He looked to me, his dark eyes, blurry from the pain meds, narrowed. “If I want someone to hold my dick for me, it’ll be the nurse in pink.”

I held up my hands to tell him I was backing off, then leaned against the wall outside the bathroom to wait.

He came out a minute later. “As your lawyer, I’m telling you you’ve got a problem with Mandy. She’s not going away, and based on the phone call from her lawyer that accompanied the letter in my briefcase, she’s batshit crazy. I guess he’s been paid so far in cash but is doing this for the big payout when she wins.”

I had no idea what he’d done in the crapper, but he came out all business, even if he walked back to the gurney at the pace of an eighty-year-old. I didn’t like anything he said. Mandy had been crazy enough to lie to me because she wanted my cash and was now back. That meant she was probably crazier than ever.

“I’ll do whatever it takes to protect Claire.”

“Mandy’s her mom, and she’s threatening to exercise that right. She wants custody.”

Like that was ever going to fucking happen.

I’d met Mandy when I was in Helena at the police academy. I’d been twenty-four, and she’d lived in the same crappy apartment building. She’d been a hot fucking mess, to put it nicely. Drugs. Random men. Shouting matches with them at all hours of the day and night. It had been annoying, but I’d been angry and dealing with having to walk away from Sarah. If I wasn’t at the academy, I drank. Often I’d pass out. Black out even.

One morning she’d been in my kitchen making me eggs. Said we’d fucked. I hadn’t remembered a thing, but with how out of control I’d been, it hadn’t been all that surprising. Horrible and a stupid fucking mistake since Sarah had been the only one I’d wanted. The fact that I’d been one of Mandy’s random hookups had been the wake-up call I’d needed for the way I’d dealt with a broken heart. I’d dumped all the whiskey down the drain, carted the empties to the recycling, and gotten tested for any and all STDs. I’d been clean, but three weeks later Mandy had knocked on my door and told me she was pregnant. With my kid.

It had taken a while—a fucking understatement—to come to terms with the fact that I was going to have a baby, and not with Sarah as I’d always imagined. I’d broken up with Sarah because I’d had to, but it hadn’t gone down easy. And then I’d fucked it up even more.

Mandy hadn’t been the model pregnant woman. She hadn’t changed her ways at all. Partying. Men. When her actions had endangered my unborn kid, I’d stepped in. She’d lost her shit, and I knew if I was going to get her out of the picture, I needed to use every bit of what I’d learned at the academy to my advantage. I took pictures. Video of her less-than-motherly behavior.