by Lexi Blake
Noah. Why had someone been after Noah? He had to know something he shouldn’t. Shelby took off, rushing toward the back door that would take her to the pool house.
“Shelby!”
She could hear the others rushing after her, but she couldn’t stop. She had to find Noah.
The door to the back opened and Hatch stepped in.
Shelby nearly fell backward. She tumbled back, but Ellie was behind her, her arms catching her.
Hatch stopped, his eyes widening. “Hey, are you all right? Is Drew still here? I need to talk to him.”
“Where’s Noah?”
“I’m here.” Noah stepped inside. “Hatch is cooler than Drew. He says I can have a beer since someone’s trying to kill me. But no Scotch.”
Hatch nodded. “I think after two murder attempts, the kid needs a beer.” He glanced around. “Noah, go on to the kitchen. Pop open one for me, too. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Carly reached a hand out to Noah. “Come on. I’ll show you where it is. You can join me in my drinking binge. I think it’s how this family deals with stress.”
“I’ll go with you.” Ellie followed after.
Mia stared at Hatch. “What did you do? Shelby found something that disturbed her.”
His eyes closed and a shudder went through his body. When he opened them again, he seemed to have aged; the light that was usually in his eyes dimmed. “So you know?”
Shelby nodded. “I went to Williams Investigations.”
Mia reached out to Hatch. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
Hatch’s arms came out and hauled Mia in for a hug. He held her like she was fragile, his face so sad as he smoothed back her hair. “I love you like you were my own, baby girl. Do you know that?”
“Of course.” Mia hugged him tight. “Of course I know that.”
He kissed her forehead gently. “Remember that always. I have to go talk to Drew.” His eyes moved Shelby’s way. “I’m so sorry. You’ll never know how sorry I am.”
He disengaged and began to walk toward Drew’s office.
Mia turned, her face pale. “Oh, God, what happened?”
She watched as Hatch disappeared down the hall, and wished she’d never investigated this case at all.
Mia’s cell trilled. Her hand was shaking as she swiped her finger across the screen. “Hey, babe, can I call you . . . what? Are you serious?” She looked up at Shelby. “We have to turn on the TV. Apparently my mother is giving an interview.”
Shit. Iris was making her next move.
• • •
Drew stared down at the folder, telling himself over and over again that it wasn’t true. He was perfectly willing to accept that Shelby thought it was true. She wouldn’t bring him a bunch of lies. She thought this was true and she was afraid for all of them. That’s why she’d acted the way she had. Between this news and his mother showing up, she was justifiably scared, and that had affected her behavior.
This was some kind of trick by his mother. She was trying to sow chaos. She wanted them as broken as possible for whatever her next move was.
She’d been planning it for years. The picture she’d given to Shelby proved that his mother’s game play was superlative. He took a deep breath. He needed to figure out how to keep Shelby close. She couldn’t leave. If she did, he wouldn’t get her back. She would move on with her life and forget about him.
It was of the utmost importance that he keep her close. He would sit her down and explain that it didn’t make sense for her to leave when she didn’t have a home to go to. It made much more sense for her to stay here while she decided what to do. She was welcome to stay as long as it took.
There was a knock on the door.
Thank God. Maybe she’d come to her senses.
He opened the door and then sighed. Hatch stood there, one hand on the doorframe. Drew stepped back to let him in. “I was hoping you were Shelby.”
Hatch stared at him for a moment before entering. “I thought I told you to let her lead the way. You should have gotten the story from her before you ever said a word.”
“I know.” He should have done a lot of things differently with Shelby.
He hoped he still had a shot at convincing her about the dangers of being on her own. Maybe he could talk to Carly and she could convince Shelby.
“You going to let her go?” Hatch asked.
“I’m trying to figure out how to stop her without actually tying her down somewhere. I know that works in the Taggart world, but in the real world, it might get me arrested.” He sighed and slumped down into his chair. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t let her go. Despite what she might think, my mother knows who Shelby is, and there’s no way she leaves her out of this. She’s planning something.”
“Iris was always good at planning,” Hatch said quietly. “I need to talk to you, Drew.”
“About this?” He gestured to the folder with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Shelby gave it to me. It’s all bullshit, of course. Apparently Mommy Dearest has been watching me. At least she’s been tracking my movements. She took pictures of me in Florida a couple of years back. I was there checking a lead on Patricia Cain the same day Shelby’s brother died. Naturally I walked right by his car and someone has a picture of it. I think whatever she’s planning she’s been planning for four years, ever since she decided to die a second time. She figured out how powerful I was becoming, and she’s going to try to take me down. The question is how. And what role is Noah going to play? I’m not saying he’s a bad kid, but I don’t believe in coincidences when it comes to my mother.”
“It was me.”
Drew halfway heard him saying something, but he continued on. “What if Iris is the person who’s targeting him? If she thought killing Noah would buy her something, she would do it in a heartbeat.”
“Drew, are you listening to me?”
