Her Detective's Secret Intent

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Yes, he did.” And then, pinning Miranda with a steely look, Chantel asked, “Isn’t he?”

  She shook her head, then collapsed, and this time it was Chantel who screamed for help.

  Chapter 26

  “Sam!” Chantel’s voice could be heard through most of the detective squad room. Tad, who’d been standing with Detective Sam Larson, locked eyes with the older man for a second before they both ran for the door of the women’s restroom, bursting inside without hesitation.

  They were all trained in basic CPR.

  “Get Ethan,” she said. “Bring him here.” She was talking to Sam, but Tad was going, too. If something had happened to that boy...

  “Tad, stay here.” Chantel’s command was just that. A command. Not a request. Or open to options.

  With a glance at the departing back of the detective, Tad forced himself to stand down. He had to admit he was influenced by Sam’s history; he’d just discovered the detective was married to a woman he’d promised to keep safe, only to have her first husband, a noted psychiatrist, find her and beat her almost to death.

  “Jeff Patrick is not her abuser,” Chantel said, biting the words out with such anger, Tad didn’t question her.

  “Who is?” The chief was wrong. The chief, who was never wrong.

  “Her father.” Chantel’s words came in the same instant as recognition.

  He went cold. Could feel the blood draining from his skin. And nausea forming. He’d led Miranda’s abuser to her doorstep.

  His worst nightmare coming true.

  He looked at her, huddled there, refusing to look back at him. He’d done this.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said, throwing the door open. He pushed into the small bathroom next door, barely made it to the toilet and puked his guts out.

  * * *

  Miranda didn’t need Chantel’s urging to get up off the floor. To wash her face, pull herself together. Knowing that Ethan was on his way was enough to propel her outside herself and into doing whatever had to be done.

  Within minutes of Sam’s leaving, Miranda was sitting in a kitchen with Chantel, drinking orange juice.

  “I’ve asked Tad to come in and tell us what he knows,” the detective said. “I need you to listen, to corroborate, or not, the things he says. He’s our only lead to your father’s thinking and we don’t have time to waste.”

  “I can just go, get another identity, start over. It worked before, it can work again.”

  “Did it?” Chantel asked, staring her down.

  For six years, it had.

  “Trust us, Miranda. I realize it’s a tall order, but you’ve been in Santa Raquel four years now. You know Lila and everyone at the Stand. You know me. You definitely know Max. And we know you. We don’t know Brian O’Connor. He has no power here.”

  She wanted to believe that. So badly.

  “Give us a chance to get him. To put him away. Give us a chance to give you your life back. A real life. One where you don’t have to keep wads of money and emergency bags in your car. One where your son can make friends he can keep for a lifetime if he wants.”

  She wanted help. God, how she wanted help. She’d been alone for so long. Eleven years old was far too young to take the weight of the world on your shoulders.

  But she was her mother’s daughter. Had to make her proud. She wouldn’t be a victim. Wouldn’t let him win.

  “Sometimes it takes the most strength to stay and fight.” Chantel’s words hit her at her core. She’d been fighting for so many years.

  But she’d never stood up to her father. She’d only run. To college. And Jeff. To Miranda Blake.

  She’d made the right choices then.

  Maybe, now, the right choice was different.

  “Fine,” she said.

  * * *

  At Chantel’s urging Tad walked in, sat down. Miranda wouldn’t look at him.

  The three of them were at a round table with four chairs. Two vending machines lined the wall directly across from him, behind Miranda and Chantel. One held packaged junk food. Chips. Pretzels. Candy. The other, microwave meal choices. Soup. Pasta. The microwave was on the counter behind him. He’d seen it when he came in.

  The refrigerator, next to the vending machines, had smudges on the handle. And the Formica floor beneath the table was cracked.

  Apologies were choking him in their need to escape. But this wasn’t his show. He waited for permission to speak.

  “Miranda, tell me about the man you know your father to be.”

  Surprised that Chantel had turned to Miranda, Tad looked at her, too. He’d been under the impression that he was only going to be allowed to speak about his part in what could turn out to be criminal charges against him.

  If someone wanted to try to prove that he’d knowingly aided a man in his attempt to abduct his grandson. Or assault his daughter.

  As far as Tad was aware, Brian O’Connor had never had charges filed against him. He’d never even been exposed as an abuser. But he knew that his daughter had fled his abuse. Tad knew none of the details, but he’d put that much together.

  “He’s insidious.” The way Miranda said the word suggested she’d thought it many times before. Like it was just something she knew. “All the great stuff he did, the lives he saved, the volunteering, the caring for the community, it was all real. He didn’t fake a bit of it. He can see a burning building falling down at his feet and instinctively know how to save one more person before it collapses completely. And he’s got nerves of steel that let him act on what he knows.”

  Tad nodded. And then stopped himself. He didn’t want to admire one damned thing about the man. Was still sick at his own culpability. Still trying to make sense of it all.

  Miranda had been lying to protect herself. But the chief had been lying, too. Tad...well, he’d been nothing more than an effing pawn—all puffed up with his own ability to save and protect.

