by HELEN HARDT
For a moment, Larry Wade almost looked like he felt something akin to sorrow, but it faded away seconds later. “It went too far. All of it went too far.”
“What?” Joe said through clenched teeth. “What went too far, Larry?”
Wade shook his head. “I can’t do it. I can’t. Not even for the children of my sister. I barely knew her, you know.”
“For God’s sake,” Joe said. “We mean nothing to you. Don’t try to play the sister card.”
“Besides, Simpson is dead,” I said. “He can’t get to you.”
“Mathias isn’t dead. And he isn’t even the most dangerous.”
“Then who is?” I asked.
He stared at me eerily. “You have your mother’s nose,” he said again. Then he stood and motioned to the guard. “We’re done here.”
Chapter Twenty–Nine
Ruby
Marjorie and I ended up at a small café for a late lunch. Melanie joined us. She had driven into the city with Jonah and Ryan, who were visiting Larry Wade. I was nervous, waiting for a call from Tuck. I knew we probably wouldn’t hear anything for a while, but Tuck could be speedy sometimes, especially where a lot of money was involved.
I’d rather he take his time and get it right.
“I’m thinking…” Melanie began.
“Yeah?” I took a bite of my BLT. Tasted like sawdust with mayo.
“We’re not too far from that psych place where they’re holding Wendy Madigan. Would you be willing to go speak to her?”
I nearly jumped off my chair. Go talk to the woman who might be my lover’s mother? A woman who was batshit crazy? A woman who knew my father a hell of a lot better than I did? “Hell, yeah.”
“Would they let us in?” Marjorie asked.
I pulled my clutch open and pulled out my badge. “This will.”
Melanie nodded. “I was hoping you’d agree. I just want to talk to her. I’m not looking for any specific information. Just want to get a feeling, you know?”
“Actually, with your psychological expertise and my investigative training, we might be able to get somewhere.”
“If you two don’t mind, I’m going to bow out of that one,” Marjorie said. “I’ll do some shopping. I’m afraid I might just kick the shit out of the bitch.”
I felt Marjorie’s pain. “I understand.”
“Me too,” Melanie said. “We’ll text you when we’re done, and we can meet up later.”
I shuddered. This would be another betrayal of Ryan. But I was all in already. I’d given Marjorie his hair and arranged to have the DNA testing done.
God, I hoped it was negative and we could all go our merry ways. Still, that in itself would be a lie. What had I gotten into?
Didn’t matter. The test would be positive.
In the depths of my marrow, I already knew the truth.
Wendy Madigan was Ryan’s mother.
And she was going to answer to me.
* * *
Wendy Madigan had medium-dark hair with gray roots. Her eyes were a dull blue. She might have been quite pretty in her day, but now, her hair was slicked back on her head and she wore hospital scrubs.
Did she know my face? Did she know I was the person she had texted? Two orderlies escorted her to our table, one male and one female. The female’s nametag read “Mary.” Perhaps this was Mary Moon, whose phone Wendy had stolen.
“Are you Mary Moon?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She nodded.
“Keep better track of your phone,” I said.
She arched her eyebrows at me and patted her pocket. “It’s right here.”
I said nothing more as Wendy sat down, an orderly on each side of her.
“Detective Lee,” Wendy said, staring straight into my eyes. “How nice to see you.”
Okay. Question answered. Wendy Madigan had eyes in all places. Time to figure out who was seeing for her and why.
“Nice to see you too, Ms. Madigan,” I said with as much nonchalance as I could muster.
Melanie looked understandably confused. “Do you two know each other?”
“Oh, we go way back,” Wendy said.
“Hardly,” I said. “But you obviously know I’ve been seeing Ryan Steel. I’d suggest you quit stealing your orderlies’ cell phones. That can get you put in solitary lockup.” I didn’t know if there was such a thing as solitary in psych, but I didn’t much care at the moment.
