Alone
Crap. Damn. Oh, God.
How could she have been so completely and utterly stupid? She kept thinking back, trying to figure out a time when they hadn’t used protection, but her brain refused to work.
No. It was stress. That’s all. She would go to the drug store and get a kit, and it would be negative, and everything could go back to the way it was before. Because she wasn’t ready for this. She might never be ready for this. Ever. She wasn’t really completely convinced it was going to work out at all. Okay, she pretended she was because Will was in a really dangerous place right now and he needed her, but this was too much. Too soon. Too fast.
This was not the way it was supposed to happen.
Will was supposed to finish his stupid job, and they were supposed to date some more. And eventually, honestly, she figured he’d get tired of her and leave.
Only now when that happened, she would be a single mother with a child and not enough income to cover daycare and - oh, God.
Right. Okay. Go to the store. Pick up test. Panic later. It was going to be negative, anyway.
Only four hours later sitting in her bathroom floor staring at the little stick - it wasn’t negative. The phone rang. The Will phone.
She didn’t answer it. She couldn’t talk to him now. Should she tell him? Maybe it would make him come home?
Maybe it would upset him and he’d do something stupid and get hurt.
No, not now. Later. When it was all over.
Oh, and wouldn’t he be just thrilled about the whole pregnant thing. He would freak out. He would probably do something stupid like ask her to marry him and then she’d have to say no because it would just be because of the baby. He would think about how he didn’t know his father and she’d seen the look on his face talking about that. A sort of wistful look, quickly hidden.
The phone rang again. But she couldn’t talk to him now without letting on that something was going on, and he couldn’t be distracted.
Oh, God. What if her not answering distracted him?
She picked up the phone half a second after it stopped ringing. She sat there the rest of the night, staring at it and willing it to ring again while she was really hoping it wouldn’t ring again. Or would.
She was so damned confused.
But one thing she did know. She wasn’t going to hide it from him. She wanted to go for a little bit without telling him, just to make sure he really wanted her by herself. But she couldn’t keep his baby from him. That was cruel, and wrong - and fuck the whole invasion of privacy thing, it had been wrong when Anne did it, too.
She went back out. This time for some antacids, and to mail a package.
Will stared at the cell phone in his hand. He’d gotten a sudden and overwhelming feeling that he needed to talk to Beth. In the middle of his meet with Liam - and wouldn’t you just know it turned out to be him slithering around in the muck these days - he’d been hit with a certainty that she needed him.
Probably all in his head.
“What’re you doing?” Liam glared.
“Nothin’.” He put the phone away. “Wrong number. Unless you’re Bethany and you’ve been giving out my number to strange men.” He wiggled his eyebrows, watching the other man’s jaw start to twitch.
“This isn’t a game, Willie.”
“You’re not gonna provoke me. I gave you what I got. It’s enough. When the hell can I go home?”
“You don’t get to say when it’s enough. I say when it’s enough, and this isn’t enough.”
Don’t hit the wanker. Just don’t hit the wanker.
“I need to get out of this, Liam. I’m telling you, something’s about the go down I’m not in for. I’m about a day away from getting told to kill somebody, you asshole! And one of the girls keeps looking at me funny, like she knows something’s up. This isn’t good. Take what you’ve got, and move on it before the whole thing gets buggered up.”
“I want to know what happens to the girls who aren’t local. Where do they go?”
“LA”
“LAPD says they’ve not seen any of them on the streets there.”
“Look, I don’t work there. I work here. He got two off the street, cleaned ’em up, and sent them to the bloody city with some guy he calls Sheik. Which is the moron’s nickname for everybody he meets of middle eastern descent, so it’s not like this one’s the only one running around calling himself that. That’s everything on the shipment of cocaine, which one would think you’d be interested in. Get him with that and the numbers running and it’s enough.”
“I want to know where the girls go.” Liam started pacing.
“Yeah. Me too. Don’t know, not one to be told. Pull me out before he bloody well makes me, ya daft git.” He’d fallen into old patterns, both speech and behavior, that he didn’t like. He needed to leave. Now. And the fool was going to try to stop him.
“One more week.”
“One.” Shit. No. Something wasn’t right the last couple of days, and he knew - he just bloody knew - he had to leave now.
“Give it one more week. See if you can get anything on those girls. Because this asshole’s shipping them overseas, Spike. I know it, you know it - just get me enough that the Feds will suspect it too. At least that much.”
