And went very still.
It was a phone. A cheap throwaway phone. A burner.
He was almost afraid to breathe. He reached out to touch it with a fingertip, half-afraid he was seeing things. It shifted slightly in the flour. He picked it up.
“Damn,” Duke muttered, crossing the room now. He joined Dante, staring down at the phone. “He really is that good.”
“Yeah. He is.”
* * *
He couldn’t mean it, Gemma thought. Dev couldn’t really be breaking up with her.
“But—” she began.
He shook his head. “I’m going to give you that chance to find that guy,” he said again.
Gemma frowned. He sounded as if he were giving her some great gift, not destroying their life together. And somewhere deep inside, where she was the woman who knew her place in this world, she felt a spark of anger.
“That’s big of you,” she said sharply. “So, what, you’re just going to walk away from me? From us?”
“Yes.”
“And just what,” she asked imperiously, “do you think you’re going to find with someone else that I don’t have? Just what is it you think I’m lacking, Devlin Harrington?”
Dev looked almost sad. “An ounce of maternal instinct,” he said.
Maternal instinct? Her brow furrowed. What on earth did that have to do with anything? Then a memory struck her.
“Is this about your cousin and her baby?”
She found it hard to believe one awkward moment with a tiny, squalling, squirming infant could have brought them to this. Sure, it had been clear she didn’t know the first thing about babies, but why would she? She was Gemma Colton, daughter of Fenwick Colton—not to be confused with her distant cousin with the same name, who had had to deal with that awful virus a few years ago in Dead River, Wyoming, the best reason she’d ever heard for not becoming a nurse—and any children she might ever have would be safely ensconced with a nanny.
“That was just the demonstration of what I already knew,” Dev said. And now he was sounding sad. “Gemma, keeping Harrington Incorporated in the family is my responsibility. And that requires children.”
She might not know much about kids, but that seemed a rather cold-blooded way of thinking about them, even to her. But she loved Dev, and so she plowed on. “So? I want kids...someday.” She shoved aside the doubt. “And they’ll have a good life,” she declared. “The best schools, the best care, a dozen nannies if that’s what it takes to find the right one.”
“Exactly.”
Gemma blinked. “What?”
“I want a woman who will be hands-on with our children. Who will be a great mom. Like mine. She never turned us over to a nanny. Never abdicated her responsibility.”
“Abdicated her responsibility? You make it sound like giving up a crown—” She cut off her own words when she heard how snarky she sounded. Secretly, she thought Dev probably had a rose-colored-glasses view of the mother who had died. Kind of like her father did of his first wife, Layla’s mother.
Layla.
“Wait, what about your father? Who’s to say he and Layla won’t have children when this crazy killer is caught?”
Something flashed in Devlin’s eyes. Was he not happy about his father being engaged to a woman only three years older than him? Surely he didn’t think he would be supplanted by any children they had, since he was already a crucial part of the company.
She herself wasn’t thrilled with her sister marrying Dev’s father, and not just because it would make things complicated—her father-in-law would also be her brother-in-law—but because she couldn’t quite believe Layla loved the guy. Not like Gemma loved Dev, anyway.
And belatedly she remembered she was thinking about complications that would now apparently never arise. Because Dev was breaking up with her. Her ultimatum had gone seriously sideways.
“You can’t mean this,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “It’s just not a good match. But you’ll be all right, Gemma. I wish...” He paused, then said decisively, “I’ll let you find the happiness you deserve.”
He’d let her? She’d had about enough of this royalish munificence of his. She wanted to ask who put him in charge of the world, but didn’t.
She’d show him. No one broke up with Gemma Colton. She was the one who did the breaking up. He wanted maternal instincts? She’d show him maternal instincts. She’d make him sorry he’d ever doubted she had them. She’d have him crawling back, apologizing, in no time at all. She’d never been thwarted in her life, not for anything she’d really wanted.
And she would not be now.
* * *
“I’ll go let the Sarge know you found something.”
Dante nodded, didn’t even look as Duke left. His attention was fastened on the phone. The screen was tiny compared to his own, and it was obviously bare-bones, but it booted up quickly enough.
The call log was empty. No contacts saved. Neither of which surprised him. He opened the messaging app. His mouth tightened a little at the short list of text conversations. Top name meant nothing to him, nor did the next. In fact, none of the four names did.
But the next three had only phone numbers listed, no names assigned.
And that middle number looked familiar.
He pulled his own phone out of his pocket and quickly called up a file. Scrolled down to a list of numbers...
It was there.
Holy bloodhound nose, it was there. They finally, finally had a link to the Larsons. He looked at the patient dog. “Flash, you’re a genius.”
Okay, Dante thought, that look was dignified. And it fairly screamed, “Of course I am.” He grinned. His Monday was turning out not just decent, but great. He quickly checked the rest of the bag—nothing but flour. Sealed up the evidence bag. Picked it up. Headed back toward the living room.
Boom.
The front windows of the apartment shattered. Gunfire. Dante grabbed Flash and hauled him back to the kitchen, out of the line of fire. More shots.
His mind was racing. Ran through it in a split second. Three quick rounds. Not fast enough for fully automatic. Large caliber, but not huge. No hope of hitting anyone, so a warning. Then a squeal of tires on pavement. Picking up speed. Maybe—
A horrendous crash from outside echoed through the now broken windows. Metal versus metal, and more glass raining down.
But no more shots.
