“I received your emails and messages,” Abigail said, looking at Riley. He didn’t bother to introduce the rest of his team. Either she knew who they were or she didn’t. Names weren’t important at the moment.
“And I got scared,” she told them, looking around the table now. “I did some research on you all and figured I could trust you...”
No one nodded, but no one looked away, either. “I have no idea what you know about my father, or why you’re contacting me, but...”
“He’s missing,” Vikki said.
When Abigail nodded, Griffin leaned forward as though ready to leap from the opposite end of the table at any moment. “I tried to call him,” she said, shaking her head. “The number I had for him isn’t working,” she said.
“That’s what everyone else is saying,” Riley said, studying the young woman, sure he didn’t trust her, but not sure how much that mistrust came from who she was, or because of some vibe she was giving off.
“When was the last time you spoke with him?” he asked, to test her as much as anything else.
Shaking her head of long hair, she turned her hazel eyes on him, meeting his gaze head-on. “It’s...been a while. A long while. We’re...estranged.” She said the word as though it only minimally described her relationship with her seedy father.
“But that’s not why I’m here,” she said, looking around the table again, and then back to Riley. “After you left that message this morning, I looked you up and saw your social media posts about RevitaYou. I recognized it because a librarian at the university had told me about it. She’d bought some from a friend and after she’d taken it for a couple of weeks, was asking everyone if they could see a difference in her looks.”
“Did she get sick?” Pippa asked, her voice filled with urgency.
“No, luckily not,” Abigail answered immediately. “I called her as soon as I saw the post, and went over and got her entire supply,” she said. “And then I took what she gave me to the lab.”
She looked around the table again, and Riley couldn’t tell if she was looking more worried, because she was trying to sell them a bill of goods, or because she was truly afraid.
“I broke down the compounds,” she said. “And I found something terrible.”
“What?” Sadie’s tone was sharper than usual.
“There’s a compound of Ricin in it that can be deadly depending on the person taking it. Certain bodies will react more strongly to it than others, and it won’t affect everyone, but unless this stuff is off the streets immediately, it’s only a matter of time before deaths are reported.”
The collective gasp that hit the air seemed to strike the baby, as well. Her feet jerked up, she sucked in air and then settled back to sleep without opening her eyes.
“RevitaYou is deadly,” Abigail told them then. “I saw a replay of the newscast that was done last night,” she said. “They’re saying not only that people are getting sick but also that the banker running the RevitaYou pyramid is my father. Is that right?”
She clearly knew the answer to her question before she’d asked it. Riley could read that much in her expression. And didn’t bother answering. He just stared at her. As did the rest of the team.
“And you all think I’m involved,” she told him. “I was afraid...as soon as I heard the news...tested the pills... I knew...” She hung her head before Riley could be certain it was tears he’d seen as the sudden sheen in her eyes. And when she glanced back up, her gaze was filled with nothing but fear. Sincere or otherwise.
“I swear to you all. I haven’t seen or spoken to my father in forever. You’re welcome to my phone records, to anything... I’m working on a memory-boosting drug...something that will really help improve the quality of life, not just improve the appearance of it... You’re welcome to check out my lab, my records, anything. That’s why I came to you tonight. It’s only a matter of time before the police take me in, and I can’t take a chance on them taking their time to clear me. I could lose Maya...”
The tears that came to her eyes then were unmistakable.
And Riley glanced at his team. As each one gave a small nod, he told Abigail that they’d see what they could do.
He didn’t trust her. Doubted that any of his siblings did. But if what she said was true...
Their mission was to find justice for all they could.
And to bring Brody home.
Not to judge a person by her father.
As they saw Abigail safely out, with Riley’s promise to call Emmanuel Iglesias at GRPD and fill him in, Riley hoped that karma had taken note of the choice they’d just made. Because, in the future, he’d hate for his kid to be judged by some of the choices Riley had made.
Chapter 20
Charlize drove to Lowell to have Sunday dinner with her aunts and uncle Sunday afternoon. And while her uncle snoozed in front of a golf match on the television, she led her aunts out to the wicker furniture on Aunt Grace’s screened-in porch, perched herself on the daybed she’d jumped on and napped on as a kid, and told them about the baby.
She didn’t tell them who the father was. Only that he was a good man who was going to take responsibility for the child, but who didn’t want to get married. And braced herself for their questions. Their disappointment.
She was moving on. Starting her new life.
And she couldn’t do it without them.
“Oh, sweetie, are you okay?” Aunt Blythe asked, slowing her rocker to lean forward and gaze into Charlize’s eyes.
“I’m fine, Auntie,” she said, smiling. “I had the ultrasound this week, and everything’s perfect. And I know this isn’t the way we wanted it to happen, but I’m really happy about the baby. Super excited, actually...”
“A baby!” Grace said, smiling for a moment. “We’re finally going to have a new baby in our family! Just think of it, Blythe.” She looked at her sister, frowned at her and then, with a completely serious face, glanced back at Charlize. “What can we do for you?” she asked.
