by Ryan Michele
He said nothing, just stared at me furiously. “You kissed her. I saw it.”
An audible sigh came from Rylynn. She was just as tired as I was hearing about this. “That was a mistake. One that won’t happen again.”
“Don’t expect me to be here,” he challenged, and I smiled.
“Your ass is here next week as planned. During your time here, one negative word to or about Rylynn will have you doing more shit around here.”
His head shook like he couldn’t believe it. “You can’t take my car.”
“Watch me.” I’d put a fucking boot on it if I had to.
“Now, I’m drivin’ your ass home and droppin’ you off. Your mother isn’t wakin’ up to you not home just to be a dick. Your car is staying parked here. You can walk your ass to school or ride the bus. Your choice.”
After that, we loaded up in my Tahoe after getting the keys to Greer’s car from him. That thing was too small for my legs. Rylynn just smiled as we left. Who knew what was going through that head of hers.
The drive was quiet, until it was not.
“I can’t believe you’re doin’ this, Dad,” Greer started. “We could all be together, and you’re throwin’ it away.”
One hand on the steering wheel and my temper in check, I responded, “I’m not throwin’ anything away, Greer. Your mom had so many chances to be with me. She didn’t want that. Then, out of nowhere, she decides that she wants this life, but she’s too late. Even if Rylynn wasn’t here with me, I wouldn’t be with your mother.”
“Bullshit,” he coughed out.
“No, it’s not. Sophia is a good woman. A great mother. But she’s not for me, Greer. We’ve shielded you from things because that was how Sophia wanted it, and I gave in. It seems it was the wrong choice, and now we need to work out those consequences.”
The air in the cab was tense. It was all coming off of Greer.
“I just don’t…”
“Don’t what?”
“You need to be together with Mom. She needs you.”
Letting out a heavy sigh, I responded, “No, she doesn’t need me, Greer. She needs to find herself a good man.”
“Like Simon.”
“No. He’s bad news.” It made me happy that I never had to worry about him going to their doorstep again.
Greer was quiet the rest of the car ride, but before I let him out he needed to hear me. “Son, love you. I’ll always love you. But it’s time for you to man up and look around you. If you did, you’d see everything differently.”
“Doubtful.”
I parked the Tahoe knowing that when he talked to his mother, I had no control over what she said to him. I could only show him when he came to see us. While him being there would put a strain on all of us, it was needed. Desperately.
“You need to get your head screwed on straight, Greer. You have until you’re due at my house.”
He grabbed the handle of the door, not saying a word, opening it and jumping down. He slammed it for good measure, and I knew this wasn’t the last I’d heard of this.
Time to go home, sleep, and wake up to a new day only to start it all over again.
10
Rylynn
Sitting at the kitchen table, my laptop wasn’t doing what it needed to do. Or I wasn’t pushing the right buttons, but I still blamed it on the machine. Everyone knew technology sucked, and when you needed it, it always failed. It was completely natural to get pissed at it.
At least that was what I was telling myself. I hadn’t thrown the machine yet, so there was still time.
The asshole really hid the money his wife was supposed to get well. He either had it done, or had some serious skills when it came to the computer. Everything I brought up had been a dead end. There were three options. Withdrawal, move, or invest. Neither of these three were showing up.
The damn money didn’t vanish.
Going through the information his wife sent me, I started going line by line and checking it out. It was a tedious process, but with having nothing, it was the only way to go.
My phone rang. I picked it up seeing, Crow calling.
I answered, “Hello?”
“Hey, Pixie.” Damn, I loved when he called me that. He didn’t hesitate in launching in. “We have business that got bumped up. Can you go pick up Van from school?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks. Goldi was gonna do it, but she got held up.”
This made me curious. Goldi appeared to be the matriarch of the club, but she was more. There was something there I wasn’t seeing.
“No problem.”
It made me all the more curious and something I needed to ask Crow about. Puzzling.
“I’ll be home late.”
This uncertainty washed over me. I hated it. But it was there nonetheless. While he had shown me he wasn’t into Sophia, there was that bit of mistrust there that I couldn’t escape. It made my chest tight wondering what he was doing and who he’d be with. I wanted to believe him. Believe he was with his brothers and not with Sophia. Internally the struggle went on, pushing and pulling me in so many directions.
It wasn’t healthy. Had I made a huge mistake coming here? Fuck.
“Okay.”
“You’re not okay with this,” he said as a statement of fact rather than asking me. This man could read me over the phone. That was a scary thought.
While I knew what to say, I didn’t want to. My insecurities were mine, and I needed to work through them. On the other hand, if we didn’t have good communication between us, this was never going to work.
“It’s the doubt, Crow. It eats at me.”
He didn’t pause when he said, “We’ll talk about this tonight. So we’re all straight.”
This warmed me somewhere deep. Him being open to talking about this feeling and maybe being able to squash it to smithereens. I wanted it gone. I wanted us to move on from it, and I didn’t want it to strain our lives together. I wanted the war inside my head to be settled so these thoughts wouldn’t bombard me at every turn. I wanted us to have time to be us and this cloud to burst into flames.