Oh, balls. “Yeah. One more week. Just one. And I get anything before that, I’m taking off and hiding in a corner of the damned station ’til you get him put away. I’m serious here, Liam. This is bigger than I signed on for, and I want the hell out.”
“You’re the only one we’ve managed to get in. Just do your damned job and stop whining, Spike.” And with that the magnificent poof pranced off to his nice, safe little house, leaving Spike behind to do the real work.
Typical Liam.
Balls.
Elizabeth slammed her headset down and took at a sprint toward the bathroom. She only just made it before what felt like everything she’d ever eaten in her life was violently ejected from her stomach. How in the world did other people work like this? She heard the bathroom door swinging open and cringed.
“Summers?” The other voice wasn’t one she particularly liked hearing, and she muffled a curse as she used her foot to flush the toilet.
“Yeah. I’m coming. Sorry. Just be a minute.” She winced at the squeaky sound of her voice. Damn.
“Meet me in the office when you’re finished here, please.”
And there went any chance of just going back to work until the next spasm hit.
She pondered her situation in front of the sink, rinsing her mouth and dousing her face with cold water. She wasn’t ready to let them know what was going on. It felt wrong to tell anyone before she told Will - and she wasn’t particularly looking forward to telling him anytime soon. On the other hand, she couldn’t keep missing work and running into bathrooms with no warning or permission either.
Shit.
There were two Sergeants and a Lieutenant in the office, all somber faced and staring at her.
“Close the door behind you please.”
She did so, then clasped her hands behind her back and waited.
“You wanted to see me?” Oh, that was the most brilliant thing she’d ever said, she thought sarcastically.
“Summers, we need to talk about your recent job performance.”
She meant to be professional. She wasn’t sure how much she was going to tell them, but it had been her intention to apologize for her recent absences and the lack of attention to duty when she was able to show up. She had visions of being calm and polite and talking her way out of actually telling them anything while satisfying them that she would be back in top form immediately.
Instead, she dove to floor beside the desk and barely got the trash can into position in time.
The good news was it apparently went a long way toward convincing them that she hadn’t been laying out of work for no reason lately. The bad news was that the trash can had been overflowing, and thus - well, overflowed some more. And the Lieutenant’s shoes were just a bit closer to her than she’d thought. And that apparently pregnant looked far closer to “hung over” than she’d ever imagined.
To add to her mortification, she then got a nice little escort to the ER for blood and urine tests. She could feel the eyes in the middle of her back as the patrol officer called in to take her held the door for her. Tears were trying to force their way out of her eyes, and she composed epic monologues about evil pregnancy hormones trying to rob her of what dignity she had left in her head.
But let’s face it, Beth. No dignity left here.
Oh, shut up.
She wanted Will. Needed him. And just what made his dead wife more important than her, anyway? Running off on her when she needed him because somebody took advantage of his precious Dru years and years ago.
She hated him.
And dammit, now she was not crying. She was just - leaking a little. It wasn’t crying if you weren’t making any noise. She couldn’t help it that her eyes watered too much to keep her face from getting wet.
Seven weeks. Seven bloody weeks of this, and every nerve in his body was on fire. There were eyes and ears everywhere. He didn’t know how much of it was paranoia, and how much was truth.
Spike leaned against the wall of the alley, trying to get a bit of shelter from the rain by staying under the overhang. The wind was having none of that, though, and water ran down the back of his neck and dripped from his nose. He’d tried to smoke, but with the wind and the rain it more of hassle to keep the damn thing lit than to put of the nicotine craving.
In the movies, it was always abandoned warehouses and pawn shops. Always made him snicker a bit when he saw that. This particular alley, for instance, was outside an ice cream parlor. On Saturday afternoons, yuppie moms brought the kiddies here never knowing that the guy asking them if they wanted sprinkles had sucked their husbands off on the other side of town last night for twenty dollars. And only got five of that.
He had ten more minutes before he was supposed to be in the back room of the shop, and he glanced around himself again, wondering if he could risk a quick call to Beth. He needed to hear her voice, to imagine her smiling her sleep rumpled good morning smile at him while the sun from the window glinted off her hair. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, and pulled her image up in his memory. Maybe he could risk it.
“Yo, Spike!”
No time for phone calls, then.
“Yeah.” He turned his head, looking for the source of the voice, and everything went black.