Page 40 of Enemies to Lovers

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said. “First off, got a call from Apollo around eleven. Turns out there’s an Amber alert for a missing three-week-old. Apollo, being the bleeding heart that he is, looked into the Amber alert and found out that the alert was put out on the baby that I had under my care. The grandparents have custody, and left the kid with a family friend while the grandfather had open heart surgery in California. When they got home, they realized that the kid was missing and DPD sent out an alert. The kid that I’d been watching wasn’t related to Reign or her brother at all. That kid had died in the car crash that Reign had caused. She straight up stole this baby from a person’s house.”

“What?” I asked in shock.

“No joke,” Webber said. “The woman that was supposed to be watching the baby wasn’t the best person in the world, either. It was the mother of the child. Apparently, she believed Reign when she said that she was the baby’s nanny that the grandparents had hired and just handed him off without any questions. I immediately called the grandparents and got them to the baby. Then I turned Reign into the police. Or, actually, I went to Haze, who did all the in-between. Reign’s currently got a BOLO—be on the lookout—for her. You see her, don’t engage. Just call the police and let them deal with her.”

“She’s at her place,” I muttered. “I’ll call Haze myself and get him on it.”

“I can’t believe I fell for her shit,” Webber sighed. “I’m such a little bitch.”

“I’ve been falling for it for twenty years,” I pointed out. “So has Chevy. She’s good at manipulation.”

“She looks so much like Seely it hurts,” Webber said. “I just…”

I knew exactly what he was going to say.

He saw Reign, and pictured what his baby sister, Seely, would’ve looked like if she’d grown up. And instead of protecting himself, he’d tried to help.

“You think that letter she wrote was just bullshit?” I asked.

“I think it was bullshit, yes,” Webber agreed. “My guess, she wrote what she thought would get you to react in the way that she wanted. We reacted like planned, and suddenly stopped her from doing the unthinkable, when in reality she likely never had plans to off herself.”

“Great,” I said. “What’s with the brother? Is he actually the brother?”

“I have no clue anymore,” he laughed. “I got a lot going on. Apollo is digging into Reign’s life now, and I’ll keep you updated. But it’s lookin’ like he’s actually her brother. Apparently mental illness definitely runs in the family.”

I finally looked up at Baker, who was listening to it all, and instructed Webber, “Get the cops to her door, and let me know when they have her. I have to get into the office, but I won’t leave until she’s gone. She’ll likely stay put if I stay.”

“Already done. They should be there soon,” Webber said. “Sorry to lay all this on you at seven in the morning.”

“Glad to know it,” I admitted. “Should’ve followed my gut instinct when it screamed at me to double check. But the letter was pretty damn convincing, I’m not gonna lie.”

Webber muttered a few choice curse words, then said, “I’ll talk to you later.”

I called Apollo back next, but he sent me to voicemail, so I tossed the phone onto my bed.

Holt popped off Baker’s breast, and I got a full, unencumbered view of her breast before she hastily covered herself up.

“What the hell was all that about?” Baker leaned forward in interest as she sat Holt up onto his bottom and started patting his back.

I gave her the full version as I got up and got dressed, being sure to keep my hard-on out of plain view while I did so.

“That’s insane,” she said after I’d given her the whole story. “There’s definitely some mental health issues there.”

“Yep,” I agreed. “I’ve always felt that she had issues. Things that didn’t quite line up. Overreactions. Made up situations that never happened. A couple of months after I got out, I caught Chevy, my brother, and her in bed together. I was justifiably pissed. Chevy thought I was pissed because he’d ‘slept with’ my girl, when in reality I was mad as fuck because Reign had sunk her claws into my brother—whom I thought I’d warned about Reign’s issues. I later learned that he’d been dealing with her shit for years.” I shook my head as I reached for my toothbrush. “She’s a nutcase, but she’s a smart nutcase. She’s been playing people for years, and no one has any idea that they’re being played. At this point, no one knows what is real. Hell, I don’t even know what’s real. And she’s still goin’ strong. Maybe she doesn’t even know herself what’s real anymore.”

“I don’t think that Munchausen’s is the only thing she has. If she even has it. I think it might just be a very clever way to get people to do what she wants,” Baker pointed out. “She could be just that manipulative.”

I studied Baker in her element once we got to the office.

She’d been working in the corner of my office, clicking away and her fingers flying across her keypad as she quickly typed faster than I’d ever seen.

Not even Keely typed that fast.

I’d watched for long periods of time as her fingers moved over the keypads, wondering how such delicate hands could turn me on so much.

“Maybe.” I shrugged, forcing myself to come back to the topic that I’d much rather have nothing to do with right now. “I don’t really care all that much anymore, though. I don’t want anything to do with her.”

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