Fries Before Guys (SWAT Generation 2.0 2)

Then he went about clearing the rooms as I took the crying infant outside.

The infant that was still inconsolable in my arms.

Ford made his way outside, and I gestured at him with my chin.

“I think the kid is hungry,” I said. “There any bottles or anything in the kitchen?”

Ford disappeared and reappeared moments later with a bottle and a formula canister.

Between the two of us, we were able to finagle a bottle up, and the poor kid wolfed it down as if she hadn’t eaten in way too long.

I could tell the kid was wet, too, having spent enough time with Katy’s twins to know when it was apparent.

But for now, I wasn’t going back inside that house until it was cleared by the crime scene techs.

Even though I had a good idea who’d done it, this still had to be handled correctly. Because the girl needed every single strike that we could pin against her.

***

“I asked her to help me, and she wouldn’t,” Rachel said, a smile on her face. “The bitch already had all that money. There was no reason that she couldn’t. We both hated Avery. We were bonding over that. But she said she had a baby to think about now, and that she couldn’t do anything now that her husband was in jail. When I told her I would help her with the baby, she laughed… and I just got so… mad.”

I felt nausea churn in my belly at the smile still on Rachel’s face.

“I have these voices.” She grinned. “They tell me to do it.”

They tell me to do it.

Bullshit.

I narrowed my eyes, wondering if this was all an act so she could plead insanity.

I would much rather be in a crazy house than a prison if I were that pretty.

“Okay then,” I said to Rachel, turning to Ashe. “She’s all yours.”

Ashe’s eyes were hard and focused.

“Can I speak to you for a moment?” I asked Ashe just as I was exiting the room.

She nodded once, standing up and walking to the room’s one and only door.

After we both slipped out, I leaned against the wall beside the door that she was leaning on and said, “You don’t believe she’s crazy.”

She shook her head, a sardonic look on her face.

“Hell no,” she answered. “I think that daddy coached her on what to say, and now she’s playing us.”

I looked over at Pierson Howell and narrowed my eyes.

“He knows something,” I found myself saying.

Ford, who was amongst a few of the officers watching the interrogation, came from the room beyond and said, “We can question him.”

“He’s a veteran,” I said. “He’s not going to slip up.”

We looked at each other, then I looked at Howell.

“Rachel loves her dad,” I said. “Maybe if she realizes that he’ll go to jail…”

Ashe grinned. “Let me handle it.”

“The lawyer’s a shark,” I said. “If he thinks you’re going to lead her down the wrong path, he’s going to shut it down. You’re going to have to be quick about it.”

Ashe’s smile was predatory.

“I’ll be quick,” she said, once again going back into the interrogation room.

I walked into the viewing room that overlooked both interrogation rooms and walked up to where Ford was holding the baby.

Social workers had come and gone, and since Avery was officially listed as this baby’s sister, Avery was now the guardian.

Avery, who hadn’t made it back from her exams at the college yet, but should be arriving at any moment, was in for a big surprise.

Just like I’d been.

I wasn’t really sure what I expected when I’d called my mother. But she’d smiled, left to go collect some things she’d been planning to take to Katy’s for the baby and her twins, and had put it all in my cruiser.

She’d then taken out the car seat for the new grandbaby, too. Rigged it up in the back of the cruiser and had told me good luck before disappearing back to work.

Which left me with a kid I had no clue how to handle.

A kid that’d been seen by the social worker, had been given back to me, and that was that.

I didn’t even know the baby’s name.

Lynn came in the room then, carrying a piece of paper in his hands and looking perplexed.

“I did all this work,” he said. “Did all this research. Ran a DNA test. Found out that she was, indeed, Avery’s sister. And then the woman up and dies?”

“The woman up and got murdered,” I corrected.

Lynn stopped and looked at the baby asleep in Ford’s arms.

“You look good with a baby, kid,” Lynn teased.

Ford rolled his eyes. “Hello, Mr. Mayor.”

Lynn grimaced and held out the paper.

“I’m not sure you’ll need this at all,” he said as I took it. “But it shows the DNA matching and that the kid is Avery’s sister.”

I nodded once.