That was it? Was she okay and what could they do for her?
“I know you two have to be really disappointed in me,” she said, needing to just get it all out in the open and dealt with so she could move forward.
“Are you kidding?” Blythe stood, came to the daybed, sat down and took Charlize’s hand. “You are the brightest shining star in all of our lives, Char,” she said. “You always have been. There’s nothing you could ever do to disappoint us. It’s just not in you...”
“I’m...having a baby without marriage. With a man who’s not my one and only. I’m doing just what my mother did...”
The instant and vehement shakes of both women’s heads kind of shocked her. “Your mother, God rest her soul, slept with any man who wanted her from the time she was sixteen,” Grace said, not with censure so much as with stark truth. “Best as we can figure it was the drugs,” she said.
“Or maybe she really wanted what she saw we had, both of us so in love with our husbands, and just didn’t want to wait,” Blythe added. “She was a spoiled one.”
Grace nodded. “Our fault, really,” she said. “She was like a toy to us...so pretty and happy to be dressed up. We gave her everything she wanted, even when Mama and Daddy told us not to. We’d sneak it to her...”
“We made her selfish,” Blythe said, nodding at Grace.
“That’s why she tried to sleep with Harrison,” Grace said, referring to Blythe’s husband who’d died so young.
“She wanted what I had and didn’t think about how it would hurt me,” Blythe said.
“Didn’t care’s more like it,” Grace said.
Feeling as though she’d walked into a bizarre twilight zone, Charlize looked from one to the other of them, speechless.
No one had ever, ever told her that her mother was spoiled. And selfish. They’d said it was the drugs. And a de
sire to find the kind of love they all had.
They’d spun the tale because they were talking to her about her mother.
Looking from one to the other of them, she understood, loved them and felt betrayed at the same time.
When Blythe took her hand, she almost pulled it back, but because of the love, she couldn’t.
“We couldn’t have you thinking you’d be like her, that you were like her,” Blythe said, running her forefinger up and down the back of Charlize’s hand. “That’s why we didn’t tell you some parts of it. The drugs we couldn’t hide. You saw the effects of them, but the rest of it...”
She swallowed.
“And after all that, here you are thinking you’re like her, anyway...” She broke off. Shook her head.
“So...all of that stuff about love at first sight, about the love of your life...all of that was just part of a fairy tale...” The fantasyland she’d finally given up.
“Oh, no!” Grace stood and came to sit at Charlize’s other side. “That part was true. Mama and Daddy fell in love at first sight. I did. And Blythe had her one true love. Just like we told you. And I like to think your mama was looking for real love, too...” She took Charlize’s other hand.
“I looked for mine,” she said. “I waited...”
“And you found him,” Blythe said as though she knew. When she couldn’t possibly...
“He’s that investigator, Riley Colton,” her aunt continued. “I knew the first time I saw the two of you together. The way you looked at him...”
“No.” She shook her head as she quickly cut off her aunt, but she didn’t let go of either hand holding hers. Instead, she held on tight.
“He’s the baby’s father, isn’t he? This Riley that Blythe’s talking about?”
Charlize nodded. “And I do love him...”
“Of course you do...”
Why she’d ever thought these two would doubt her...or had underestimated the support that was there for her...
“He asked me to live with him. Or, rather, to live at his house. To raise the baby there.”
“What did you tell him?” Grace’s tone had grown serious and noncommittal.
“That I couldn’t accept crumbs.”
“Thank God,” Grace said, while Blythe nodded.
“That’s the mistake your mother made,” Blythe offered softly. “She settled. And then everyone gets hurt.”
“He cares. I know he cares,” she said, feeling the despair well up inside her. “But he doesn’t believe in love and happily-ever-after.”
“Then you made the right choice,” Grace told her with enough conviction for the three of them. “A man who enters a relationship he doesn’t want or isn’t ready for will not be a happy man, and the relationship will suffer. And you aren’t a woman who can accept any less than someone being all in.”
Having already reached those conclusions on her own, Charlize was still devastated to have them confirmed. Because... “I have no idea who I’m going to live the rest of my life alongside without having him be mine...”
Her voice ended on a wail and slowly, starting one at a time, the sobs came.
Racking, painful, tortured sobs that tore through her, ripped at her throat and expressed the anguish she’d been trying so hard to fight.
Arms around her, Aunt Blythe and Aunt Grace had to have felt every one of them, holding her up, helping her bear them until the tears were spent.
Because they were a family and that was what families did.
The women who’d helped raise her couldn’t make this one better. Couldn’t put some lidocaine on it, or wash it away with a cool cloth and a cookie. But they’d be there for her.
And somehow, that would be enough.
* * *
“Hey, Ri? Can we talk a sec?”
Glancing up from the computer screen on his desk, Riley saw Sadie standing in the office doorway. He’d thought they’d all left.
“Sure,” he said, quickly clicking out of the baby equipment page he’d been just starting to peruse. Kind of relieved to be able to put off what was quickly appearing about to become an overwhelming task. “What’s up?”
