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While I was busy with that, he must have reached for his phone, because I heard his voice as I was adjusting Lainey’s straps.

“Ah, yes, hi. Um,” he started, his voice pitched a little higher to, I assumed, mask his identity. “Yeah, so I was walking to my car from the bar over on Stark, and there’s a man in the lot next to, er, the textile factory. And he seems in bad shape. Think you gotta send him an ambulance. Yeah, real quick.”

I could hear the operator asking something else, but he was already ending the call as I quietly clicked the backseat door closed.

“Can’t they trace your phone to you?” I asked.

“Not if it’s a burner. Gonna give me a ride?” he asked, nodding toward my car.

It was the least I could do.

We climbed in.

“Where am I going?”

“Right now, just drive. Get the fuck outta here, but calmly and casually. Don’t be looking all freaked out or speeding. We’re just a young family, driving home from some event. No biggie.”

Right.

Okay.

Yeah.

I could do that.

“You good?” he asked a few minutes later as I drove back in the direction of my motel, since I didn’t know where he lived.

“I think so,” I said, hearing the sirens off in the distance and saying a prayer that they could get to the guy in time.

“You can drop me there,” he said, nodding his chin toward a convenience store up ahead.

“I can drive you home.”

“Nah, don’t worry about me. Get the baby home. Get yourself some sleep. I can make my own way home.”

The guilt was immediate, but I tamped it down as I turned into the well-lit lot and pulled into a spot.

“Wait,” I called when he opened his door and climbed out.

“What’s up, baby?”

God, the casual way he threw that word around must have melted panties. Mine felt halfway there already.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” he asked, shrugging. Like it genuinely was no big deal. Saving our lives. “Get yourself and that baby home safe, alright, Zo?”

Before I could say anything else, he gently closed the door, then hip-checked it to make it click.

Then the guy just… swaggered on into the convenience store like nothing at all had happened.

“Okay, baby,” I said, forcing myself to reverse out of the spot instead of sit there watching Coast walk around the store. “Let’s go home and try to forget this whole thing ever happened.”

As if that was even possible.

I obsessed about it until I fell asleep.

Then I dreamed of piercing blue eyes and hands all over me.