by HELEN HARDT
“Easy, honey.” Strong fingers stroked my hair. “Easy. It’s me.”
I inhaled.
The sweet scent of familiarity.
The sweet scent of the man I loved.
All the tears I’d held back since I’d been taken gushed out of me. Crying was for girls, I’d always said, growing up with three older brothers.
I used tears sparingly.
Not this time. This time, I let them out. Let them flow. Let them flow onto Bryce’s chest and shoulders.
He kissed the top of my head. “Thank God,” he murmured. “Thank God.”
I let myself weep for several minutes unchecked.
Bryce held me. Simply held me and let me break down. I reveled in it for these few minutes, let myself go, until I knew it was time to gain my composure. I didn’t know where Colin was, and Alex was inside the mobile home bleeding to death.
I gulped down my last sob and wiped my face on Bryce’s shirt. “It’s you. It’s really you.”
“I’ll always come after you,” he said, stroking my hair, which had to be a ratty mess by now. “Always.”
A few more seconds of gentleness passed.
“You okay?” he asked.
What a loaded question. I was far from okay. I’d been drugged and abducted. But I hadn’t been beaten or raped. I nodded into his chest.
“Hey,” Bryce said.
I moved my head to look around. Colin was behind me.
“They didn’t hurt us,” he said. “Other than drugging us and taking us. They actually fed us and everything.”
Colin seemed coolly fine for someone who’d just slit a woman’s throat. Not that Alex didn’t deserve it, but still.
Or had he just recaptured his confidence? Done something to help himself when earlier he hadn’t been able to?
“The woman inside needs medical help,” he said to Bryce.
I nodded. I didn’t want to see Colin charged with involuntary manslaughter or anything. Was that possible? Jade would know.
“I already called 9-1-1 for a guy in another trailer. They’re on their way.” He stroked my cheek. “We found your mom.”
Sweet relief swept through me. “Is she okay?”
“She passed out. Talon got her to the truck.”
“Tal is here?”
“Yeah. Plus Ruby and Ryan.” Bryce tossed his phone to Colin. “Call 9-1-1 and tell them about the woman.”
Colin caught the phone easily—confidently—and made the call.
“I want to know everything,” Bryce said. “Every detail. But first we’re going to get you to a hospital. Both of you.”
“We’re okay,” I said.
“Not good enough. I want you checked out.”
“Bryce—”
“Nonnegotiable. Your brothers will agree with me.”
I nodded numbly. He was right. I had no idea what Dominic had injected me with. I’d go to the hospital.
Then I wanted to go home.
And put an end to this madness once and for all.
“By the way,” Bryce said, “you have a new nephew.”
I jerked. “What?”
“Melanie’s water broke earlier today. The baby’s small but doing well. He’s expected to be fine.”
“It’s my fault,” I said. “All the stress from my being taken must have made her go into labor.”
“Don’t take this on,” he said soothingly. “You didn’t ask for this, and the baby is doing fine.”
“Joe doesn’t know about you being here, does he?”
“He knows you were missing, but no. He doesn’t know about Colin’s message to Jade.”
“Thank God it worked.” I sighed.
Bryce gripped my shoulders and pushed me away slightly, meeting my gaze. The moonlight slid over his features. He looked both beautiful and insanely mad at the same time.
“Thank God,” he echoed. “I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”
Chapter Nineteen
Bryce
Marjorie.
I held on to her, relishing her body melded against mine. We fit together so perfectly, almost divinely, even like this.
I hadn’t let the fear overtake me while I searched for her, hadn’t let myself give in to the fear that threatened to consume me. No, I’d had to focus—focus enough to be able to use every bit of my muscle to kick in doors. For her.
But now? Holding her like this, letting her cry into me…
All the fear flew through me in retrospect.
I couldn’t let her go. Didn’t want to let her go. If I let her move away from my body, would I be able to protect her?
I’d meant what I said. I wanted her and Colin to go to a hospital to get checked out. Talon was probably already on the road with his mother. Had he checked in with Ryan and Ruby?
Colin still had my phone.
Even if I had it, I wasn’t sure I’d have let go of Marj to text them.
I wasn’t ready to let go just yet.
I might never be.
“All good,” Colin said. “They’re on their way.”
I nodded.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Go to my contacts. It’s a short list on this burner phone. Text Ry and Ruby and let them know I have you and Marj. Tell them Tal has Daphne as well. I’m not sure if he texted them.”
Colin nodded and began pecking at my phone.
And still I held on to Marj.
“I’m never letting you out of my sight again,” I said echoing myself. “Never again.”
I expected her spitfire personality to emerge and fight my words. But she didn’t. She just leaned into me. She was no longer bawling, only a sniffle now and then.
We stood, and even though clothing separated us, I felt like we were one body. Like we’d always be one body.
Ryan and Ruby found us, and though I spoke to them, told them what had occurred, it didn’t seem like me talking. The real me was glued to Marjorie.
Time moved slowly, and it seemed like hours before the police and ambulance showed up. Ruby took the lead with the police, and the paramedics brought the woman inside the unit out on a stretcher.
“Is she alive?” I heard Colin ask.