  “Your greatest challenge is going to be not to underestimate him,” Miranda said, looking straight at Chantel. “Don’t think you’re his equal. Assume he’ll be outthinking you.” Her sentences were clear. Each one a lecture in itself.

  “If you need proof, look at what he just pulled off. He takes a strong, powerful detective like Tad Newberry who, it seems, isn’t from Michigan, after all, and makes him into a patsy—apparently with very little effort.”

  He felt the dig clear to his soul. Took it like the man he wanted to believe he was.

  “But don’t stop there,” she continued, still with little inflection. A professor, teaching a class. “He knows me, knows enough about Tad, knows human nature. You can’t give him any information. He builds profiles of people from what he learns and intuits about them. He allowed Tad to get close to me in whatever way he could, even if that meant having sex with me.”

  “I did not, absolutely not, have any kind of personal relationship with you at your father’s behest.” He hadn’t been asked to speak yet, but there was no keeping that one down.

  With an eyebrow raised, Chantel glanced at him. The retribution he expected for his outburst didn’t come, though. She looked back at Miranda without saying a word.

  Miranda did, though. Glaring at him, she asked, “Did he let you know that it would be okay with him if you did?”

  His answer was his silence. And with sickness spreading through him, he thought of all the information he’d fed the man over the months he’d been in town. All the little tidbits that would reveal his daughter’s current state.

  “My father knew I’d fall for Tad,” she said, turning back to Chantel. “The plan would be to let me fall in love, to think I’d finally found happiness, only to let me know that it was all his idea, his plan. That he’d been the one to pick my man for me. To show me that he’s in control of my life even now.”

  Tad wanted to blurt out a denia
l. To prove she was wrong.

  He couldn’t do that when his instincts were telling him she was right. He’d been played. Thoroughly and completely played.

  “Girls usually go for men like their daddies. They don’t mean to, don’t necessarily even want to, but it’s human nature. And human nature is his biggest tool. He knows when and how to cash in on it. Probably helps him save lives.”

  Because every side had its opposite. Good versus bad. And bad versus good, as well.

  “He wants me to know I can’t run. I can’t hide. And if I’m ever going to be really happy, I need him to watch out for me. His end goal is that I’ll feel I have to come home, so I’ll bring my son to him. That’s who he really wants. Ethan.”

  She shuddered, and Tad could only imagine what she was remembering. But he was fully confident that whatever it was had to do with the reason she’d run. Whatever final catalyst had prompted her to never let her father near Ethan.

  “He truly believes in his own power over others and in his ability to control the world,” she said. “In North Carolina, he pretty much is that powerful. He’s revered, and it sticks because he’s earned the reverence. Everything his admirers know him to be is true. But it’s created a man who thinks he’s invincible. And that’s your biggest challenge. He’ll do things you wouldn’t expect anyone to try. And he’ll succeed.”

  “Not this time,” Tad said. He was going to see the man stopped if he had to give his own life up to do it. If that meant shooting him in cold blood and spending the rest of his life in prison, so be it.

  * * *

  Miranda couldn’t remember when she’d ever felt so tired. Bone-deep, just “lie down and go to sleep” exhausted. Being unconscious for an indeterminate amount of time sounded good.

  But she knew she wasn’t going to be sleeping anytime soon.

  The minute they got Ethan to her, she’d look for her chance to get away. She’d find a “vacation” spot for them until she could figure out the next move. She just needed him to arrive safely.

  Talking about her father had reminded her all over again that Chantel, the High Risk Team, Santa Raquel—they couldn’t save her from him. Legally, he’d done nothing wrong. Finding her—there was nothing preventing him from doing so. No restraining order. No charges to file. There’d never been a single police report. The broken bones over the years had all been readily explained away as accidents. A lot of kids had bumps and bruises along the way. For the most part, the chief had made certain that hers didn’t show.

  Except the summer she’d kissed a boy on her father’s front porch. Then, he’d just suggested she stay inside until she healed. And she had.

  Even if he was in town now, had been watching her, which she was certain of now that she knew Tad had turned him on to her, they couldn’t arrest him. He’d broken no laws.

  He was simply letting her know that she belonged to him. That he could always get to her. That he wanted her back, out of possessiveness, control, vindictiveness. But mostly because he wanted Ethan. The son he’d never had. The son she should have been. The wonder was that it had taken six years...

  Because he wanted her to think he’d changed? Had given her a cooling-off time? She might never know the reason, but she was certain he had one. And that it had to do with her doing what he wanted.

  The whole thing made her sick to her stomach. Ethan should be there any minute. She’d rest better with her hands on his bony little shoulders.

  “How certain are you that O’Connor’s in town?” Chantel asked Tad.

  “I’m not. I’ve had a colleague of mine, my partner, Gail Winton, checking up on him.” Tad’s words brought her gaze to him. He’d had doubts?

  And how close was he to this Gail?

  Were they lovers?

  She wanted to ask, to distract herself, but knew she’d come across sounding like a crazy woman.

