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Had he lost her, then? He was still contemplating that question an hour and two glasses of whiskey later when his phone rang. Seeing Liv’s face on the screen, he hit the button to answer. “Is she okay?”
“She’s… safe. Okay is another thing altogether.” Liv’s voice was thick with tears. “I don’t know if she’s ever going to forgive us, Bry.”
“What did she say?”
“Mostly I talked, explained MaryAnn didn’t have anything to do with the other attacks. There wasn’t as much yelling as I expected, but I almost wish there had been.” A heavy pause, like she wasn’t sure what to say next. “She said she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be okay with this, and she needs some time.”
“Fuck that.” Being away from her for just a few hours had been torture. There was no way he was walking away without a fight.
“Look, Bry. It’s late. And if I know you, you’re sitting on the couch with a glass of whiskey, and it isn’t your first one of the night.”
Glancing at the tumbler in his hand, he couldn’t help but smile. “It’s my second, and I’m standing in the kitchen, thank you very much.”
“Still, you don’t need to be driving all the way home right now. Let her have tonight, and tomorrow you can storm the castle and rescue the princess.”
Myprincess, he corrected silently. But although it killed him, he reluctantly agreed. “First thing in the morning, I’m going over there.”
“Fair enough.” Another long pause. “She’s hurting, Bryant. You keeping this from her didn’t help, but honestly, I don’t know if she ever would have accepted you helping MaryAnn, even if you’d been honest with her from the start. And I’m so sorry I put you in this position.”
“You don’t have to apologize, Livvy. MaryAnn doesn’t have anyone else to stand up for her, and after the way the prosecution has tried to railroad her, I can’t walk away now. We’ll just have to make Shannon see reason.”
Liv gave an impatient huff. “If you go in there in lawyer-mode, you’re going to lose her. She needs her Daddy, even if she doesn’t want to admit it.”
“Noted.”
“Good. Let me know how it goes. Love you.”
“Love you, too, brat.” He ended the call, cutting off her snort of laughter. Standing at the island where he’d sat and watched Shannon squirm with a chunk of ginger in her bottom, he drained the rest of the amber liquid in his glass before shooting off one last text of the night.
Bryant
I love you, princess. Try to get some rest, and I will see you in the morning.
Without waiting for an answer, he rinsed the glass and headed up the stairs to see if he could sleep.
CHAPTER26
Bryant’s text kept her up half the night, unable to relax enough to even close her eyes, much less get any real sleep. As a result, she was sipping her first cup of coffee before the sun even came up, watching the door as if he might burst through like the Kool-Aid man at any given second.
She finished her third cup in the shower, and a plan began to form. Not so much a plan as an idea, but that was all she needed. Sitting around, waiting for him to show up so they could fight about MaryAnn, was slowly driving her insane.
The address was surprisingly easy to find, and it cost her less than the breakfast she grabbed at a drive through on the way over. The sausage biscuit tasted like ash, but she knew if she didn’t eat something, the amount of caffeine in her system would make it impossible to focus.
And she wanted to be completely clear-headed for this conversation.
The apartment building was on the older side, but lovingly maintained. And almost no security to speak of, making it ridiculously simple for Shannon to slip in behind another tenant and take the elevator up to the fifth floor.
Where she stood in front of 5B for a solid ten minutes, willing herself to knock.
“You survived a deranged serial killer, for fuck’s sake. You can talk to a mousy little bitch.”
It took another five long minutes before she finally raised her fist and rapped on the door. A woman answered only a few seconds later, her wide, perpetually frightened eyes somehow managing to widen even further when she saw Shannon.
“What do you want?”
The question was filled with fear, like Shannon was the one who’d gone around murdering people. Irritated, and ridiculously insulted, she scowled down at the tiny woman. How had she never noticed how small MaryAnn was? “I want to talk to you.”
“I, um.” Nervous eyes shifted back and forth. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to talk to you. Before, um, the trial?”