When she came in and sat in the chair opposite his desk, reminding him of times he’d had to face his father from that very same chair across the very same desk, he wished he had a beer to offer her.
And one for himself, as well.
“I just...you know...with getting married and all...maybe I’m the only one who can see the change in you, and...”
“What change in me?” She was pissing him off and he knew how it felt to sit in that chair and hope to God you weren’t about to piss off the man behind the desk.
“This week,” Sadie said, looking him in the eye with her chin up, almost as though daring him to argue with her. Almost as though she was the man behind the desk and not vice versa. “You’re different, Riley. With Charlize here...it was like you were...happy.”
“I’m always happy. I like my life.”
“You settle for what you’ve chosen, yes, and I do believe you’re moderately happy with that choice. But this week there was more, Riley, and life should be filled with that more. You seem to think that for you it has to be one-dimensional.”
He didn’t. How could he when he’d never even considered the idea of dimensions.
“It’s just that... I hate to think that having all of us come into your lives as we did...you were just a kid and yet with Mom and Dad so busy and preoccupied all the time, we always came to you, depended on you. At least from my memory of growing up it was that way—and now, look at you, living here at home, sitting behind Dad’s desk, running the family business...it’s like you continue to live that life, to be the one we all rely on, without ever asking anything for yourself.”
The fact that she was truly upset had him listening to her, rather than brushing her off, which was what he’d rather have done.
“I’m here because this is where I want to be,” he assured her. “I’m good at what I do. Great at it. And it gives me a sense of accomplishment like none other. I had someone tell me once that I’m an adrenaline junkie...”
“Marisol?” Sadie asked. She and her siblings had met his former partner a time or two. He hadn’t realized they’d remembered her name. Or anything else about her. It wasn’t like he’d ever brought her to family dinner...
“It was obvious you were sleeping with her, Ri,” Sadie said drily as he remained silent. “We all knew.”
That was news. Not good news.
News better left alone.
“And obvious that you took it hard when she was killed,” she added. Delving right into the muck he’d opted to avoid.
Deciding to still opt out, he sat there, saying nothing.
“I just think...it’s time that you stop hiding behind all of us, if that’s what you’re doing, or else thinking that you have to keep sacrificing your own life and wants and needs for all of us, and grab up what you want, Riley. Fight for it, if you have to. Just don’t let this one pass you by...”
“Nothing’s ever passed me by. Not anything I wanted, anyway.”
She shook her head, and he totally recognized the way her eyelids opened a little wider, knowing that she was fighting tears.
“You have to fight for this one, Riley. Fight yourself if you have to. You might not get another chance! For a smart man, you’re about the most stupid person I’ve ever met when it comes to pushing away that which your actions draw toward you.”
He didn’t relish being called stupid. Most particularly not by his runt of a sister, but she’d made him curious. And pissed, too. Since he wasn’t going to spew anger at her, he asked, “What is it that I draw to me?”
“Love,” she said. “You make everyone love you to pieces, and then you just push away...”
He stood, angrier than
he could remember being at any of his siblings, in a long, long time.
“You think that’s what I do?” he asked her, leaning over, his hands on the desk as he brought his face closer to hers.
She didn’t rise to meet him. And didn’t look away, either. As far as he could tell, she didn’t even blink. “I do.”
“Well, let me just tell you...” he started, words bubbling up out of deep inside him. “I’m not the one who did the pushing,” he said. “I was pushed. Did you ever stop to think about that?”
Frowning, she shook her head. “Could you please sit down? You’re towering over me.”
He sat. Hard.
Already regretting his outburst.
“What did you mean?” Sadie’s voice was soft. Filled with the love that she’d always poured so freely over all of them. “Who pushed you?”
He shook his head. “I was out of line,” he said. “I apologize.”
“No, Ri, I’m not going away this time. I’m really and truly afraid for you. You really care about this woman. You’ve got a baby on the way. This is your chance... What did you mean? Who pushed you away? When?”
He wanted to tell her again that he’d spoken out of turn. Spoken nonsense. But as he looked across at her, the little one he’d loved so fiercely and resented at times, too, he opened his mouth, in spite of himself.
“Have any of you ever thought about what my life was like before you were born?” Feeling like he was having a damned pity party, something he abhorred, he reached deep inside himself, knowing the ugly had to come out.
As though he really was in the fight for his life. And if he didn’t win, he was going to lose everything that would matter most.
Sadie must have thought his question was rhetorical. Or she just didn’t have an answer for him.
He didn’t see how answering his sister’s questions was going to beat anything, but he said, “I was an only child, Sadie, for the majority of my growing up. I was set in our ways, Mom, Dad and I. We were like the Three Musketeers. When Mom and Dad would go to political functions, or even a lot of times out to social dinners, they’d take me along. I was mature for my age, dressed in a suit and tie, treated like I was a vital part of things. People talked about me following in my father’s footsteps. Maybe being governor someday...”
Colton 911--Family Defender Page 21