  And it didn’t matter, she told herself firmly. Tad Newberry wasn’t who she’d thought he was. He’d used her...

  Pain sliced through her and she had to stop letting it in.

  “She said he’s recently been diagnosed with terminal lung disease, asbestos-induced, probably due to fighting fires in older buildings...”

  Her father was dying?

  She stared at Tad. Was that true? Could it really be true? Dare she believe there’d be an end to this madness? Or was it him, up to something else to get her to come home? Playing on her sympathy?

  “He’s on vacation, according to his staff,” Tad was saying, and fear pounded through Miranda.

  “Gail suspects he’s actually in for treatment.”

  He wasn’t. He was in Santa Raquel. Following her. Biding his time. She could feel it.

  She couldn’t look at Tad. And couldn’t help looking at him. He knew her father.

  Chantel asked for Gail’s contact information and Tad gave it to her. “Let me get this to Sam,” the detective said, going to the door to call out to her coworker, who came over immediately.

  She obviously wasn’t leaving Miranda alone with Tad. Before Miranda could process how she felt about that, the thought of being uncomfortable alone with the man she’d trusted with her life, she heard her son’s voice.

  “Is this where they keep the bad guys?” He sounded curious, maybe a little excited, not at all worried, and her heart leaped. Tears sprang to her eyes, but she blinked them quickly away.

  As she watched the doorway, needing him to appear, she could hear a male voice, couldn’t make out the words, and then, closer, and louder, Ethan again. “Can I see where they keep the bad guys?”

  Standing, she forced herself to remain calm, and when Ethan came into the room, didn’t rush to him, didn’t grab him into her arms.

  “Hi, Mom. Hi, Tad. They said I get to tour the police station today, while you do your meeting that you do here every week. Kinda like school outta school.”

  They were making sure her son wasn’t scared, turning his trip to the station into an adventure. She felt on the brink of tears again, but managed a smile. “That’s right. And then you and I, we’ll go out to lunch, okay?”

  She had to give him normalcy.

  “Can I have a hamburger and french fries?”

  “I guess.”

  “Can Tad come, too?”

  “I’ve got some work to do, buddy, but we’ll meet up later, okay?” Tad preempted her response, as though he didn’t trust her not to diss him to her son. She wouldn’t. Not for his sake, but for Ethan’s.

  The detective who’d brought her son in, Sam, had a couple of quiet words with Chantel while Miranda was speaking with Ethan, and then he led the little boy away.

  “There’s a room with toys and a television down the next hall. After they show Ethan around a bit, they’ll sit with him in there until we’re done.”

  They were done there, as far as Miranda was concerned.

  “We’ve put a call in to Lila Mantle,” Chantel was saying, naming the managing director of The Lemonade Stand. “And to Sara Edwin, too. They’ll be ready for you and Ethan...”

  She wasn’t going to The Lemonade Stand. “There’s no point,” she said. “We’d only be prolonging the inevitable. My father’s done nothing actionable at this point. There’s no proof of any abuse. It’s my word against his—in a North Carolina court because that’s where the crimes took place—and his reputation is golden. If I go to the Stand, we’d only be playing a waiting game with him.”

  It wasn’t as though her abuser had recently abused her. They weren’t getting her out of his home, and they weren’t on a manhunt to arrest him.

  “But you’d be safe, both of you,” Tad spoke up. Miranda wanted to ask why he was still there. He’d given them the information he had.

  This was no longer his business.

  And she no longer trusted him.

  “Excuse me, Chantel?”
The door had opened and a uniformed officer stood there. “There’s someone here, asking to speak with the chief.”

  Frowning, Chantel shook her head. “I don’t think he’s in...”

  “I think you’ll want to see this visitor,” the young female officer in the doorway said. “He says his name is Chief Brian O’Connor, from North Carolina. He showed his credentials and said he’s here to talk to someone about his daughter.”

  Tad’s hand covered Miranda’s on top of the table.

  She pulled herself free.

  Chapter 27

  Chantel offered to speak to Miranda’s father alone. Miranda shook her head. She couldn’t afford to play the victim. She had a son to save. Facing her opponent was the first step in doing that. She had to know exactly what she was up against. He’d taught her that.

  “Do you want Tad to join us?” Chantel asked.

  She didn’t. Wouldn’t even look in his direction. But... “Yes,” she said. Because she had to see for herself that the two men knew each other. Wanted to hear what they had to say to each other. Masochistic, in a way, and yet she needed the information to take with her into the future. She was going to have to make peace with all of this.

  Including the fact that she’d given her trust, her body, even her closed-off heart, to a man in her father’s employ.

  Tad followed them down the hall, slightly behind Miranda. She felt his hand slide to the small of her back and sidestepped. She wouldn’t fall for him again.

  Wouldn’t be wooed by the false sense of peace and future he’d brought to her world.

  She couldn’t afford to be weak.

  Pausing outside a closed door to a room with no visible windows, Chantel turned to her. “You ready?”

  Of course not. She was about to see her father—a man she’d promised herself she’d never have to see again.