“And I want to hear them, but why don’t you save them for when I see you. Okay?”
She loudly sighed. “What if I forget them? Can you come now, so I still member?”
He shared a smile with Kendall. Their daughter was the cutest thing. Across the table from him, his brothers chuckled.
“We’ll be there soon,” Kendall said. “You have fun with Tyler and be good for Harlow, okay?”
“Okay, Mommy. Bye.”
“She’s adorable,” Harlow said, coming back on the conversation. “I was where you are not that long ago, worried about my son. To set your minds at ease, all the doors andwindows are locked, and the alarm is on. Grayson’s phone is set to get a notification if something should happen, but it won’t.”
“Thank you,” Kendall said.
She handed Grayson his phone, the panic in her eyes gone. “Sorry, I just freaked out after realizing he knows my real name.”
“Understandable.” That disturbed him, too. How long had the man been stalking her, because that was what was happening here. They needed to find this man before he made good on his threat that he’d see Kendall soon. “Do you save the emails you get from your listeners?”
“Yes. Do you think he’s written others to me?”
“I do.”
“As do I,” Grayson said.
She stared at her hands resting on the table. “I can’t tell you how much that creeps me out. I do the podcast because I hope to give some families closure. This man, whoever he is, is playing some kind of sick game. He’s tainting what I do. Not to mention the more I’m learning about him, the more he scares me.”
Cooper put his hand over hers. “We’ll find him, but to do that, we’re going to have to do a deep dive in your emails and your podcasts. We need to read the emails.”
“They’re all in a file in my laptop. I can send the folder to each of you when I get back to Cooper’s.”
“Let’s do that, then we’ll get back together and share our thoughts after reading them,” Liam said. “I’ll be involved on this along with Gray and Coop, but my fiancée’s due to have our baby in three weeks, so I’ll mostly be working from home.”
“Oh, congratulations. First child?”
Liam nodded. “Yeah, and I’m driving her crazy apparently.” He grinned. “She says she’s pregnant, not helpless.”
“Do you know what you’re having?” Kendall asked.
“A girl. Erin Fiona O’Rourke.”
From the moment Liam and Quinn had found out they were having a baby, they’d been excited, and Liam had shared the experience. He’d showed them her first sonogram when they’d found out it was a girl, their excitement when the baby started kicking, his middle-of-the-night trips to the store to get Quinn’s weird cravings.
Not for the first time, Cooper wished he’d known Kendall was pregnant, wished he’d been there from the beginning for his daughter…and for Kendall. What foods had she craved? Had she had morning sickness? She’d gone through her pregnancy alone, no one to take care of her, no one to go out in the middle of the night to get her pickles or whatever she was craving.
“Let’s collect our daughter, go home and laugh at Livie’s jokes.” Other than sending the file to them, Kendall needed an afternoon of not thinking about any of this. Tomorrow, after they’d read the emails, they would get down to business and plan how to catch this bastard.
“That sounds wonderful,” she said.
“What do you call a bear with no teeth?” Livie said.
“I give up.” Another one he’d taught Tyler. He was sitting on the couch, and Livie was leaning on his leg. Kendall was on the opposite end of the couch with her feet tucked up under her and smiling at both of them. Ruby was next to Livie, staring at Livie as if hanging on her every word. It was a perfect family afternoon. He wanted it to be real.
“A gummy bear.” She scrunched her brows together. “What’s a gummy?”
Cooper opened his mouth and tapped his finger against his gums. “Those are gums, so if the bear doesn’t have teeth, all he has are gums, so he’s gummy.”
“Why doesn’t the bear have teeth?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe he ate too much candy, and they all fell out.”