“Okay.”
“It’ll all work out, Pixie.” There was a smile in his voice, and I loved hearing that. It was hopeful, and that was something we were both holding on to right now.
“Yeah.”
“Gotta run. I’ll see ya later.”
“Bye.”
He disconnected, and I tossed the phone down to the table with a clatter, running my hands over my face and through my hair. When would this rawness go away? I’d thought I’d let it, but seeing that woman again stirred up all kinds of feelings. Hate. Mistrust. Unknown.
Shaking it off, I went back to the computer. “Rodney, where’d you hide the money?”
Pulling up some old credit card statements, I found a place. Stagnet. Where the hell was Stagnet?
Starting to do searches, my phone rang breaking me from it. The display said Naddy calling. “Hey, Charlie,” I answered, still eyeing the computer and reading at the same time. What could I say, multi-tasking wasn’t hard. It was a necessity in life. For work, it helped out tremendously.
“Girl.” Her serious tone had me alert immediately as I felt my back straighten and eyes drift from the computer, putting my full attention on Naddy. “Got a call from a Dr. Phil about Elizabeth.”
My heart pounded as I closed my laptop hoping this would be a break on finding the girl. “Yeah.”
“He wants to talk to you. Says it’s important, but wouldn’t tell me what it was about.”
So many questions rolled through my head, spinning their webs of different possibilities. It was one thing a puzzle seeker had problems with. One stood out though, at the top of the heap. “How did he know we were looking?”
“He said he found us from her parents.”
That was plausible considering how much her parents wanted to find Elizabeth. They probably told everyone they could possibly think of in order to find their little
girl. Him calling me about it was strange. “Give me his number.” Grabbing a pen and paper, I scribbled down the numbers quickly. “Thanks, Naddy.”
“I don’t have a good feeling about this.” That was written all over her tone, but there was no way to comfort that because I understood it.
“Neither do I. I’ll let you know what I find out.” We said our goodbyes and disconnected. Making calls and doing searches had been my job for a long time. This one though, felt different. It felt like this ominous air surrounded it. Yeah, my gut wasn’t feeling too happy either.
Dialing his number, a man answered on the second ring. Eager. Also a flag.
“Hi, I’m looking for Dr. Phil. Is he available?”
The voice on the other end was deep and low. It sounded of age and experience. “Is this Rylynn?” he asked, not beating around the bush. Obviously sitting by his phone waiting for my call.
“Yep. You wanted to speak with me?”
He cleared his throat. “Heard you were trying to find Elizabeth.”
Since he knew this statement to be fact, or we wouldn’t be talking, I waited a moment. When he didn’t say anything, I prompted, “Yeah…” trying for him to get a move on with it.
After a long sigh, he said, “Can you let it lie?”
Holy shit. He was asking me to give up the search of a child? What kind of quack job was this? No one would want a missing kid never to be found and reunited with the family who loved them. This entire situation was off, and I didn’t like it. Not knowing the man, I hated casting judgment, but he wasn’t on top of my list to like either.
“No,” I answered. “I won’t.”
He let out another heavy sigh, then cleared his throat like the words pained him. “Please. Just let it go.”
“Why? Give me a damn good reason,” I barked through the line, getting up and pacing the kitchen into the living room and back again, needing the movement to calm the burning rage inside of me. The man was hiding something large enough to ask me to forget this and let it pass. He didn’t know me, but this had the opposite effect on me than the one he wanted. It made the puzzle more difficult, therefore more of a challenge. Not only that, this was a human life we were talking about. It also made me think that the doctor knew Elizabeth was still alive. That gave me more hope.
“I can’t.” I heard the pain in those words like each were a razor blade slicing through him.
“You called me, remember. Now, you’re asking me to give up on a kid. You either tell me why or this was a waste of both of our time.” He was now pissing me off and making the burn to find Elizabeth and Penny stronger.
“Doctor-patient confidentiality. If I could tell you, I would.” So she was alive, because if she wasn’t that confidentiality wouldn’t be in play. He was giving more to me than he obviously wanted to. This had my blood boiling, and if he were in front of me instead of on the phone, it would take every bit of control inside me not to punch his lights out.
“So you decided to call and light a bigger fire under my ass to find this girl?” Each passing second while on the phone with this man my hands tingled, blood roared, and the intensity kept growing.
“No. Just need you to leave Elizabeth alone,” he repeated himself.
“So she’s alive?” I flat out asked, starting the grilling portion of the conversation. He wanted to talk, let’s talk.
He didn’t say anything.
“She’s safe with Penny?” I continued, getting nothing back once again besides quiet air, but he hadn’t hung up so I kept going.
“So they planned this. Disappearing?”
Again nothing.
“You do realize I will find the answers to this.”
“Don’t,” he said then hung up.
“Fuck!” I yelled to the empty room, making that determination burn bright. While what he gave me was mostly shit, he inadvertently confirmed Elizabeth was alive, and he didn’t want her to be found. The question to me was why? Why leave this alone?
This made my brain scan all the information in her files, and something hit me.
