The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries) Read Free Page B

and stay home with the baby.” It was an unfair answer, but maybe not entirely untrue.
    “Ah.” Rory leaned back in her seat, seeming to buy it. “I see. Do you know that for sure?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know. When I was with the cops he used to complain that it was too dangerous for both of us to be in law enforcement, if we ever started a family.”
    “But he was with the cops then, too.” Toby and I had met when he was a Homicide detective and I’d just been assigned to the department as a 23-year-old uniform. He’d quit the force shortly after me—hell, partly because of me—and gone to law school.  
    “Yeah,” I acknowledged, “but he still considers what I do dangerous.”
    “Well, in his defense, you did get shot last year,” Rory pointed out. “And stabbed the year before that.”
    “Whoa,” I protested. “First of all, I wasn’t stabbed, I was slashed a little in the arm, and it barely needed stitches-”
    “Wasn’t it, like, thirty?”
    “–And that wasn’t even for work, that was when I saw those three kids trying to set that dog’s tail on fire. And I kicked their asses.” Rory snorted.  
    “Secondly,” I continued, ignoring her, “Okay, yeah, I got a teeny bit shot,” – I put my left thumb and index finger a half inch apart to demonstrate the triviality of the whole thing – “But that little girl is home tonight because of it.”  
    Amanda Ann Rink was a four-year-old who was snatched from home a year earlier by her junkie father, who figured he could rent Amanda out to his sexual predator friends, and then ransom her to his ex-wife for drug money. The police didn’t know about the drug connection or the sleazy friends at first, and dismissed the whole thing as a domestic squabble. So I spent a full week living and breathing the case, and when I finally found the shitty apartment where Rink was keeping his daughter, he managed to shoot me in the right shoulder before the police arrived.  
    That case had put Dane Investigations more or less on the map, and eventually the publicity got me enough business to hire Bryce full-time and rent decent office space. But I would have found Amanda for free, bullet and all.
    “I know. And I know you saved her from going through some pretty awful stuff, much less maybe being killed,” Rory said calmly. “But, Lena, a few inches over and you would have been shot in the heart.”
    “And a few inches the other way and the bullet would have missed me entirely,” I said through more pretzel. “Shit happens.”
    Rory rolled her eyes and glanced at the clock. It was officially closing time. “Can you grab the lock?” she asked, because I was closer.
    “Sure,” I said, hopping off the stool. I speedwalked over to the front door and flipped the deadbolt. Then I leaned on the counter so I could reach the pretzels again.
    “Look, Lena,” Rory continued, “This topic must have come up before now. You guys have talked about kids?”
    I swallowed. “Of course. I just... I just kind of figured this would sort itself out, later.”
    “Little sister,” Rory said, not without sympathy, “it’s later.”
    I sighed. “Yeah.”
    Rory drummed her neat fingernails on the counter for a moment, then took off her reading glasses and tossed them on top of a stack of receipts. “You know you’re going to have to be incredibly, incredibly careful with yourself. You need to get to the OB, like, right away. And I know you’re worried about it, but you are going to have to tell your husband that you are pregnant.”
    I fidgeted, rearranging the little knickknacks that were lined up on the counter. I don’t like being told what to do, even—or maybe especially—by my big sister. “Right. And how long do you think I have before I have to do that?”
    Rory threw up her hands. “Selena Kyle Dane. Are you listening to me at all?”
    “I hear you, but can you just pretend for a minute that I just want to keep it private a little longer to