Page 80 of The Morning After (Savannah 2)

“Monday.”

Damn.

“She said you’d probably stop by and she left you this.” Tonya reached into a top drawer and pulled out a sealed envelope. With a lift of her eyebrows that told him she already knew what was inside the sealed packet, she handed it to Reed.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what was inside.

Once in the hallway he ripped open the envelope and unfolded the single page.

The lab report was definite. His B-negative blood indicated with great probability that he was the father of Bobbi Marx’s baby. There was a note that a DNA report was to follow as soon as all the tests were completed.

He felt a new sense of despair.

His kid.

The bastard had killed his kid.

CHAPTER 19

“I can’t, not tonight,” Nikki said, cradling her desk telephone between her shoulder and ear and only half listening to the conversation. She was pressed for time and had just put the finishing touches on her next story about the Grave Robber.

But her sister had problems of her own and from the sound of it, she was desperate. “Why not? Look, Nikki, it’s not as if I ask you to baby-sit all that often.”

That much was true, Nikki thought. “Any other night, Lily, I swear. But the police are holding a press conference on the Grave Robber in less than an hour and after that I’ve got an important interview. Really important.”

“Take her along.”

“Take a two-year-old along? Are you crazy?” Nikki misspelled a word. “Damn.” She leaned back in her chair and gave up typing. “You take her along.”

“But I have a date. I wouldn’t ask, but my sitter flaked on me at the last minute.”

“Okay, okay, look…Take Phee over to Mom and Dad’s. I’ll pick her up after the interview…say around nine-thirty or ten, haul her back to your place and work on my laptop when she goes to bed.”

“I don’t know—”

“If it’s not good enough for you, find someone else. Call Kyle,” she suggested.

“Kyle? Humph.” Lily snorted in disdain at the mention of their brother. “What does he know about kids?”

“What do I know? Look, Lily, I’ve really got to run.”

“Okay, I’ll drop her by the folks’, but it’s really an inconvenience. I’m supposed to meet Mel at seven.” Sighing, she added, “You know what your problem is, Nicole?”

Uh-oh, here it comes. “Why do I feel like you’re determined to enlighten me?” Nikki dropped her cell phone into her bag.

“You’re just like Andrew,” Lily said, ignoring the dig. “Self-centered and driven. As if the world revolves around you.” She hung up angrily and Nikki winced. As much from the insult as from the loud disconnect. Leave it to Lily to hang up after a barb. From the time she was a whiney child, Lily had always had to get in the last word. A pseudo-intellectual who embraced academia, liberal politics and high fashion, she spent her days caring for her daughter, smoking thin black cigarettes and discussing literature and philosophy. She worked part-time at a coffeehouse and played a flute or sang in a jazz band. Nikki had been in the audience twice and just didn’t get the music. The songs never seemed to end and had a melody that wove in and out of the general noise.

Martyr-like, Lily had never named the father of little Ophelia; the baby’s paternity would probably be a secret Nikki’s older sister would take to her grave. Not that it mattered. Ophelia, fatherless and straight-on adorable, had stolen Nikki’s heart from the first time she’d laid eyes upon her niece in the hospital. Just thinking of the tangle-haired two-year-old brought a smile to Nikki’s face.

Nikki finished the rough draft of her article, leaving room to make some changes in case she learned anything important at the press conference or her interview with Reed and had to do some revisions, then grabbed her coat and hurried outside. She nearly plowed into Norm Metzger at the door.

“Watch where you’re going.”

“Always the gentlemen, aren’t you?” she spouted, though the last thing she needed was a confrontation with Norm. Not now. Well, not ever.

The angry look he sent her spoke volumes and she braced herself for the forthcoming verbal onslaught. “Where the hell do you get your information?”

“What do you mean?”

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