Reaper's Legacy Read Free Page B

exhausted,tear-streaked yet radiant face was the second-most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life.
    Right after those tiny blue eyes.
    “You did good, babe,” he whispered to Sophie.
    “Yeah,” she whispered back. “I did, didn’t I?”
    She kissed the boy’s head softly.
    “Hey, Noah … It’s Mommy,” she said. “I’m gonna take such good care of you. I promise. Always.”



CHAPTER ONE
     
    SEVEN YEARS LATER
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
SOPHIE
    Our last night in Seattle didn’t go so great.
    My babysitter, my emergency backup sitter, and my second emergency backup sitter all had the flu. I’d have been screwed if one of my new neighbors hadn’t volunteered to keep an eye on Noah. I didn’t really know her, but we’d been living next to each other for a month and no red flags. Not the best, I know.
    You do what you have to when you’re a single mom.
    Then Dick yelled at me for coming in late for my shift.
    I didn’t tell him I’d nearly missed work altogether because of Noah. And no, I’m not just calling him Dick because he’s actually a dick (although he is). It’s his real name.
    That night I truly understood why he was in such a bad mood, because of the six girls who were supposed to be on, only two showed. Two had the flu (genuine—half the city had it) and two had dates. Or I’m assuming they had dates. Their official stories were a dead grandmother (her fifth) and an infected tattoo.
    Apparently none of the drug stores in her neighborhood carried Bacitracin.
    Either way, things fell to shit fast. We had a band, which put the customers in a good mood, but the live music and drunken dancing made it even harder to keep up with my tables. Also made us busier than usual. We would’ve been stretched even with a full staff. To make things perfect, it was a local band and most of their fans were college students, which meant crappy tips.
    By eleven I was already tired and needed to pee in a bad way, so I ducked into the bathroom. Out of toilet paper already (of course), and I knew damned well nobody had time to restock. I pulled out my phone, doing a quick check for messages, and saw two. One from Miranda, my babysitter, and a second from Ruger, the world’s scariest almost-in-law.
    Shit.
    Miranda first. I held it to my ear and listened, hoping to hell everything was all right. No way Dick would let me off early, even for an emergency. Ruger could wait.
    “Mom, I’m scared,” Noah said.
    I froze.
    “I took Miranda’s phone and I’m hiding in the closet,” he continued. “There’s a bad guy here and he’s smoking inside and he wanted me to smoke, too, and they kept laughing at me. He tried to tickle me and make me sit on his lap. Now they’re watching a movie that has naked people in it and I don’t like it. I don’t want to be here and I want to go home. I want
you
to come home. I really need you.
Right now
.”
    I heard his breath hitch, like he was crying but didn’t want me to know, and then the message cut out.
    I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to control my surge of adrenaline. I checked the time on the message—almost forty-five minutes ago. My stomach twisted and for a second I thought I might puke. Then I pulled it together and left the bathroom. Imanaged to walk back into the bar and have Brett, the bartender, unlock the drawer where we kept our purses.
    “I need to get home, my kid’s in trouble. Tell Dick.”
    With that I headed toward the door, pushing through drunken frat boys. I was almost out when someone grabbed my arm, spinning me around. My boss stood there, glaring.
    “Where the hell do you think you’re going, Williams?”
    “There’s an emergency,” I told him. “I need to go home.”
    “You leave me now with a crowd like this, don’t come back,” Dick growled. I leaned forward and stared him down, which was pretty easy considering the guy was hardly more than five feet tall. On good days I thought of him as a hobbit.
    Tonight he was just a