Dialing the phone, I waited to hear the connect and a greeting. “This is Rylynn.”
“Did you find something?” Elizabeth’s father asked into the line, hope blooming brightly. Hearing him crash and burn wasn’t on top of my list of fun things to do.
“Not yet. Do you have another computer in your home besides Elizabeth’s?” I asked, remembering only Elizabeth’s laptop was in the police records.
“Yes. We have two more. One in my office and one in the kitchen.”
I grabbed my laptop, opening it and minimizing all the information from before. Those two computers weren’t in the mounds of shit her folks gave me at the beginning of all this. If this was planned, as the doc led me to believe, Elizabeth was obviously smart enough to make herself a ghost. She’d also be smart enough not to use her laptop knowing it would be looked through. But there was a chance that she’d use another in the house not thinking anyone would look at it.
“Why are you asking this?” her father questioned.
“Need to go. I’ll let you know if I find anything.” I disconnected the line, my fingers going to town, pulling up each of the computers and hacking my way inside. Their security was shit. Only one firewall. They needed so much more than that. Their loss, my gain.
Digging into the first computer, judging from the direction of the camera, it was the kitchen one. Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins were standing by the kitchen island in deep conversation. Mr. Jenkins had his phone in his hand shaking it around. No doubt wondering what my call was about. The Mrs. just shook her head like she didn’t know what to think.
They really needed to cover their cameras. Hell. everyone needed to cover their damn computer cameras when they weren’t using it. Stupid. That small little circle at the top of their machines could capture anything at any time. The things you said in your home that you didn’t want anyone to know—at that moment someone could be tapping in and listening.
It was the same for those little smart home gadgets you talked to and they responded. Those damn things were on all the time. There have been cases of murders being solved because police were able to tap into those and listen to what happened.
Don’t even get me started on having your location on, on your phone. That’s a damn huge bull’s eye on your head.
Moving through the files, I found that Mrs. Jenkins had a serious online shopping addiction, but hell, they had the money for it so why the hell not. It didn’t appear as if she was hiding it, considering the purchases were through her bank account, credit card, and PayPal all linked to accounts her husband had access to. Nothing appeared amiss there.
Going onto their computer history, my eyes scanned.
This took a long damn time considering I went back years since it hadn’t ever been cleaned. The shopping hadn’t changed one bit, so that was Mrs. Jenkins’ norm.
There were a ton of searches, but nothing stood out.
Moving to the other computer, Mr. Jenkins’ office was nice with mahogany wood and large pictures on the walls. One of a golf scene, the other looked like water. He had books on a shelf and a window to this left.
Mr. Jenkins had an addiction to porn. He didn’t download it, but the cookies were there like little crumbs leading me to PornHub, YouPorn, and many more. Another thing they really needed to do was clear these damn cookies. It would be in their best interests to clean their computers well.
After sifting through tons of shit, something stood out in a small section of the trash folder. No one had emptied it leading me through more searches.
A town called Crownsville popped up several times about two months before Elizabeth disappeared.
While I couldn’t be sure this wasn’t Mr. Jenkins’ search, it was worth checking out. Too bad I couldn’t pull up a live feed of Elizabeth on the computer looking things up. That would make my job so much easier.
Pulling up the map, my heart stopped. Crownsville was right outsid
e of Rebellion. “What the fuck?”
Looking at the time, I yelled once again, “Shit!” It was time to pick up Van. My first day doing it, and I was going to be late. Great. Nothing better than fucking up right off the bat. Closing everything down and letting the information learned roll around in my head, I jumped in the Jeep and took off.
I rushed to the school with only a few minutes to spare. There was a huge horseshoe, and cars were lined up back to back coming out on to the road. “Note to self, get here earlier.”
By the time, I made it up to the front Van was nowhere in sight. Looking through the crowds of kids, nowhere did I see her beautiful pale blonde hair bobbing around.
I parked the Jeep and hopped out. Finding a short rounded woman with light brown hair and glasses, and a name badge dangling from a lanyard around her neck, I stopped next to her. “Excuse me. I’m here to pick up Savannah Blaine.” I continued to scan the crowd, hoping she would just pop out. My gut felt it though. Something was off. It was that feeling of ants crawling on your skin and you wanted to itch them off.
The woman smiled at me then went through her clipboard, her finger going up and down the sheets of paper as she turned them. Each second that ticked by I wanted to grab the damn thing out of her hands and look for myself. Did she have to be the slowest scanner of all time at this moment? “Her mother came and got her today.”
My world tilted and not in a good way. It was as if part of my heart was sliced off and ground into mush. While only knowing Van a short time, I liked the kid a lot. In that, I would protect that little girl with every ounce of power inside of me. She may be Crow’s, but she was mine too.
And that woman had her.
A woman I didn’t trust one bit. Who was high as a kite and yet her daughter looked up to her like she hung the moon and stars. People going for their next fix didn’t care about anything but that next fix. They’d do anything, say anything, be anything just to get that high once again.
This could be horrible.
If she hurt a hair on Van’s head in any way, shape, or form, I’d kill her my damn self.