“She’ll be okay,” one of the medics said. “We got here in time. The other guy just has a flesh wound on his lower leg.”
Colin said nothing more. At least he wouldn’t be responsible for taking a life, though he’d certainly had good reason to attack. I selfishly wished I’d been the one to slit the woman’s throat. I’d have liked to kill with my bare hands everyone involved with Marj’s disappearance.
The police didn’t make Marj and Colin tell their stories yet. Instead, they drove us all to the hospital where Talon had taken his mother.
After the doctors had given Marjorie and Colin a clean bill of health, the police took them into a secluded room to tell their stories.
I still didn’t know everything that had gone on.
I sat next to Talon in the waiting area. “How’s Daphne?”
“Physically, she’s fine. They didn’t do anything to her. Apparently she walked right out of Newhaven with someone she thought was my father.”
“I thought whoever signed her out used Joe’s name.”
“He did. He wouldn’t use my father’s name. Everyone knows he’s dead. Did you get any information out of Marj?”
I shook my head. “I just held her. Didn’t want to let her go.”
He nodded.
Ruby had been let in with the officers doing the questioning as a courtesy because she was an ex-cop, and Ryan had gone somewhere. I wasn’t sure where. To get food maybe. It was the middle of the night. I’d wanted to call Jade so Marj and Colin would have an attorney, but Marj and Talon both nixed that idea.
“Who do you suppose is behind this?” Talon asked. “It couldn’t be Ted Morse. He’s Colin’s father.”
“I’m not sure that makes a difference,” I said. “I guess Marj didn’t get a chance to tell you what Colin told her r
ight before she was taken.”
Of course she hadn’t. She’d been taken while she was on the phone with Joe and me.
“What’s that?”
“Colin thinks his father actually sold him to my father.” I couldn’t hold back a shudder. Every time I let myself think about what my father had been capable of, I reacted physically. I couldn’t help it.
“What?” Talon said.
“You heard me. I don’t know what kind of proof Colin has. I’m sure he’ll share it with us once he gets over this most recent setback. This must have been horrible for him, being taken again. At least it doesn’t look like he was tortured this time.”
“Man, I hate to feel sorry for that guy, after what he did to Jade, but…” Talon shook his head. “Seems he saved the day here, though.”
“I know, man. I get your ambivalence, and I agree. He saved Marj. Plus, he didn’t deserve what my father did to him.” This time I shook my head. “No one did.”
“No,” Talon agreed. “No one did.”
I felt like an idiot. Talon was so strong and seemed so together. Sometimes I forgot that he had been among my father’s first victims.
“Sorry, man.”
“It’s okay. Sometimes I don’t think about it for days. My life is great now, you know? Then, times like this, it comes back in vivid images.”
I nodded. “You were alone all that time, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You never saw another kid?”
“I saw Luke. He was already dead.”
Nausea swept up my throat, and I grimaced.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Hey, no worries. I’m the one who asked. You never saw someone else? A kid my age, maybe?”
“You’re wondering about the kid you and Joe knew. Justin.”
I nodded.
“Sorry. I only saw Luke. And like I said, he was already dead.”
“Got it.”
It had been worth a shot. Justin Valente had to figure into this whole thing. I just had no idea how. Hell, I didn’t even know if he was dead or alive.
Though my instinct told me he was alive. Alive and in contact with Ted Morse.
But was my instinct worth anything? I wasn’t a detective like Ruby. She had honed her instincts over a decade of police work. I was a finance guy. I had good instincts about money and investments. Why would I trust my instinct about anything else? Especially something that had happened thirty years ago that I hardly remembered?
I needed to talk to Joe.
But that wouldn’t happen. Not until we all decided to tell him what was going on. He had Melanie and his new son to think of.
I knew Jonah Steel, though. Probably even better than his brothers or wife did. He would not be happy to have been left out of all of this. He’d understand why we did it, but he’d be pissed as hell.
Joe pissed as hell wasn’t a pretty picture.
“Anyone here for Alessandra Booker?” a doctor asked.
Alessandra Booker? The name sounded familiar. Right. Cade Booker. Alessandra Booker. Dominic Booker. Marj, or maybe it was Colin, had said the woman whose throat Colin had slit was named Alex. Was her real name Alessandra?
“I am,” I lied.
“And you are…?”
“A friend.”
“I need a family member.”
“Oh.”
Well, I’d tried.
“Was she the one who came in with the slit throat?” I asked.
“I’m not at liberty to say.” The doctor walked away.
A few minutes later, Ruby and Marjorie emerged from the room where they’d been talking to the police. Marjorie’s eyes were sunken and rimmed with dark circles. My poor baby.
I took her into my arms and kissed her forehead.
“They’re not arresting Colin,” Ruby said. “They’re calling it self-defense for now.”
“It was self-defense,” Marj said adamantly. “Where is Colin?”
“Wasn’t he in there with you?” I asked.
“For a while. Then they took him to question him separately.”
I nodded. Though I was grateful to him, Colin was the least of my worries at the moment. “How are you holding up?” I asked the woman I loved.
“Okay, I guess.”
