“Yes. I think she had a plan to kill White even before we’d approached her to tell her side of what had happened.” Royce didn’t tell anyone that he thought that Gurt had done them all a favor by killing White. He thought it, but didn’t voice it. “She had had her little gun made when she’d still been in the recuperating stages after he’d shot her.”
“I wish we could have talked more. I wish she could have… I was going to ask her to help me with the program. I thought she’d be an inspiration to everyone knowing that good things could come to you if you didn’t think of yourself as a victim. I guess I was wrong.”
He pulled her tight in his arms and kissed her shoulder. “You weren’t wrong, love. You couldn’t see how badly she’d been affected by what he’d done to her. I’m not sure anyone had.”
She lay there for several minutes before she spoke again. “Royce, do you think the others will be all right? Do you think any of them are thinking about killing themselves?” She turned to him then. “Is there anything we can do for them?”
He nodded before he said anything. “We’ll give them anything they need, baby. Anything. You work your magic on them and see what we can do to help them and we will. I swear if it is in my power to do it, they can have it.”
He held her long after she’d gone to sleep and when Lee woke a few hours later, he went to the nursery to get him. He changed his diaper and took him to the big rocker just to hold him. Lee seemed to be all right with waiting on his food so Royce told him about his mom.
“You should see her went she gets all fired up about something. I’m telling you, son, it’s a sight to behold. And boy, when she’s…well, that’s between mom and me. But she can light me up pretty good too.” Lee watched him as he spoke to him, never breaking eye contact. “You’re going to be such a ladies man, kid. You just wait and see. But you won’t be knocking any of them up before you say ‘I do.’ I did that and it turned out wonderful for me, but you can’t expect to be so lucky. Here are words my brothers say all the time, ‘don’t tap it if you don’t wrap it.’ Words to live by.”
“What a thing to say to a baby.”
Royce looked up at Kasey standing in the doorway when she spoke.
“Are you seriously giving our ten day old son sexual advice?”
“You’re never too young to be taught to respect the lady. Besides, you know you’ll be giving any daughters that we have the same advice.” She walked to him and started to kneel on the floor in front of the rocker. “Sit in my lap. I want to hold the two most important people in my life.”
She slid into the chair and Royce handed her Lee. He cradled them both in his arms. He doubted there was a better feeling in the world than this.
“I have a news conference tomorrow with your mom. Your brother, I think, set it up a long time ago. Then we have a meeting with a reporter from the Daily Broadcast. Some guy by the name of Kyle Washington.”
“Kylie Washington. It’s a girl, woman. She and Jesse went to school together. She’s a real ball buster. She was the one that got the last mayor impeached. She uncovered a ring of prostitution that he’d been running with campaign money.” Royce stood when Kasey did. Lee had decided that he’d waited long enough.
He watched her nurse him. He was such a greedy little thing and he made noises that made Royce smile. Lee held his mother’s finger while he ate his dinner.
“Annamarie said that he…Kylie has been on the story for some time and that she is the one who’d found two of the women for the trial. Do you think she knew about Gurt?” Royce told her that he didn’t know. “I hope she didn’t. I think that would be hard for her to live with if she did.”
Royce hadn’t had anything more to do with Gurt than to see her in the court room, and he was having a hard time with it. He could still see her blood on the wall behind her when she’d killed herself. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough. She and Daniel meet on Monday morning. And from what I remember about her as a kid, she and Daniel didn’t get along all that well. Seems she’d take exception to everything that he said.
~~~
Kylie Washington put down her phone and looked at her notes. She was really going to go to the Hunter building to see Daniel Hunter. She closed her eyes, trying to wipe out the hurt and pain that was there every time she’d thought about him. The pisser had made her mad every time she’d seen him when she’d been a teenager.
It had started in middle school, moved up through high school, and then into adulthood. Every time they saw one another, he would make her mad enough to make her want to kick him. But she’d remained the adult. And not only had she not put his nuts up around his eyes, she’d written a glowing article about him when he’d taken over the personal side of his brother’s firm. Cushy job that it was.