Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 67000 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67000 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Assman.
That was literally his name.
Berger Assman.
A brand-new rookie who was getting on my last fucking nerve with how often he thought it was okay to call out in a one-year period.
He’d been with the department just short of a year, and in that time, he called out at least fifteen times.
“Son of a bitch,” I grumbled as I got up from my desk and grabbed my keys. “I gotta go, Tobin. Call me when you have more information this afternoon.”
“Will do,” he said. “Your dad said you were my liaison with the department.”
“I am,” I confirmed. “Talk to you later.”
After saying thank you to the secretary, who worked within three departments, for relaying the news about Assman, I headed out, ready to cover a shift.
But first, I would be making a stop.
Assman’s place.
I’d never actually been.
But I’d contemplated this so many times that I had his address memorized.
I arrived in thirteen minutes, and when I made my way up to the fourth-floor apartment, the first thing I heard when I got onto the fourth-floor landing was screaming.
A baby was crying and losing his or her mind.
I headed down the hall, and my gut clenched as I made my way to the door where the baby was crying so hard. Behind the door I knew to be Assman’s.
Closing my eyes for a long second, I breathed out, then knocked.
The screaming didn’t stop, but it did get closer to the door.
When it opened, I was faced with Assman and a screaming infant.
He looked at me with his deer in the headlights look, and then said, “Sergeant!”
“Assman,” I said as I looked behind him into the apartment. It was a fuckin’ mess. “What’s going on?”
Assman was twenty-four, and according to his paperwork, single. He did have one child listed, but I hadn’t realized it was such a young child.
“Can I come in?” I asked.
He blinked, then stepped back to allow me entry.
I got the first good look at his place and realized that the man was drowning.
There was baby paraphernalia everywhere. Dirty dishes. Dirty clothes. It looked like he had the baby set up in the living room.
There wasn’t a single spot on the floor that wasn’t covered up with toys or dirty clothes.
The man was doing more than drowning. He was gasping for breath with no escape in sight.
“Uh, sorry for the mess,” Assman said as he winced.
“How old is the kid?” I asked over the screaming.
Assman looked down at his son, dressed in blue-striped footed pajamas, and said, “Uhh, ten weeks.”
My brows rose. “You just had a baby ten weeks ago?” I asked as I looked around.
There were no signs of a woman’s touch in his apartment at all.
“Yeah,” he hesitated. “This is new to me.”
I could imagine it was. “No wife?”
Assman looked down at his bare feet, which happened to be stepping on a dirty, balled up diaper. He moved slightly so he wasn’t squishing it before saying, “My ex had the baby and ran. She wanted to… yeah. She didn’t want him. She had the baby and was gone from the hospital before they were discharged. I haven’t seen her or her mom since. No signs of her at the house she shared with her mom, either.”
I shook my head, not understanding how someone could do that to their own child.
“Who’s watching the baby when you’re at work?” I asked, holding out my hands for the screaming infant.
The relief on Assman’s face as he handed over the baby was devastating.
Did the kid have no one?
The baby felt solid in my hands, so obviously he’d been eating well.
I twisted him around so that his chest and torso was to my forearm, his head resting against the crook of my elbow, and then bounced him.
I hadn’t had any child experience until Tex and Addie came around. But overall, I’d found that they loved to be like this, on their belly, for some reason.
And, like magic, the kid stopped crying.
“He has colic,” he said quietly, almost as if he was scared to raise his voice above a whisper or else the kid would start screaming again. “My part-time nanny quit. My other nanny is my grandmother, and she helps as much as she can, but she’s still working. I find a nanny, they quit. Asus has colic, and he cries all day, every day. The only time he doesn’t is when he’s sleeping, and even that’s barely ever.”
Poor guy. Both for the name, Asus Assman, and the colic. Kid definitely wasn’t winning.
Tex had colic.
I remembered heading over to their house to give Ande and Keene a break.
But to have no one…
“Go get a shower, bruh,” I said to him, using the term he liked to call me when he actually showed up for work. “Take a break. I’ll stay for a bit.”
Until I got a call out, anyway.