Page 47 of Save Her from Me

I gave a happy laugh and squished her lightly. “We wondered when you’d say.”

Gabe squinted. “Ye knew? How?”

Raphael grinned broadly. “Maybe we’re just perceptive. Or maybe you’ve wrapped Effie in cotton wool for weeks and have been entirely distracted.”

Gabe’s usual serious expression lifted, and joy shone out. “Guilty as charged. All I can imagine is our wee lad or lass.”

“I’m going to buy them their first snowboard,” I claimed.

“God, can ye imagine a tiny Gabe on a slope?” Raphael laughed.

It was a source of great amusement to us that Gabe had taken forever to learn how to board, and even now was pretty shaky.

Jackson gave his own quiet congratulations. Raphael moved to wrap Effie in a careful hug while I did the same, though less carefully with my older brother.

“About time you joined the dad gang and expanded this branch of the family,” I quipped.

He smiled back, pride and a deep sense of satisfaction in the way he watched his wife. “The timing was right. Or so we thought.”

I nudged him. “It’s still right. Dad won’t ever get to play grandfather. Nobody will tell him.”

Raphael took my place and diverted both prospective parents’ attention with a question. I sat next to Jackson.

“Congratulations, auntie,” he whispered to me, shifting closer.

I warmed. The guy had me too mixed up.

Earlier, when I’d searched on his name, I’d stopped at the list of results, the sense of intrusion too big for me to handle.

The headlines had floored me.

His sister had been murdered by an ex-boyfriend when they were teenagers. There had been a manhunt. Jackson had been part of it, including posting video appeals to her kidnapper.

A still from the video had been a thumbnail on my screen. A much younger version of the man by my side, his expression stricken, bleak.

I couldn’t imagine what he’d been through, or why he’d been the face of the appeal, and I didn’t want to read on when it was his story to tell.

I wondered if he was now an only child. If he’d never get to be an uncle.

I was almost certain if I asked he wouldn’t talk about it.

Too much crowded my mind, and I wasn’t able to summon an answer. Jackson dragged his gaze off me, smiling at some joke Raphael made.

All too quickly, we calmed, the less happy subject of Dad hanging over us.

I got up, directing my family.

“Gabe and Raph, you’ll need to be there in the background otherwise he won’t bother talking to me, but don’t speak, if you can avoid it. I’ll handle him. I’m going to ask if he remembers my problem then take it from there.”

Jackson pressed a fingertip to my arm. His touch burned.

“Feed the questions slowly. Don’t give him any more information than we know Larson’s gathered. If he has sent him to hunt ye, then they have gaps in their knowledge. They knew enough for Larson to be hunting in the right area but no more.”

“Noted. I just want to establish if he’s in on it,” I said. “He raised me for fourteen years. I’ll be able to tell something from his reaction.”

We arranged ourselves in the room to keep Effie and Jackson out of shot, then set up a phone we used only for this purpose. It only had one number stored.

I pressed it, and the video commenced.

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