Page 26 of Hey, Daddy

She’d loved it, but upon marrying my brother, Brecken had gotten an upgrade in the form of an armored Yukon that looked like a tank.

Hurrying to the Jeep, I got inside and used the key to start it.

I had to giggle as I pulled out of the driveway and headed home.

Do you skateboard or snowboard? Neither, I charcuterie board.

—Nastya to Haze

HAZE

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked.

“You heard me.” John sighed. “Fuck.”

Fuck was right.

The woman in the box, hacked up by some sort of hatchet or similar object, had been a senator’s mistress.

“So let me get this straight,” I said. “One, he wants us to keep the fact that she was his mistress on the down low. As if that’s going to be easy. But he also wants us not to investigate him?”

“His alibi checks out because of the Department of Homeland Security meeting he was in, which was super top secret. In addition, his wife has an alibi as well,” our boss, Sergeant Daniels, grumbled.

Sergeant Daniels was a good cop. I liked him a lot.

What I didn’t like was how he let people in position of power have leniency when he wasn’t willing to give that same leniency to anyone else.

Like, what did him being a fucking senator have anything to do with us investigating this case the correct way?

“What about their adult children?” I asked. “They might have an issue with their mother getting cheated on.”

“They have alibis, too.” Daniels replied.

Of course they did.

“So how do you expect this to play out?” I asked carefully.

Daniels did not disappoint.

He stood up and walked to a board that’d been set up across the room.

On the top was the victim’s photo.

She was cute.

A twenty-five-year-old female with flowing blonde hair, bright-green eyes, and a set of fake ass teeth.

I could see why the senator had gone for her.

The perv.

What had my heart beating inside of my chest like a jackrabbit was the photo of Nastya Semyonov.

“What’s going on?” I asked carefully.

“Senator Kennedy wants around-the-clock surveillance on the woman,” Daniels replied.

“For what?” I asked.

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