“And aren’t you a lovely thing,” Wendy said to Melanie. “You’re Joe’s new wife. What a lucky woman you are. Jonah looks so much like his father, so dark and dominant.” Wendy closed her eyes. “How I miss him.”
I could tell Melanie was agitated. Truthfully, so was I. We’d both have to do a better job of covering it up.
“How do you know who I am?” Melanie asked.
“I keep tabs on all my boys,” Wendy said.
All her boys? This wasn’t sounding good.
“We’re here for some answers, Ms. Madigan,” I said. “Just exactly what do you mean when you say ‘all my boys?’”
“Brad and his sons, of course.”
“You told Jonah and Talon that you were Ryan’s mother,” Melanie said. “Is that true?”
She squirmed. “Oh, that? I was just teasing them. Of course I’m not Ryan’s mother.”
A sigh of relief escaped me. Thank God! Ryan would never have to know about the DNA test now. He’d never have to know how I’d betrayed him by giving his hair to Melanie and keeping this secret from him. That feeling I’d had earlier? In the marrow of my bones? It was just my fears getting the best of me.
That was what I wanted to be true. But Wendy Madigan was a known liar. I swallowed a lump in my throat.
Melanie wasn’t convinced either. “Why would you lie to them about that? This is killing them.”
“I never wanted to hurt Brad or any of his children, but some things can’t be avoided.”
“Meaning?” Melanie said.
“It’s so sad about the middle one. What those men did to him.”
“Look, Ms. Madigan,” I said.
“Call me Wendy, dear.”
“Fine. Wendy, dear.” I fake-smiled. “One of those sick men is my father, and we need to find him. Larry Wade is in prison, and Tom Simpson is dead.”
“Yes, so sad.”
“What? That he’s dead?”
“Any end of life is sad, don’t you think?”
“No, not really. At least not that one.” She was trying to get me off track. I recognized her tactic, and I was sure Melanie did too. “We need your help finding Theodore Mathias, my father.”
“It is unfortunate that Theo is your father, dear. But that is precisely”—her voice went lower, darker—“why you need to stay the fuck away from my son.”
My skin chilled as goose bumps erupted on my arms. “What? You just said—”
My phone buzzed. It was a text from Tucker.
I have the results.
Chapter Thirty
Ryan
“You okay?” Joe asked as we were driving back to the ranch.
“Yeah. I’m good. I just didn’t expect it to affect me quite so much.”
“I know. I felt the same way the first time I met Larry. It’s hard to believe he’s my uncle. He doesn’t look anything like any of us.”
“Well, just a half uncle,” I said.
“True. Still…” He sighed, watching the road. “Thanks for coming along.”
“I should have done it before now. I should have been there for Tal.” I shook my head. “My work is important to me. I live for the harvest and the winemaking season, but I put it ahead of my brother. I’m sorry, man.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. Believe me,” Joe said.
I appreciated his sentiment, but I didn’t believe him for a minute. Right now, I felt like the lowest of the low.
“Hey,” he continued. “We’ll all appreciate it when we taste that amazing wine.”
“That wine won’t be
ready for several years.” I sighed. “No, I’m feeling pretty fucking bad, Joe.”
“Don’t. Please.”
Please? That wasn’t like Joe.
He continued, “We’ve all been through enough, and it’s not over yet. Don’t invent reasons to feel bad, okay? We have enough real reasons.”
“True enough.” Though I got the feeling there was something Jonah wasn’t saying.
I’d been getting that feeling around my brothers since before we went to Jamaica. I’d shrugged it off as pre-wedding jitters, although they were both so head over heels in love with their wives that I had a hard time believing either of them were the least bit jittery.
We were quiet the rest of the way home. Joe asked if I wanted to come over for a drink, but I declined. I wanted to be alone.
Why? I wasn’t sure.
For some reason, I felt the need to think. About what? Again, I wasn’t sure. “Hey,” I said. “Do you have those yearbooks at your place?”
