Abandoned

by Allison Brennan

  Max had never gone to an amusement park again.

  “Did I say something wrong?” Eve asked in a quiet voice.

  “No, of course not.”

  “What was she like?”

  What did she tell her? Max didn’t coddle people. She never had. And she wasn’t going to start now.

  “I’m still trying to understand her,” Max said.

  “I read your website. All about your show and your books and what you do. You wrote in your biography that your mom—our mom—left you with your grandparents when you were ten.”

  “The Thanksgiving before my tenth birthday.”

  “When’s your birthday?”

  “December thirty-first.” If her mother had told her the truth.

  “I’m January twelfth.”

  “We’re sixteen years and two weeks apart,” Max said.

  “She didn’t tell anyone about me? In your family?”

  “No. But you were a baby when she disappeared.”

  “I don’t know what happened—I don’t think my dad likes her very much.”

  “Martha was smart, she was worldly, she loved the finer things in life. Especially travel, art museums, good wine. She was manipulative and truly thought she was better than everyone else. No one is all bad or all good, except for maybe Beth Henderson,” Max said with a smile.

  “Everyone loves Molly’s mom.”

  “Martha was the polar opposite of Beth.”

  “Do you miss her?”

  “I did. Not anymore. She lied to me, Eve, about important things, and I’ve found it very difficult to muster any forgiveness.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t say that—you have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing, okay?”

  “Okay.” Eve sighed. It was almost dark out, the sun having gone down, but the lights of the house shined bright, and laughter from the back reminded Max that they weren’t really alone.

  “I don’t have any pictures of her,” Eve said suddenly.

  “I don’t, either.”

  “Really?” she was surprised. “None?”

  “All the pictures of my mother are from when she was younger. My grandmother had them. Martha never shied away from a camera, but back then we didn’t have cell phones that could take pictures.”

  “Why do you call her Martha?”

  “Because she doesn’t feel like my mother.” Max looked out into the dark, beyond the porch. Blocked out the sounds and tried to understand, but realized she might never truly understand Martha. She could, however, understand herself and how Martha’s choices—how her life—had created Max. “Martha Revere was wild. She wanted to have fun. She lived off her trust fund and traveled the world because she wanted to. The excitement? The thrill? I don’t know. She had me when she was twenty-one and then continued with her jet-setting ways. I didn’t go to school at all until I lived with my grandparents.”

  “Could she do that?”

  “Martha would say she could do anything she wanted.”

  “Was she pretty?”

  Max took out her phone. She had her mother’s senior picture saved. She’d only scanned it recently, to send to her private investigator to run against Jane Does who might have been found. Rogan had age-enhancing software as well, but Max didn’t show Eve those pictures.

  She turned her phone to Eve. “This was her senior portrait.”

  Eve took the phone and looked at it. What did she see? Someone like her? Eve looked far more like Martha than Max did. If Max didn’t have her grandmother’s eyes, she would have doubted she was even Martha’s daughter. But there were some similarities. Their cheekbones, the shape of their face, basic facial features. Eve had Max’s eyes—which were different than Martha’s—but her hair, her nose, her stature was all their mother.

  “She’s pretty. Really pretty.”

  “She was. You look like her. Except you have the Sterling eyes.”

  “Sterling?”

  “Our great-grandmother, and our grandmother, have the same dark blue eyes and the same shape—not quite almond, but not round.” Max brought up a picture of Eleanor. “Here’s Eleanor.”

  “You call her Eleanor?”

  “Half the time. My great-grandmother wanted everyone to call her Genie, no matter what.”

  Eve took a deep breath, handed Max her phone back. “Would you send me the pictures?”

  “Yes. And maybe someday, I can take you to California to meet everyone.”

  Eve looked panicked.

  “Yeah, if I were in your shoes, it wouldn’t sound like fun. And our family is … I can’t even put it into words.”

  “What if they hate me?”

