Free Dark Lava: Lei Crime Book 7 (Lei Crime Series) by Toby Neal Page B

said. ‘Use the knife and take the baby.’” Stevens felt that violent nausea again, and he put his head down until it passed. “I told her no. I said hang on; help was coming. She passed out. I did CPR on her, chest compressions, rotary breathing.” He shut his eyes against the memory of her breasts, unfamiliarly round and full, leaking the thin yellowish milk newborns needed as he’d done the chest compressions. “The paramedics finally got there. They moved her out and took her to the hospital. I heard from Pono that they performed an emergency C-section when they determined she was dead.”
    “ Where were you when this went on?”
    “ I just stood there, after they left. There wasn’t anything I could do really. I don’t know if the baby was alive. Pono had gotten there by then. He can tell you.”
    “ Is it your baby?” Omura’s question was soft but had all the sting of a lash as it sawed across his consciousness.
    He shook his head, buried his face in his hands. “ I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t see how.”
    “ When was the last time you had relations with Anchara Mookjai? Sexual relations?”
    “ The morning she left, like I said.”
    “ And when was that?”
    “ I don’t know. I can’t think. But if you want to do a paternity test on the baby, I consent.”
    “ Stop. You’re not thinking clearly,” Shimoda said, holding up a hand. “You don’t have to agree to this.”
    “ I do. She was my wife!” He pounded his chest with each word. “I didn’t love her, but she was my wife, and if that’s my child, I will do right by him as best I can!”
    “ If you insist, but it’s against my advice,” Shimoda said. Omura made a note that Stevens consented to the paternity test and pushed it over to him. Stevens signed it.
    “ So then what happened?” Omura went on.
    “ I tried to call Lei. I tried and tried. She didn’t pick up. I went outside when the crime techs arrived to help process the scene.”
    “ All right. Let’s get a timeline of events.” Omura looked down at her pad. “Let’s use your wedding to Lei as a starting point, since we all know that date, and work back from there.” After rehashing various events, they established that there was a physical possibility the child was Stevens’s.
    “ Anchara and I only stayed in touch with e-mail. She never called, and I didn’t see her after the day she left. She very clearly wanted to move on from the marriage,” Stevens said.
    “ So did you ever abuse her?” Omura slid it in like a knife between his ribs.
    “ You’re kidding, right?” He pinned Omura with a hard gaze. “She’d been a sex slave. She’d been abused in ways I can’t imagine. I married her to help her, not hurt her more.”
    “ And yet that’s what you did,” Omura said. “You just told us you didn’t love Anchara. You hurt her when you married another woman, the woman you loved all along.”
    A long pause. Stevens couldn ’t think of what to say. It was the ugly truth, if not all of it.
    “ I advise my client not to respond,” Shimoda said. “I believe this is sufficient for an initial interview.”
    Stevens ignored him, still focused on Omura. “ I cared for Anchara. But not the way she wanted to be loved or deserved to be loved.”
    A long moment passed, raw and charged with the trifecta of grief, guilt, and regret he thought he ’d carry forever now.
    “ Did you kill Anchara?” Omura’s voice was a samurai sword slicing through silk.
    “ No. I tried to save her. I tried to save her!” Stevens felt his words coming out hard and tried to soften them. “In every way, I tried to save her. But I couldn’t.” And then, to his humiliation, his eyes welled with tears. He put his hands over his face. The tears burned like acid on his hands.

Chapter 8
     
    Lei finally picked up her phone after she’d stripped out of the coverall down to her jog bra and Lycra shorts. She was dismayed to see multiple calls from Stevens, but no