It’d been a great way to distract him from what had gone on with Neil, which had worked out a good thing given what’d happened not long after the cinnamon challenge.
I’d received a text telling me Neil was being transferred to L.A. for his job and asking me to tell Cody. I’d advised him to tell his son himself, and I’d also mentioned him giving Cody an update on the baby, given that he hadn’t talked about it since.
Come to find out: there was no baby. The woman had lied about it, thinking he’d start paying out hand over fist for shit for her, but she hadn’t banked on how cheap Neil was.
But what really made me see red was the fact he hadn’t thought to mention this to his son. Instead, he’d dropped the bomb on him and then hadn’t hung around to help with the clean up afterward.
Oh, and he wanted me to break that news to our son, too.
So to say that I had no issues or reserves about Cody going into the station with Alex two and a half days a week was an understatement. Cody needed the time with the guys who all thought he was the shit. He needed the time with Alex, who was his support. And my baby boy needed time with Dave, who was his confidant, listened, and gave him advice.
But that didn’t mean I didn’t feel my heart go into my throat with what was happening in there right now. My son might not be in it, but the man I loved was, along with other men and women who were like family to me now.
“He’ll be okay,” Jacinda tried to reassure me as she pulled me into her side.
If it hadn’t been for her and Sayla running down when I’d texted them to say I wasn’t coming back and why, and then both of them holding me up when it became clear that it’d gone from bad shit to motherfucking shit, I probably would have been curled up in a ball.
“They’ll be okay,” Sayla agreed. “Hurst made sure they’ve got the best protective gear, and he installed the panic room there. So if need be, they’ll go down there and hunker down until Bailey’s caught.”
Knowing that one of the major pieces of your world was in danger like this and not being able to see him and make sure he was still breathing was a special torture and pain. It was like wanting to pull someone out of the way of an out of control truck in a dream and not being able to reach them.
Except this wasn’t a dream, it was real life.
“Your brother’s here with P.T.P.D., honey.” Sayla pointed at the cars that’d stopped slightly farther down the road so as not to block access to any necessary responders, like the paramedics who’d just pulled up behind them. “Oh, Hurst looks pissed. I wonder if he’ll go in there and knock Terry Bailey out with a punch?”
“Nah, he’d just hit him over the head with a chair or a unicorn, knowing him,” Jacinda joked, but the tremor in her voice gave away how scared she was for the people inside the building.
“I think he might have to play rock, paper, scissors with Judd for the honor,” Heidi mused, alerting me to the fact she’d joined us at some point.
Seeing us huddled safely behind the window of the bank opposite the station, Hurst jogged across the road as he spoke into his phone.
“Doesn’t move badly for a man his age,” Sayla mused.
Jacinda, as always, had a dirty comeback. “I’d do him.”
“I already do,” a voice said dryly from behind us, and Jacinda and Sayla turned me as they spun to see who it belonged to.
Seeing Linda Townsend, Hurst’s wife, standing there with a smug smile on her face, I felt like laughing.
Only Jacinda could set herself up like this.
“I’m so sorry, so freaking sorry,” Jacinda said quickly. “We were just— I—”
When her mouth just opened and closed, Sayla leaned forward. “She has a condition, we’re sure of it. But I can assure you, she’s like a nun—well, ish. I mean, if nuns had—” I elbowed her to get her to stop talking before she could make this worse.
No one needed to hear about the possibility of a nun having an arsenal of sex toys. It was just wrong.
“It’s fine.” Linda waved her hand through the air, smiling over her shoulder at her husband.
“It’s a proud moment for me when beautiful young women say he’s attractive because it means I chose well. Life’s too short for petty jealousies and nonsense over what’s essentially a compliment.”
Amen!
Reaching us, Hurst shoved his hand in his hair. “Fucking Terry fucking Bailey.”
“Language, Hurst,” Linda said, looking around the bank to see if anyone had heard him.