  “Let me tell you one thing: Eleanor will never hate you. She doesn’t know how to show love and affection, but you are blood, and to her that means everything. She’s not getting any younger—she’ll be eighty in the fall. Maybe that would be a good time to come out, she’ll have a big birthday party. I love Eleanor, even though she is difficult and judgmental and stubborn and does things I’ll never understand. But she took me in, no questions asked, when Martha left me. She never made me feel unwanted. Now, the other family members—some will welcome you, some will shun you, some will doubt you. I’ll have a DNA test done to confirm, but there is no doubt in my mind and my heart that you are my sister. I promise you, Eve—I will protect you. I never thought I’d ever have a sister. I’m thirty-two—how would that even be possible? And now I do, and I hope you give me a chance to really get to know you.”

  Eve took her hand. The simple gesture brought tears to Max’s eyes. She blinked them back.

  Eve smiled. “I’d like that.”

  * * *

  Max found Ryan talking to a small group of young men about a case of his. She only caught the punch line.

  “And they say white-collar crimes are boring.”

  The others laughed, and Ryan was grinning. He was clearly in his element, and when he looked at Max he smiled in a way that had her thinking of him as something more than a FBI agent.

  “Well, my ride looks like she’s ready to leave.”

  “You’re not staying for cake?” Wyatt asked.

  Max needed to get away from people. The conversation with Eve had drained her, and she wasn’t in a social mood.

  “Happy birthday, Wyatt. Be good to your mom.”

  “She’s the best,” he said honestly.

  Ryan walked Max through the house, where they said their good-byes and thanks.

  Beth came over with a large disposable plastic bowl. “Here’s some pork for sandwiches tomorrow. Slice a bit of apple on top, and it’s really good.”

  Ryan took the bowl happily. “Thank you. Everything was delicious.”

  “Glad you could join us. Nice to know we have good folk in our local FBI. Are you from here?”

  “Iowa.”

  “I have an aunt in Madison County.”

  “Hop, skip, and a jump from Des Moines where I was raised.”

  Evidently that satisfied or impressed Beth.

  “Max, please come back before you leave town. You are welcome anytime.”

  “Thank you.” She didn’t know why she was suddenly on the verge of tears. She’d met a lot of people in her line of work, though most were victims or victims’ families. Why was she so weepy being around the down-to-earth Hendersons?

  It wasn’t that—it was Eve, and the complex, surprisingly deep emotions she had during their conversation. She felt raw and exposed.

  She and Ryan walked out to his car. Gabriel had been waiting for them at the bottom of the porch stairs. He glared at Ryan.

  “Gabriel, truce,” Max said.

  “Why did you bring the cops? What did you tell Eve?”

  “Ask Eve. I answered her questions.”

  “Like what?”

  “What you expect. Why did my mother abandon me? Who was she? What did she look like? Those questions.” She was trying not to get angry at Gabriel. “I didn’t tell her that I don’t think
you’re her father, if that’s what you think.”

  “Shut. Up.”

  “I think we need to talk, Gabriel—you, me, and Ryan.”

  Ryan cleared his throat.

  “I’m serious, Ryan,” she said. “We all have information, and we need to share it in order to find out what happened to Martha, what happened to Jimmy, and what happened to—” She stopped herself. She wasn’t going to betray Ryan’s confidence, not now.

  “What?” Gabriel demanded.

  Ryan said, “Martha Revere and Jimmy Truman are suspected of stealing a minimum of seven, and possibly up to nearly two dozen, works of art, many virtually priceless. This isn’t public—Jimmy’s name has been part of my investigation since I first talked to you ten years ago, but only because of information Max had was I able to make great inroads this week.”

  “Art?” Gabriel almost laughed. “My brother had no expertise in art. Theft, sure.”

  “Martha was the expert,” Max said. “Let’s talk tomorrow at my cottage. I think it would help everyone.”

