Page 66 of Broken Daddy

Fuck.

“I’ll stick closer to him,” Donovan added. “Should I bug his offices?”

“Technically, he’s a client,” Hayes said.

“Technically, he sounds shady as fuck. We could be guarding one of the bad guys.”

Fatigue flooded Hayes. Once he’d believed in the good guys winning like Donovan still did. But that didn’t always happen. And he’d learned that there weren’t really good guys. While some people were all bad, most people were varying shades of gray.

“I’ll message Kent,” Hayes said. “Tell him what we heard. See what he says.”

“Whoever he was speaking is probably the person who . . . paid him to throw a case. But why? And how the fuck do we figure this out?”

Yeah. That was the fucking question.

15

Devi stared at her work proudly.

“It all looks amazing, Devi,” Michelle told her.

She had one more piece to make and a couple more to complete and then her collection was all done.

“I’m going to start packaging them up soon.”

Devi turned to the older woman. “You don’t have to do that. I can do it next weekend. We’ve still got nearly seven weeks to go.”

“You’ve still got several pieces to work on, dear. You’re running close to the wire as it is.”

She knew she was. And the urgency was riding her hard.

“I know you’re busy, Devi. Let me help. Please.”

Michelle was always so kind to her. Devi had always loved working with clay. Her mom had scraped together some money for lessons with Michelle. After her death, Derick had seen it as a waste of money. But Michelle had let Devi take lessons in return for cleaning up her studio.

Michelle was the closest thing she had to an aunt or grandma.

“Are you sure? I don’t want you overdoing things.” Michelle was getting older and she had to get a lot more rest lately.

“Don’t worry, dear. There’s still life in these old hands.”

“I know there is.” Devi hugged her old friend carefully.

“Now, it’s time for you to go home. Surely, you have other things to do than spend time in this studio.”

She really didn’t. However, she was exhausted and as she looked out of the window she saw that it had gotten dark. While she didn’t want to go back to the trailer and risk seeing Derick, she knew that Michelle was likely exhausted and wouldn’t leave until she did.

“I do. I’m going to head home and take a shower, watch some television, and go to bed.”

“Good. Make sure you eat too.” Michelle waved a finger at her. “You’re looking thinner than last week.”

“I will,” she said, crossing her fingers behind her back. There was nothing in the house at the moment and she didn’t get paid until Thursday.

At least when she was at work she ate two meals a day.

Well, unless Aaron was being an asshole.

And, generally there was some bread or something in the house. But Derick must have come home at some stage yesterday and cleared the place out of food.