Michael wanted to swear profusely. Six years of being a father had taught him restraint.
“Was.” He pulled into the convenience store parking lot. Indicating that Sara should go do her thing, he followed behind her. Hand on his gun as he watched her back.
“She was here,” she said once they were back in the car. “Yesterday. And Saturday, too.”
“What time?”
Robert had said she always got her drink in the morning. Shortly after she got up.
“Late afternoon.”
She was sleeping sporadically. Michael was certain of that. And had most likely found a place that felt safe to rest for a couple of hours in the afternoon. She’d need the soda to prep her for an evening of moving around. Making herself more difficult to track. To find.
“Chances are she’ll be back this afternoon.”
“I gave the clerk my number. She’ll text me if she shows up.”
“We need to stay close, then.”
Nicole had to be on the beach. It was close. It was public. And there were a lot of coves among the sporadic cliffs...
Sara buckled herself in.
“You want another sandwich, or could I interest you in a real breakfast?” he asked, eyeing a diner across the street.
“You want to keep watch from someplace besides the car?” Sara replied.
“I’m craving some grease.”
She got out of the car again, and waited for him to join her.
She never did tell him if she wanted breakfast or not.
* * *
SARA MADE A production out of reading the menu. As though there was some special breakfast dish that had been invented since the last million times she’d had breakfast out.
Well over an hour had passed since she’d had contact from Nicole. Lila’s last text told her that the cell phone Nicole had been using had been turned off. Sanchez and his crew suspected that she’d ditched it and bought herself a new pay-by-the-minute model.
Sara had confirmed as much five minutes before in the convenience store across the street. The clerk who’d recognized Nicole’s picture said she’d purchased three phones yesterday. She remembered because it was such an odd thing to do.
Nicole had said she was buying them for her roommates.
The menu blurred before Sara’s eyes. More than food, she needed time to find her inner peace. Michael was a liar. They’d established that.
But Nicole had lied to her, too. Her parents were very much alive.
Lila’s text had confirmed that Nicole had not contacted the Lemonade Stand. Or anyone else from the High Risk Team.
Trevor had moved her son after the team had said they wouldn’t let that happen. Lila feared that she no longer trusted the team to be able to take on the Ivory Nation.
It was the only theory that made sense.
And what about the garbage Michael was telling her? Why was he suddenly being so forthcoming?
He wanted something from her. But what?
And what about that tattoo on Robert Buchannan’s neck?
She couldn’t deny that she’d been more than a little uneasy in the Buchannan home. The stark whiteness of the kitchen.
The white-supremacy theory made sense. A woman who’d lived her whole life being fed propaganda, who’d been brainwashed to think that her very existence was for one purpose only...
Nadine gave truth to Michael’s words.
So was it true, then? Nicole had been raised by the Ivory Nation?
Sara and Michael ordered coffee. And the breakfast special. Eggs, toast, choice of bacon, ham or sausage and hash browns. She wanted her eggs scrambled. He had his overeasy. She chose sourdough toast. He chose wheat. They both picked bacon over ham or sausage.
Michael was facing her in the booth. Her knees had brushed his a couple of times.
She’d pulled away immediately. Trying not to notice.
The booths were situated along both walls of the long skinny room. All but one of them were occupied. Which gave them an anonymity Sara needed at the moment. She’d already cased the place, including the bathroom, had shown Nicole’s picture to the staff. No one had seen her.
Right now, Sara needed a few minutes apart from Nicole. She couldn’t be in Nicole’s shoes until she was certain her boundaries were in place. Until she could separate her thoughts and feelings from the client’s. It wasn’t a problem she’d ever had at the Lemonade Stand. Where she had her own office. Where her job was more about helping victims with the recovery process than it was about getting them to safety.
Today, she was out on the front line, so to speak. Completely out of her element. In so many ways.
“Robert and Nadine picked Trevor for Nicole just as Nadine’s father picked Robert. He’d been groomed to take Robert’s place at the helm of the California coalition, and the position was solidified by a marriage that would produce the next heir to the heritage.”
“Toby.”
“Exactly. With genes from the founding father and the chosen leader in one union.”
Nadine’s words—“that baby was not meant to be”—ran through her mind. Followed by, “He killed my baby girl right in my stomach because she wasn’t a boy.”
A girl could not lead the brotherhood.
Michael leaned forward right when Sara was feeling like she needed a shoulder to lean on. “Robert told me pretty much the same thing that Trevor did. When Nicole found out she was having a girl, she blamed herself for not producing the boy Trevor and her father wanted.”
Because she’d seen how it had been for her mother living in a misogynistic society with a daughter and no sons? Nicole had been raised as her mother before her. If she’d been brainwashed, she wouldn’t be able to help herself, but would want to please those around her.