“It would have been easy enough for her to steal the keys to that car and use it herself. Unless she hired someone. Apparently she’s got some muscle with her.”
Hatch’s palm slapped against the table. “Goddamn it, we have to talk about what Shelby found.”
He was worried about that? “Did Shelby confront you? I have to admit, the stuff she brought back from Dallas is pretty damning. I have to find a way to convince her that this is all just another part of Iris’s plan.”
“Maybe it is, but the money trail Shelby found isn’t. Well, it was, but not how you think it was. It was my money, Drew. It was my fifty thousand dollars. I gave that money to Maurice Williams. He turned around and gave it to the assassin.”
The words coming out of Hatch’s mouth didn’t make sense. Drew tried to figure them out, but couldn’t come up with the reason for them. “Why would you do that?”
Hatch leaned forward, seemingly eager to make his case. “Your mother convinced me this was how we ensured she got what she deserved in the divorce.”
“Why would my mom come to you for money?”
There was a moment of heavy silence before Hatch spoke again. “Because I was her lover. I’ve lied to you for twenty years, the same way I lied to your father, but I’ll be damned if my lies cost you the way it did him.”
Drew shook his head because he wasn’t hearing things right.
Hatch continued. “I remember the night you found that picture. I’d carried it around for years. I could lose everything with the exception of that picture. It was the only thing I cared about because I thought it was real between us. But she was gone and you were . . . you came along, and for the first time in years I figured out that I could do something to make up for what I’d done wrong. And then you found that picture and asked me why I had it.”
He remembered that night well. “You told me you loved her. You told me you loved my dad like a brother, but that my mom caught your heart because she was so
beautiful. You told me you missed her, and you told me you were only friends because you would never have hurt my dad that way.”
“I couldn’t tell you the truth. I couldn’t look at you and tell you how fucked up we’d all been back then. I was a piece of shit, and then you walked in and you were sure of yourself. You were a kid who’d had the shit kicked out of him, and you were already a better man than I was. You were so strong.”
“I was not. I was scared.”
“You never once looked scared,” Hatch said. “You were the single most self-possessed man I’d ever met. When you walked in, you reminded me so much of your father I thought his ghost had come back to haunt me. You were like Ben. You knew what you were capable of, and you would let no one at all tell you what you could or couldn’t do. You were a fucking force of nature. You still are, but I think you’ve found your match.”
His gut was in knots again. “I don’t understand why you would give an assassin fifty thousand dollars.”
He felt dumb, like he wasn’t capable of grasping the situation placed in front of him. Like it was in a foreign language he never wanted to learn.
“I didn’t. I gave it to a private investigator Iris convinced me to hire. She said your father was hurting her. She showed me the bruises. She told me she needed proof so that she could get her fair share of the company in the divorce. She was a lawyer. I believed her, but eventually I got suspicious.”
Drew forced his nausea down. “Suspicious of what?”
“She was spending a lot of time with Patricia. I would catch her coming out of Patty’s office while you kids were in school.”
“Yes, she was apparently screwing Patty while she screwed you.” His childhood had been a fucking soap opera of moving body parts.
“I hired a PI to try to figure out if she was cheating on me. He wasn’t on the job long, and then it happened. I thought she was dead. It wasn’t until Phillip Stratton showed up to thank me that I realized what had happened.”
“She set you up so you couldn’t talk about it. She placed your hand in the cookie jar. She managed to get her quarter of the payment in without having to cough up a dime, and she put you in a corner. You couldn’t go to the police because you would be implicated. So you let us go into foster care and you went on your merry way.”
“I wasn’t merry, Drew. I was devastated. I hated myself. I still hate myself. I might hate myself even more because I love you kids so much.”
He didn’t want to look at Hatch. The very sight of him made him sick. Still, he forced himself to face the man head-on. “Yes, you loved us so much you left us behind after you had a hand in killing our parents. I don’t understand. If she’d lived, she would have been able to take her portion of the company. Why wouldn’t she have done that?”
“I think anger got the best of her. Or she wanted out more than she wanted the money. She likely blackmailed the others over the years.”
Nothing was making sense to him today. “Then why kill them now? From what Carly told me, she’s had a hand in every single death.”
“Because they could have told her secret,” Hatch replied. “Even if she’s caught at this point, she’s the only one who can talk. I’ll be implicated because it was my cash. Her hands are clean on that side. All I’ve got on her is some pictures the PI took that I placed in a safe deposit box years ago along with a letter to you and my will. I know it won’t mean anything to you now, but everything I have is yours. You’re the son I never had. I love you, Drew. I love every single one of you, and I’m so proud that I could be a part of this family.”
Anger bubbled over and he couldn’t help the words that spat from his mouth. “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t decided to fuck my mother.”
Hatch sat back, visibly startled. “It wouldn’t have. Not this way. I think she would have found another way to make it happen, though. When Iris wants something, she doesn’t stop until she gets it. I know I was foolish, but I thought I loved her. You have to understand that now. Now that you’ve had Shelby in your life, you have to know that you would do anything to keep her.”
