank, no one breathed.

“Uh,” I said, raising my hand. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Harrison, or at least the man I would continue to know as Harrison despite new information, bowed his head. “My name is Adam Rowland. I was born in Denver, Massachusetts, and lived most recently in Florida before I came here. My son’s name is Trey, though Trey Rowland, not Trey Rowe, and he is six, but his birthday is in August, not May as we have previously celebrated.”

“Why are you just now telling us this?” Rogan asked. “And what does it have to do with losing Jordan?”

“My ex-wife was a beautiful woman by the name of Eva,” Harrison continued. “I was a navy seal and an F.B.I. agent and spent many hours away from home. As a result, she developed severe depression and social anxiety and took her own life by way of drug overdose. I came home to find her dead on our bed, and before I could call the police and report it, her brother, a man who always hated me, found me and began to make claims that I had killed her.”