She’d told Sara that she wanted that baby more than anything. That losing that baby had changed everything for her. That was when she’d known she had to leave Trevor. But he’d had sex with her again and again afterward. Holding her captive. Telling her she was going to give him the boy child he needed. That he was going to have a child with her, Robert’s offspring, a boy child melding his genes and Robert’s. That his son would be truly gifted. A given heir to the Ivory Nation throne who would do work beyond the California coalition. He’d make a difference in the world.
Nicole’s words had been filled with an intensity and passion that had convinced Sara of their truth. She still believed them.
And yet, they also fit what Michael was telling her. The woman in her had grieved for the baby she’d lost. But it was also possible the child her parents had raised had hated that she’d conceived a girl baby. Nicole would have been in a personal crisis that would have been nearly impossible for her to pull out of on her own.
“She wanted that baby,” Sara said. For some reason, everything rested on that fact. She couldn’t speak for Nicole anymore. Wasn’t sure, in that moment, having just come from her parents’ home, if Nicole had been using her, and the Stand, as a place to hide or not.
Maybe Nicole had lied to her about other things, as well.
Nicole couldn’t stand dirt. Was, by her own admission, obsessive about cleaning. Because her upbringing had strongly enforced the idea of cleanliness and purity? Was her obsessiveness a product of Ivory Nation brainwashing?
Was anything the woman had told her true?
If Nicole was using her, and she’d put Michael in bed with Trevor in Nicole’s mind, would the other woman go after him instead of just running from him? The smell of food became an overwhelming burden to bear...
But wait, losing that baby girl had hurt Nicole deeply enough to change her on an elemental level. In all of her doubts and confusion, Sara didn’t doubt that fact at all.
Oh, God. She was in way over her head. Didn�
��t know who or what to believe. What was real. She couldn’t bear it if something she’d said had put Michael Edison in danger. She...cared about him.
More than she had any reason to.
More than logic could explain.
She’d known him less than three days, he’d lied to her and he’d somehow changed her life...
“She had the baby aborted, Sara.”
Silence. Then... “What?” Sara watched his mouth as he repeated the words.
He’d given her a thread to hold on to. A way to find out where the truth and lies began and ended. Or at least a starting place.
Nicole had told her her doctor’s name. She’d given written permission for any member of the High Risk Team to speak with her doctor regarding the loss of her baby girl’s life. She’d said that back when it had happened, she’d given written permission to her doctor to divulge information about the situation if anyone ever came asking.
She’d been protecting the truth.
Excusing herself to the restroom, Sara pulled her phone out of her pouch and texted Lila. She needed the doctor’s number. And for Lila to fax over the written permission for Sara to speak with her. Lila texted back immediately, asking if Sara needed Lila to make the call.
Sara didn’t know yet how she was going to get away from Michael long enough to have a complete telephone conversation that could very well involve being put on hold, but that was one call she was going to have to make herself.
Just before she left the restroom she received another text from Lila. It contained the phone number. And confirmation that the recently signed fax from Nicole, requesting her doctor to speak with Sara had been sent.
And another piece of news that shed a very different light on the morning’s events.
Michael Edison was most definitely lying to her again.
* * *
“DID ROBERT SAY how long it’s been since he’s seen Nicole?” Sara’s question broke a more than five-minute silence between them.
Breakfast had been served. They’d been busy eating.
“Four years.” Reaffirming what they’d both already been told. Michael put a forkful of food in his mouth, more interested in eating than in talking at the moment.
She nodded. Took a bite of toast. She hadn’t touched her bacon. Or her potatoes, either. She’d seemed calmer since she’d come out of the bathroom.
More self-possessed. The kind of calm that came before a storm.
Something was clearly upsetting her.
He hoped she was coming to grips with the fact that Nicole had lied to her.
And thought about the fact that while he’d been living with Sara for more than two days now, they were eating their first meal together at a table. Their first meal together in a restaurant.
She frowned. And he commiserated with her. He hated making her doubt herself. But comforted himself with the knowledge that it was for her own good.
While finding out that her client had been lying to her had to be hard, the doubt she now had about Nicole was going to save her life.
“Was the break between them her choice or his?” Her question wasn’t random.
He wondered what Nicole had told her.
Robert had told him how hard it had been for him to cut his daughter out of his life. But after she’d gone against her husband’s wishes and aborted that baby, a child that would have grown to bear Ivory Nation sons, and then, a short time later, had started using methamphetamine, he’d known he had to do it. He had to set the example for the other wives and daughters of the Nation brotherhood. Their work was critical. Dangerous. The men of Ivory Nation had to know that their women had their backs at all times.
That they would do as they were told without question.
And that they would keep their bodies pure to conceive and grow pure brothers who would go on to save the world.
“It was Robert’s choice.” He hoped the truth would serve him well.
Wrong answer. He could tell by the look in her eyes.
“Look, you already know Nicole lied to you. Why would you be surprised she lied about this?”
Shaking her head, Sara pushed her plate away, reached into her pouch for a twenty-dollar bill and picked up the tab that had been left at the end of their table.