Drew stood up, pointing all that righteous anger at the man who’d been his partner for years. “Don’t you even mention her name in the same breath as that woman. Shelby is worth ten of my mothers. Shelby would never abandon her children or slaughter her husband. You’re not fucking fit to be in the same house that she’s in, that any of them are in. Get the fuck out.”
“Drew, I know how angry you must be, but this is what Iris wants,” Hatch began. “You don’t have to look at me or speak to me, but you have to allow me to stay around so I can help.”
He was about to explain to Hatch what he would and wouldn’t do, when the door opened and his sister was standing there, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Mia?”
“Drew, you have to come out.” Her blond hair was up in a perky ponytail that belied the slump of her shoulders, the red of her eyes.
He moved to her, his stomach threatening to roll again. How much could he take in one day? “What is it?”
“Mom’s on TV. She’s talking to a reporter and she claims she knows who killed Dad.”
He braced himself because he was fairly certain he knew the answer. “Who?”
“It’s you, Drew. She says it was you.”
Well, at least he finally knew what she was planning to do.
Chapter Fifteen
Shelby couldn’t take her eyes off the TV. Iris was there looking perfectly forlorn as the interview was winding down. “I didn’t expect this today. I knew she wanted to blame Drew, but this is so soon.”
“She already had it in place,” Drew said under his breath, his eyes staring straight at the wide-screen fixed to the wall of the living room. Since the moment he’d stalked out of his office, he hadn’t said a word, merely stared at the woman on the screen. Even as he spoke now, the words were a hard, chilly monotone. “She probably taped this yesterday or the day before. She knew this was coming out.”
“Then why come after me today?” She hated how still Drew was, how his eyes seemed flat and unfocused even as he watched. Iris was telling the same sob story she’d given Shelby. She explained how scared she’d been of her son, how he’d been single-minded even from a young age, how she’d always known her child was capable of hurting someone, but she hadn’t realized he could kill until that terrible night.
“Did she offer to take you with her? To get you away from me?”
Shelby nodded. “She told me she would keep me safe and that then she would go after Noah.”
“Optics. She was thinking about the optics.” Drew’s head tilted as though he was considering the woman on the screen from all sides. Like she was some kind of animal he was studying.
“Optics?”
“If you had been with her tonight, it would look like you were taking her side,” Hatch said. Unlike Drew, his emotions were written all over his face. He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. “I’m going to need you to get legal and publicity together. Now. And I need the name of the best defense attorney in Austin. I need him on retainer tonight, like in the next twenty minutes, and send security guards. We’ll need to beef up for the press.”
“Defense attorney?” Shelby turned away from the interview. The TV had a picture of Noah in his old school uniform, and Iris wept openly, begging Drew not to kill her baby. “Why would you need a defense attorney? Her whole story is bullshit.”
“The fact that she’s alive and making accusations will bring the police to our doorstep,” Mia said. “I would bet a couple of detectives from DPD are already on their way down. They’ll want to interview Drew.”
The door opened and the men rushed in. Riley and Bran and Case all strode to their respective wives, taking them in their arms.
Mia looked up at her husband. “Did you find anything out?”
“DPD is already here, but we have to deal with the feds, too,” Case explained. “They’re sending in an agent to talk to Drew and Hatch and the rest of you. They want to question Riley and Bran about what they recall. I think they believe Mia was too young.”
“Well, I certainly was old enough to remember that it was my brother who picked me up and carried me out of a burning building,” Mia replied fiercely.
“That’s my point,” Shelby said. “I don’t see how this can work. The evidence is going to be against her.”
Riley had his phone in hand, too. “She doesn’t have to get Drew actually thrown in jail to hurt him. All she has to do is start some rumors, and 4L stock will suffer.”
“The press is already here.” Case hugged his wife close. “We managed to get through because there are only a couple of local news vans right now, but in thirty minutes or so, the nationals will be here and then all bets are off.”
At least they were back from the street and there was a nice-sized gate around the complex. It would afford Drew some privacy while his nightmare played out.
“You think she’s doing this so your stock will tank?” Shelby asked, her mind playing through the possibilities.
“I assume she’ll come to me at some point and offer to stop talking to the press if I give her enough cash,” Drew said, turning the TV off. “I’m sure she’ll get an offer to write a book, probably somewhere in the ten-million-dollar range, and I’ll have to top it to get her to stop. In the meantime, she’ll ruin our every public moment. She’ll make my life miserable by being everywhere.”
“You can’t pay her off. If you do, she’ll only come back for more.” It would never end. The family would be stuck in a cycle, always waiting for Iris to reemerge. She could haunt them for years.
“The police aren’t going to be able to charge me with anything,” Drew said, his voice still bland. “There’s no evidence, but simply being brought in for questioning is going to cause trouble. Where’s Noah?”
“He watched the beginning and then he ran out.” Ellie glanced toward the door. “He was upset. If he was faking that he didn’t know she was alive, he’s an excellent actor. I think he’s in the pool house.”