“No, they’re at Tal’s.”
“Okay.” No problem. I lived in Talon’s guest house. I’d walk over and borrow the yearbooks.
I wanted to get a good look at the future lawmakers.
One way or another, I was going to unravel the mystery of my father’s involvement with those men who’d tortured my brother…and who probably had wanted to torture me as well.
* * *
Armed with the yearbooks, I poured myself a glass of my aged cab and sat down in my leather recliner.
I hadn’t spent enough time in this chair lately, and God, it felt good. I flipped on the massager and closed my eyes.
And then shot them open.
Now wasn’t the time to relax. I didn’t want to associate combing through my father’s old yearbooks with my favorite chair. So I turned off the massager, got up, and sat at my bar where I could spread out the books.
First, I took a sip of my wine and let it linger on my tongue. The cab could use another year, but damn, it was good now too. Nice and dry with soft tannins and a blackberry finish.
But now wasn’t the time to pat myself on the back for making great wine, either.
I grabbed the book where my father was a junior. That was the only one that showed the future lawmakers club with all six of its members. Simpson and Mathias were seniors and had graduated after this book, and Wendy Madigan, a sophomore in this book, had moved after that year. Rodney Cates, Uncle Larry Wade, and my father were juniors.
I stared at my father’s photograph. It could have been my brother Joe staring back at me. The resemblance was uncanny. Jonah definitely favored our father the most of all of us. But Tal and I looked like him too, just a little less so. Not one of the three of us looked anything like our mother, other than our coloring. She was dark-haired and dark-eyed also. Marjorie had her face shape and nose, but none of us guys did.
Wait. Larry Wade had said I had her nose.
I touched my face. That wasn’t my mother’s nose. What the hell had he been thinking?
My nose was more like my brothers’ noses, although it was a little smaller. I had finer features than they had. It had bugged me when I was little. I didn’t like being a pretty boy. Now it didn’t bother me so much. In fact, it was kind of cool to be considered the best looking of the Steel brothers, since both Joe and Tal were great-looking in their own right.
Looking at Theodore Mathias made me cringe. This man had fathered Ruby. Other than the dark hair, she didn’t resemble him. He had a dark and Mediterranean look about him. Mathias was a Greek name, so that explained the look.
He was handsome. They all were. Tom Simpson looked exactly like his son, Bryce, had in high school, and while Larry Wade was graying and balding now, in high school he was good-looking and muscular. Rodney Cates was probably the least handsome of the lot, and even he looked good. Wendy Madigan was cheerleader-pretty with brown hair in the “big” style that was common back then. They hardly looked like the demons they’d turned out to be.
But my father wasn’t a demon.
He couldn’t be.
So why had he hung around these people? Why did he give them money? And what the hell did they do with it?
Future lawmakers? I scoffed. More like future lawbreakers.
I broke out in a chill.
Had I just stumbled onto something? Ice filled my veins. Was this what it felt like to have a premonition? Shit, I didn’t believe in that voodoo…but God, I sure felt like I’d come to some kind of correct conclusion.
Was the future lawmakers a deliberate misnomer?
Had my father broken the law?
No. Not possible. His integrity had been legendary.
But why had he swept Talon’s abduction under the rug, never allowing any of us to deal with the fallout?
The reason was out there.
And damn it, I was going to find it.
Chapter Thirty–One
Ruby
My nerves did a jig under my skin as Melanie and I sat across from Tucker at the lab. Marjorie had elected to continue shopping and not join us. She was afraid she couldn’t take hearing the results for the first time.
I wasn’t sure I could either.
“This is Dr. Melanie Carmichael,” I said to Tucker.
“Steel,” Melanie said.
“Yeah, of course. Sorry. Dr. Melanie Steel.”
“We appreciate you getting these results so quickly,” Melanie said, her voice stiff.
