It started ringing again after I hit the button.

I looked to it.

Same number.

Statistically (my personal calculations were), it was a 92 percent chance it was a robocall.

But we’d had three whole weeks of no drama.

My landlord was kind of a dick about letting me out of my lease, even if I offered to pay April, let him keep my last month’s rent, and I knew he had a waiting list so it wasn’t like he couldn’t turn it over immediately.

Then Danny paid him a visit, and he brought Mo along, and poof! I was released.

But that was all the hoopla we’d had.

I was moved in.

I gave official notice to Smithie I was quitting.

Charlie was ecstatic that I’d go full-time at Computer Raiders.

Gert demanded to go to the house showings Danny arranged in order to give her opinion on where we might end up next (but mostly, to get out of her house, also, because she liked to give Danny shit, and last, because he gave her shit right back and she had a hoot taking it—we’d only looked at two houses, both of which I liked, both of which Danny and Gert hated, so no offers had been made on a house).

And Rob had filed for divorce.

Oh, and none of the girls had caved to go out with the guys, which was upsetting me and ticking Lottie off.

To make matters worse, both Boone and Axl had started seeing other women.

And yes, even if it was so illogical, it was wrong, both Lottie and I (and I could tell, Ryn and Hattie) considered them other women.

But Danny told me it wasn’t my life, even if it was semi my business because they were my friends.

Regardless, he advised that I needed to chill and let nature take its course.

“It’ll happen how it happens. There are people more afraid of having it good than facing the bad,” he’d said.

“And why do you think that is?” I’d asked.

“Because if you have it good after having it bad, the good would be harder to lose.”

“I’m not gonna lose you,” I pointed out.

“Babe, you told me that you were gonna end it with me just to protect me. They need to get past stupid shit like that.”

We had then bickered about him calling it “stupid shit.”

Danny had ended the bickering by kissing me then proceeding to go down on me on the couch.

And he’d been so good at ending the bickering, we hadn’t bickered for a solid three days after that.

So, even though things seemed to be going great in the world of Evan Gardiner, I had lived my life as that life came, and a lot of it wasn’t so great, so who knew what would come next?

I just knew I’d face it with more awareness and more support than I’d done before.

This all meant, two calls back to back from the same number, I took the call.

And I found immediately, as usual, I shouldn’t have taken the call.

Because right after I said hello, my mom cried, “Evan, don’t hang up!”

The elevator came, the doors sliding open, and I stared into it.

But I didn’t get into it.

“Evan?” she called.

The elevator doors closed.

“Evan!” she snapped.

“I am not talking to you about Mick, Rob or Dad, and if you say ugly things to me, Mom, about anything, including me, or Rob, I’m hanging up and blocking this number too.”

“Sweetheart, I’m not gonna say ugly things to you.”

I made no reply.

“Your stepdad served me with divorce papers,” she told me.

“I know. Danny and I see Rob a lot and I talk to him all the time.”

She sounded hurt when she asked, “You do?”

“He never treated me like shit,” I pointed out.

“Evie—”

“Mom, I’m doing something important. Is there something you need?”

“So Rob has met your man?”

“Yes,” I said shortly.

“Your stepfather has met him, but your mother has not.”

Now she sounded pouty.

“I’ll repeat, Rob never treated me like shit. Now, is there something you need?”

Silence.

“Mom,” I prompted.

“Well…”

She said no more.

“Spit it out.”

She spat something out.

The question, “When did you get so sassy?”

I wasn’t going to answer that, with the answer being, “too late, but still, just in time.”

“Mom,” I said warningly.

“It’s your brother,” she said like she didn’t want to say it.

“Don’t,” I again warned.

“Your stepfather left me high and dry. I got a job, but I’ve only been at it a week. I don’t have the money to—”

And there it was.

Mick, with whatever Mick was up to now (though I noted he was alive and breathing to do it, unlike what he wanted me to think would be his state after all was said and done), needed money.

And Mom was now his only avenue to getting it, what with Dad copping a guilty plea for burglary, vandalism and possession with intent to distribute. He bought a nickel, and according to Jet, who asked Eddie, if he behaved himself, probably would be out in two, at most three years.

Not that Dad would ever front Mick money.

In fact, not that Dad ever had any money.

In the interim, after I heard Mick had survived a situation he tried to convince me he’d never survive, I had not kept track of Mick because I didn’t want to know about Mick.

Not for the last two months.

Not now.

But clearly, he needed cash, and Mom needed someone—that someone being not her—to give it to him.

“Goodbye, Mom.”

“Evie!”

I hung up.

I blocked her new number.

And I tagged the elevator button.

When I arrived outside the door to the suite, I hit yet another button and looked up at the camera above the door outside Danny’s office.

I then waited for them to scope me out on their kickass system inside, heard the click and low buzz that meant I was in, opened the door and strolled into the command center with its theater-style rows of stations facing an array of television screens with glass-walled offices and conference rooms to the sides.

Seriously, and I didn’t care how nerdy it meant I was, I wanted to dig into this setup. There were so many cable covers over stuff snaking on the floor and up to the workstations and into the walls, I almost salivated every time I walked in there.

I pushed thoughts aside of Hawk’s system, and after spotting Danny standing on the third landing (along which was where his workstation was) with Hawk, a gorgeous blonde with a better ass than mine, and a little, insanely beautiful, dark-haired girl clinging to Hawk’s leg, I looked to the ground floor office at the left, and found it empty.

Elvira was, again, proving elusive.

Her office was unoccupied.

Drat.

She’d been out the two other times I’d been to the offices as well.

Sidney had had cosmos with her three times and been vaguely invited over to Elvira’s place for something called “boards.”

Sidney said she was spectacular (that was the actual word she used).

And Danny and all the guys talked about her like she was their annoying, and ridiculously lovable, older sister.

As for me…