Page 18 of Bad Mother

“No.” He ran a finger under his lip, thinking. “I live a pretty quiet life, to be honest.” Her gaze lingered on him for a moment, and she gave a nod before she reached forward, setting a couple of pieces of paper on his desk again.

Gavin took them, noting that they were copies of handwritten notes, the first short and single sided, the second two pages, both sides filled with the same neat writing.

“Do you mind looking them over?” Sienna asked. “I’m sorry I can’t leave those copies with you—”

“I have time,” Gavin said, picking them up and leaning back in his chair. From his peripheral vision, he saw Sienna pick up her phone and scroll through it as he read.

When he was done, he set the pages down and pushed them back across the desk. She retrieved them and set them in her lap on top of the notepad still there.

“What is this?” he asked. “Someone’s diary?”

“Or a piece of fiction fed to us for reasons unknown. I’m not sure. I thought maybe the dog’s name might mean something. Did anything stick out at all?”

“Jaxon?”

“Yes, but he calls him Jax in one spot.” Sienna picked up the copies and scanned quickly to the place she meant, then read from the copy. “‘I first went to the back porch to see if Jaxon was still there, curled up in his pool of sunshine. But when I looked out the window, no Jax.’”

“No Jax. As in... nojacks? Cards?”

Sienna huffed out a breath. “I don’t know.” She rubbed her temple, and Gavin had the desire to comfort her. It startled him. Not the need to offer Sienna Walker comfort from her obvious frustration but the strength of it. As if it’d been yesterday when she would have welcomed such a thing, rather than eleven years before.

But the fact remained that it had been eleven years, and regardless of the feeling’s strength, it belonged to him and him alone.

“Can I see those again?” he asked, gesturing to the pages in her hand. She gave them over wordlessly, and he scanned the lines again, but there were no more numbers or card suits. He used the pads of his fingers to tap on the pages, going back to what she’d said about the dog.

“No jacks. Okay, so let’s take a look at the remaining ones,” he said, realizing why she’d asked him that question a few minutes before.

“I tried that, but the other cards are still meaningless to me. What about you?”

He reached his hand out, and she obviously knew what he was asking for because she handed him the photo of the seven cards placed in the order they’d been displayed in the victim’s hand. Their eyes lingered for a few extra beats, and Sienna looked away first, watching as he took the picture, placed it on top of the other papers on his desk, and studied the cards.No jacks.So without those, the cards read: eight of spades,nine of hearts, five of diamonds, ace of clubs, and two of diamonds. Eight, nine... five, one, two.

Gavin looked up at Sienna to find her studying him. Her eyes widened, and she looked briefly embarrassed before her expression leveled.

“Eight, nine, five, one—if you’re counting the ace as a one—two, is a zip code here in town,” he said.

“Oh.” She blinked twice, her gaze going to the side. “Yes.Yes.Where is it?”

“Over in Northeast, I think. Hold on.” He opened his laptop and used a search engine to confirm what he’d said. “Yup. Northeast. It’s a pretty big area, though.”

Sienna was tapping her knee again the way she did when her mind was going so fast her body unconsciously attempted to play along. “He is, though,” she said as if thinking aloud and only voicing half her thought.

“Giving you clues in the notes?”

“Yes.”She looked slightly incredulous but also excited. She sat back in her chair, her knee stilling. “If itisa zip code the cards represent—which, it’s too coincidental not to be, right?—then what the hell am I supposed to do with it?”

Gavin set the cards aside and went back to the note, reading through it for the second time.Somethinghad stuck out to him, but he hadn’t been thinking the way she obviously was—as though there were clues contained within...whateverthis was. And not just clues using numbers but—“This,” he said, tapping the line with his index finger. “His mother says, ‘You might think I look better than I play, lover, but oh, you’d be wrong.’ It’s a phrase. In cards, you call a hand that looks better than it plays an Anna Kournikova.”

“An Anna Kournikova? The... tennis player?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. So what does that mean? She looks better than she...” Understanding came into her expression, and she gave an exaggerated eye roll. “Well, that’s rude.”

He let out a small chuckle on a shrug. He agreed, but he hadn’t coined the phrase.

“The real question is, What does that have to do with—” Her mouth made an O, and she went still. “There was a tennis ball at her house.”

“Whose house?”

---