  “Eve has a race tomorrow. I’ll think about it. But I need to know, what is going to happen now?”

  “I’m going to have a DNA test done, with Eve’s permission, to confirm that she is my sister. I know she is, but having the scientific evidence will help ensure that she receives her trust allowance.”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  “I know you don’t. But it’ll pay for her college, wherever she wants to go. And beyond that? Well, I just want to get to know her. Gabriel, you’ve done a great job with her. She’s beautiful, she’s healthy, she’s happy. I’m not going to get between you two. But you need to be honest with her.”

  “I am.”

  “No, you’re not. I didn’t tell her I think Jimmy is her father, and I won’t volunteer it. But if she asks me, I’m not going to lie.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing. This isn’t your secret to tell.”

  “Eve is my sister and I care about her. But right now we need to find out what happened to Martha and what happened to your brother.”

  “Let them both rot in hell,” Gabriel said through clenched teeth.

  “I wish it were that easy,” Max said. She looked at Ryan. Almost pleaded with him to give Gabriel something more.

  Ryan said, “Over the course of my investigation, which I took over from a retired agent, I believe that there is a third party involved. And he’s still out there.”

  “Who?”

  Ryan was clearly uncomfortable discussing it. “I don’t have a warrant, I don’t have proof, and I really don’t want this information getting out.”

  Gabriel stared at him. “Ten years ago you came here and asked me about my brother and wouldn’t give me shit, so I have a hard time trusting you.”

  “And I have a hard time trusting you, Truman, because you lied to me.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I don’t believe that you didn’t see your brother ten years ago. He was here for at least three days and stayed at the resort you co-own. So yeah, I think you knew. Maybe you didn’t help him, maybe you didn’t help him get away, but you knew he was here.”

  Gabriel didn’t say anything for a moment, then said, “I’m not going to admit to anything—but hypothetically, if the brother you hadn’t seen in years, who didn’t even show up for his mother’s funeral, stopped by and said he was taking the girl you raised as your own to family she didn’t know because she was an heiress and worth a fortune, then that brother disappeared into thin air—you can see how you might think you’d be a suspect.”

  Max was stunned. She hadn’t expected that revelation. Yeah, she could see how the police would think that he had something to do with his brother’s disappearance—though not for the reasons they might have initially thought. Fathers often did desperate things to protect their children. She suddenly had a new impression of Gabriel. Whether he killed Jimmy or not didn’t really factor into it, though she didn’t think he had. He didn’t seem to be violent. Angry, maybe, but if he killed Jimmy, Max didn’t think that he would have been able to live with himself.

  “What happened, Gabriel? Off the record, I won’t use it against you,” Ryan said. “Having this conversation could get me fired, especially if I’m wrong about you, but it also might help me find out what happened to him.”

  Gabriel took a deep breath, and in a low voice said, “It was Eve’s sixth birthday. January twelfth, a Friday, which is why I remember it so clearly. I didn’t know he was staying at the resort until he told me. Brian Cooper, my partner, knew I was angry with Jimmy for not coming to see our mom before she died, a few months earlier. I reached out to him, begged him to give her peace and he said he couldn’t. She was dying for three months and he couldn’t spare one day.”

  His fists were tight, as if he wanted to hit his brother.

  “So when he showed up, I was angry but also worried. He told me to tell Eve I wasn’t her father and that he was taking her to California because she was worth millions. I wanted to kill him—I shouldn’t admit that, except that I didn’t kill him. I couldn’t sleep or eat all weekend, waiting for him to return. He never did. Then you came asking questions and I decided to keep my mouth shut. I had motive—he was going to take my daughter. I don’t care that I’m not her biological father, she’s my daughter. I raised Eve since she was eight months old after she was abandoned by her mother. When I finally talked to Jimmy a year later, asked him what was going on and where Martha was, he said he thought she was dead because she screwed over the wrong person, and he was keeping a low profile. Told me he didn’t care about Eve, that she was better off with me and our mother. I agreed, and didn’t talk to him again until he showed up when Eve was six.”