“You must be exhausted.”
“I’m sure we all are.” She turned to Talon. “How’s Mom?”
“Confused, but that’s nothing new. Physically she’s fine. She keeps talking about Dad, though. Keeps saying he picked her up and took her and the baby somewhere.”
“I’m not sure what to think about Dad.” Marj rubbed her temples.
“What do you mean?” Talon said. “He’s gone. We both witnessed it.”
“I don’t know,” Ruby said. “Sometimes our eyes can deceive us.”
Chapter Twenty
Marjorie
Ruby’s words rang in my ears.
Did I think my father was truly alive? No, I didn’t, and I certainly didn’t expect my brothers to think it either.
“The fact remains, though,” I said, after briefing them on what Dominic had told Colin and me, “that according to Dominic—”
“Dominic?” Bryce asked.
“Yeah. Dominic my trainer. He’s Alex’s brother, apparently. He’s the one—”
“I’ll fucking kill him,” Bryce said, his voice a dark monotone.
“You’ll have to find him first,” Ruby said. “The cops are looking for him, but the guy you shot”—she eyed Bryce—“isn’t talking, and his sister can’t talk at the moment.”
Ryan turned to me. “According to Dominic…what?”
“He was acting on orders from Dad.” I rubbed my eyes, and then I noticed Bryce’s.
“He’s blowing smoke up your ass,” Ryan said. “I watched my nutty mother kill him. I saw the blood on his chest.”
“I saw it all too,” Ruby said. “But there are ways to fake a death, and your father had all the money in the world to figure out how.”
“What happened to your eyes?” I asked Bryce.
“Pepper spray.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. It’s a long story and I’ll tell you later.”
I sighed. I loved this man with all my heart. Who had harmed him? When was this all going to end? “My father wouldn’t fake his death twice,” I said. “He just wouldn’t.”
“Look,” Ruby said. “I never knew your father. I get that. All of you did know him, including you, Bryce. You say he wouldn’t fake his death twice. Okay. Let’s go with that for a minute. But let me ask you this. Did any of you think he would fake his death once?”
She paused. Was she waiting for us to say something?
“Because he did,” she continued. “We know that for a fact.”
Talon, Ryan, and I said nothing. What was there to say? She made a valid point. I would have bet the entire Steel fortune that my father would never fake his own death, leave his children, leave his business.
But he had.
Why would he do it again? It didn’t make sense. Wendy Madigan was dead. Ruby had killed her. Tom Simpson, Larry Wade, and Theodore Mathias were all dead. We had proof of this. Joe had witnessed Tom kill himself, Larry had been killed in prison, and Wendy had killed Mathias when he tried to save Ruby, his daughter.
All of the people from whom he was protecting his mentally ill wife—whose death he’d also faked—were gone.
Except they weren’t.
Someone had taken my mother from her facility—the best facility available that supposedly had top-notch security. If Dominic was to be believed, it was for her own protection, which meant someone out there meant her harm. Meant me harm.
Even if this had something to do with Ted Morse or Bryce’s childhood friend Justin Valente, why would either of them care about a mentally ill woman? Ted might have had a beef with Tom Simpson, or he might have sold his son to him. Either way, it had nothing to do with our father. Nothing to do with our mother.
> And Justin Valente? If he was indeed still alive, his beef would also be with Tom, who was dead. He couldn’t seek revenge against a dead person.
But if Justin was alive, if he’d somehow survived whatever Tom had done to him that weekend three decades ago, he might blame the two people who’d invited him to that camping trip.
My brother Joe.
And the man I loved. Bryce.
Joe and Bryce.
Who were their Achilles’ heels? For Joe, his pregnant wife. For Bryce, his son.
But one person was a weakness for both of them.
Me.
I’d be the first target if Justin wanted to hit Joe and Bryce at the same time and avoid harming a pregnant woman or a little boy.
Bryce had been right to send Henry away. He didn’t yet know how right.
Had there been truth to Dominic’s ravings about the order coming from my father? He hadn’t said my father was alive. He’d only said a system had been put in place. My father didn’t need to be alive for a system to work in his absence. But if Dominic had been telling the truth, my father had known there were still threats beyond Madigan, Simpson, Wade, and Mathias.
He knew.
For a moment, I allowed myself to have a smidgeon of hope that my daddy was still alive. That he hadn’t been killed by his crazy ex-lover, Wendy Madigan, right in front of my eyes.
But he had been.
Ruby said eyes can deceive, but I’d know if my father hadn’t died that day. I’d run to him, thrown myself over his body. His body had still been warm. The blood had been warm. It had covered my fingers.
Joe had tugged me away, made me leave the room. I’d kicked and screamed and cried in protest, but still he’d dragged me out. “For your own good,” he’d said.
The police had come, and we’d made arrangements for our father’s cremation. The last time any of us had seen the body was in Talon’s office that day. That horrible, hellish day.
Ruby hadn’t asked her question again, and no one else had spoken.
Which meant only one thing.
Talon and Ryan were most likely struggling with the same thoughts.
Perhaps even Bryce was, although he hadn’t been with us when our father died.
Finally—