“Nicole didn’t tell me either way. She told me her folks were dead,” she reminded him.
A critical piece of information he’d forgotten. He couldn’t believe he’d made such a foolish, blatant mistake. Sara Havens’s effect on him was not good for him. Or anyone.
“Well, you know that was a lie.”
“I also know that the choice to sever contact was not Robert’s. Nicole and Trevor took out a restraining order against her parents four years ago.”
She knew. And hadn’t said anything. Because she’d just found out? Who had she been talking to in the bathroom? Nicole? The High Risk Team she belonged to?
Sara’s expression was closed.
The words I can explain that came to mind. He could tell her about Robert’s anger when Nicole had aborted her baby. About how he’d threatened his daughter to such an extent that Trevor had known he had to get out of the Ivory Nation. About how Robert had come around, trying to repair the breach between him and Nicole when he’d found out what Trevor was planning to do. About Trevor needing the restraining order to keep her parents away from him after he’d left the brotherhood. About how he’d named his wife on the order as a member of his household. Robert’s telling of the story, even to his detriment, validated Trevor’s.
With one exception. Robert hadn’t told him anything about Nicole’s actions since then.
Obviously the man didn’t know that Nicole was still working for the cause, albeit quietly. She was truly afraid of her father, but still his daughter. Her belief system, ingrained from birth, was his.
Trevor had told him about that. Not Robert.
Robert was Ivory Nation to the core—but his daughter was his one weak spot. He’d taken a stance. A strong one that had broken their bond, as far as Nicole was concerned. And then he’d backed down. He’d tried so hard to get her back in his life, she and Trevor had filed a restraining order to keep him away from them.
But it wasn’t the order that convinced Michael of anything. It was the fact that Robert had honored it. With his connections, his lifestyle, a restraining order meant next to nothing. Ivory Nation brothers broke a lot bigger laws than injunctions to stay away from someone.
Robert honored the order because he respected his daughter’s wishes. He wanted Nicole safe. And he wanted a chance to get her back in his life.
He didn’t think that Nicole would ever be back at her parents’ house, though. After three days of putting himself in her mind, he had a feeling that the baby she’d aborted had changed the woman. Trevor and Robert had both said she’d done it for the cause. And she probably had. But that didn’t mean it had been easy for her. Or that the regret, afterward, hadn’t been debilitating.
And then when her husband and father, the two men she revered, her leaders, disapproved of her actions, she’d obviously gone over the edge. Started taking drugs...
Which had only made the situation worse.
Following Sara’s rigid back out of the restaurant, Michael thought again about telling Sara that he could explain. But he wasn’t sure the words would do him any good at this point.
The one thing he knew for certain, other than the fact that he was going to get Nicole Kramer off the streets, was that he’d underestimated Sara Havens.
By a lot.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THEY TOOK A run down to the beach. Michael said they’d spend the next couple of hours between the beach and the convenience store. He drove by the Buchannan household, as well.
And she had to ask. “Why
do you think Robert told you about that convenience store? Why turn in his own daughter?”
But she knew. Because in their minds, Nicole had gone rogue. She was a wild card, a woman who was trying to take control of her own mind, act on her own cognizance, which made her a huge threat to them.
The question in her mind, now that she knew about the Ivory Nation connection, was where they and Trevor stood. The brotherhood was close-knit.
And if Trevor was still a part of it...then where did that leave Robert and Nadine?
“Robert wants Nicole safe and he knows we aren’t going to hurt her.”
Made sense. But why would Nicole tell her her parents were dead but say that Trevor was Ivory Nation? Why not admit her parents were, too?
Because that implicated her?
Because she didn’t believe her parents would ever hurt her?
Because they really were dead to her to the point that she’d wiped them out of her mind completely?
For all Sara knew, Trevor could have told her her parents were dead.
“Does he know you’re a bounty hunter?”
“No.” Michael turned into traffic, edging into a line of cars that were exiting to the road that ran along the beach.
“You seemed to establish quite a rapport...”
“He thinks I’m helping you and that his daughter will be put in safe custody.”
“He doesn’t know about your warrant?”
“I didn’t tell him.”
Which didn’t mean he didn’t know. “Did he mention any warrants for her arrest?”
“No. And he didn’t appear to know there were any.”
His gaze met hers briefly.
Okay. So he was catching on to the fact that she had to have answers if she was going to continue helping him.
Didn’t mean his answers were true...
Michael told her his suspicions that Nicole had found a place for a midday rest. He wanted to find it. And so they set out to case the beach again. Farther up. Away from the water. Sara was assigned to bathroom duty. Just as she’d known she would be.
Their first stop was the restroom where she’d found the jeans. It was closest to where they were. Telling him she might be a minute, she hurried inside. There was no sign of the pants. Or of any notes. The trash had been collected. A fresh empty bag now lined the big can.
Mother by Fate Page 18