  He looked from Max to Ryan. “Would you have done anything different?”

  “I wouldn’t have lied to a federal agent, but other than that, probably not,” Ryan said. “Jimmy was on our radar because he was looking to sell a painting that had been on our docket for years—stolen, but then silence. No one looking to buy or sell it. Then years later we get chatter about it. We tracked the buyer—a Russian—when he came into this country through Baltimore. It was extremely difficult to pinpoint the exchange, but we know that on January thirteenth—the day after you talked to your brother—the Russian left the country. We confirmed through intelligence sources that he has the painting in question. But we didn’t have this information until it was too late to stop him.”

  “And then what happened to Jimmy?” Gabriel asked. “If he sold the painting, he wouldn’t need Eve. Is that why he didn’t come back for her?”

  “Maybe. The painting was insured for ten million dollars but Truman received only seven hundred thousand cash. More than enough to disappear.”

  Max said, “Eve is worth substantially move. He may have wanted a larger cushion.”

  Ryan nodded. “We never found his body or the money. For a time, my team thought he took on a fake identity and left the country through New York, but I was always skeptical. We had no tangible proof, not even a security video—and I scoured tapes from airports and ports for weeks. I still have the recordings, look at them from time to time. Maybe he left through another airport or drove across the border. But, I think he’s dead.”

  “Good. Then he can’t hurt my daughter.”

  Ryan continued, “He had a storage locker with three other stolen paintings. I suspect he intended to sell off the others. But the storage locker went into default, and eventually through a series of events, the FBI was able to recover the three pieces. There are still three more out there, and we now think that Martha Revere may have had them.”

  “So Martha had the paintings … and where did she go? You think she’s dead.”

  “I know she’s dead, but I can’t prove it,” Max said.

  Ryan continued. “We’re not quite sure how Martha and Jimmy hooked up with this man, Phillip Colter, but it’s clear that they must have stolen several of his paintings
. I use ‘his paintings’ lightly, because he’s been on our radar as an art thief for nineteen years. We just don’t have enough evidence to get a warrant to authenticate the art in his homes. It’s circumstantial evidence based on his travel and when art was stolen. Colter is originally from Northampton—older than your brother, you may not have known him—and it could be that he figured out that Jimmy was behind the thefts. Remembered him, researched him, I don’t know. He doesn’t have a history of violence, but then again, maybe no one has stolen from him before. There are still missing paintings, and if Colter thinks you, or your daughter, or Max might have a clue as to where they are, that puts you all in danger.”

  Gabriel looked from Ryan to Max with a shocked and worried expression. “All because you came here.”

  “My mother’s car was found here.”

  “You should never have come, Maxine. If Eve is in danger, it’s all on you.”

  He walked away.

  And Max stood there, stunned.

  Gabriel Truman was right.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Max and Ryan stopped at the resort bar for a drink. Max needed to unwind—there was too much going on inside, and she wasn’t used to so much emotion in her life. Eve, Gabriel, she could handle the emotions of other people. But her own? They were making her jumpy.

  “Don’t let Gabriel get to you,” Ryan said after they sat in silence for several minutes after their drinks arrived.

  “He’s right.”

  “No, he’s a father and he’s worried, and said what he thought would get you to back away.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I wished you’d told me about Eve earlier.”

  “I found out yesterday. When you came I was so focused on the art and what Martha and Jimmy were up to—I didn’t think about it. But yes, I should have mentioned it.”

  “How did the conversation with Eve go?”

  “Good. I don’t know what I expected, to be honest, but Eve is grounded. She was interested in me, in Martha, even a bit in the family. And relieved, I think.”

  “Relieved?”

  “She never knew Martha—she thought her mother abandoned her. Knowing that she was dead and that’s why she didn’t return was a relief.”