“Not a problem. Turned out all the samples were great. Very viable. This is a first for me. I’m normally asked to test for paternity. I’ve never been asked to test for maternity, though I’ve heard it’s becoming more common these days with surrogacy and egg donation.”
“Let’s get to it,” I said, biting my lip. “I can’t stand the suspense.”
“I’m getting there. As you know, a child inherits half of his DNA from his father, half from his mother, so his DNA should show similarities to half of his mother’s DNA. We look at twenty-five different genetic markers.”
“Tuck, I know how DNA testing works, and Melanie is a doctor, for God’s sake. Just tell us. Is WM the mother of RS or not? I can’t stand this anymore.”
Tucker nodded. “She is his mother.”
My heart dropped into my stomach.
Melanie let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t think anyone will be surprised.”
“No one but Ryan,” I said. God help him.
“As to the other samples, JS, TS, and MS are full-blooded siblings. The RS sample contains roughly half of the same genetic markers as the siblings’ samples, which means the four all share one parent—in this case, the father, since the DNA sample matching RS’s other markers is from a female.”
Thank God. I had allowed my thoughts to go a little crazy after Wendy had called the Steels “all of her boys.” It wouldn’t have surprised me if Tuck had said all three of them were Wendy’s kids. In fact, I’d actually hoped in some crazy way that would be the case. At least then, Ryan wouldn’t be alone.
He wouldn’t be alone now. His family wouldn’t desert him because he was only their half brother. I knew that. And I wouldn’t desert him, even though he might desert me.
But in his mind, he’d be alone. Oddly, though I hadn’t known him long, I knew that was how he’d see it. I couldn’t bear it.
“Thank you for doing this so quickly,” Melanie said again.
“I have a printout showing the results,” Tuck said, handing it to Melanie. “This explains everything. Roo knows how to read it, and I’m sure you do too, Doctor.”
“Yes,” Melanie said, “though I wish it said something completely different.”
“I’m sorry this isn’t the result you were hoping for,” Tuck said.
“It is what it is,” I said. “In my business, results are always a crapshoot.” But in my business, I wasn’t usually personally involved. “Thanks again, Tuck. You’re a lifesaver.”
Though he had probably just ended any life I might have had with Ryan.
Melanie and I left the lab.
“What now?” I asked.
“I take this to Jonah and Talon, and they decide.”
I turned and looked Melanie straight in the eye. “No, I’m going with you. I’m in up to my eyeballs now. I care about Ryan as much as the rest of you do. Whatever goes down is going down with me involved.”
She sighed. “Fair enough. Let’s go.”
* * *
Sitting in Jonah’s kitchen with the two brothers, Marjorie, Melanie, and Jade wasn’t what I’d imagined for this Saturday evening. I was supposed to spend the weekend with Ryan. Of course, I’d been the one to bail. None of this was Ryan’s fault.
“I’m the oldest,” Jonah said. “I’ll handle this.”
“No, that’s not fair,” Talon said. “You and I should both tell him.”
“Look,” I said. “I’m about the farthest thing from a Steel family member sitting here, but I got the hair and I gave it to the lab. This involves me just as much as it involves any of you.”
“Are you saying you want to tell him, Ruby?” Melanie asked.
Shit, no. I didn’t want to tell him. “What I’m saying is—do we really have to tell him at all?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew they were crap. “I’m sorry. Of course we have to tell him. I just don’t want…”
“What?” Jonah asked.
I closed my eyes and then opened them. “I don’t want to lose him, damn it.”
“None of us want you to lose him,” Jonah said. “You’re the best thing that has happened to Ry in a long time. And we appreciate you getting the sample. Melanie told us how terrible you felt about it, how you refused at first. In fact, Melanie and Jade both thought we should have told Ryan before we even did the test.”
“I agree with them,” I said.
“Then why did you get the hair?”
I sighed. “Because I didn’t want him to get hurt. I thought maybe the test would be negative, and then he’d never have to know. If my involvement could have saved him being hurt at all, I wanted to do it.”
