by HELEN HARDT
“Shayna, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Did someone threaten you?”
“I’m at a pay phone. I can’t talk long.”
“I understand. Can you answer my question?”
“I got a phone call.” Her voice shook. “A man said I shouldn’t talk to you. To anyone, really, but specifically to you.”
I wouldn’t bother asking her who the man was. She wouldn’t know, and I had my own suspicions. “Has there been any news on Lisa and Juliet?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s so terrible. Their parents are beside themselves. I’m so worried that they’re…dead.”
I had the same worry, and in a way, if they weren’t dead, their fate might be worse. “I know. I’m so sorry. I’m going to do all I can to find them.”
I hoped I hadn’t just made an empty promise. Juliet and Lisa had been taken from a resort in Jamaica, most likely to be sold into slavery. I had no ties to the Jamaican authorities and no way to get information. I only knew what my intuition and instinct told me.
My father was somehow involved in this.
“You don’t have to call me again if you don’t think it’s safe,” I told Shayna. “I understand.”
“No. I want to communicate with you. I had to block you on my cell phone. I think”—she cleared her throat—“my phone is tapped.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me. What kind of evidence do you have?”
“Just a…feeling.”
Shayna had just lost her two best friends, and her mind could be playing tricks on her. But I knew better than to tell her not to trust her intuition. “If you truly think someone is following you, tapping your phone, you need to call the police. Screw that. Go straight to the FBI. Call me from a pay phone if you need to until we figure out a better way to communicate. I’m here for you. And Shayna…”
“Yeah?”
“Take care of yourself. This isn’t your fault.”
“I know. I mean, yeah. I know.”
I knew exactly what she meant. It wasn’t her fault, but she still felt responsible. She hadn’t been able to talk her friends out of going with their kidnappers, just like I hadn’t been able to talk them out of going.
“Thanks, Ms. Lee.”
“Call me Ruby. I’ll be in touch. Somehow.”
“Okay. Bye.” She ended the call.
Shayna had reluctantly gone along with her two friends in Jamaica and then jumped off her Jet Ski and nearly drowned. She’d been rescued by some other locals who returned her safely to the resort.
My phone buzzed again.
“Detective Lee.”
“Don’t talk to that girl again.”
The same voice from two days ago. My father’s voice. I’d recognize its ooze anywhere. I knew my phone wasn’t tapped, which could mean only one thing. My father—or someone who worked for him—had witnessed Shayna’s call to me.
“Two calls in a few days?” I said. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” My father racked my nerves, but I was determined to play it cool with him. I had to if I was going to make him trip up.
“You heard me, Ruby.”
“Listen, Theo. I don’t hear from you in ages, and then all of a sudden you appear with your girlfriend a few months ago and want to see me. And now you call me. Twice. Seems like you’re getting a little nervous. Now that Simpson and Wade are out of the picture, are you starting to feel a little worried about getting caught yourself?”
“I’m not falling into any of your amateur traps, girl,” he said. “Just watch your step.”
The line went dead.
Nausea crept up my throat. For all my confident words, I was still a wreck when it came to my father. Damned if I would let him know that, though. I initiated a trace on the number he’d called from, knowing it was futile. But…procedure. Then, just in case, I ran a check on my own phone. I was right. It hadn’t been tapped.
My father was good. I’d give him that. I’d have brought him down a long time ago if he hadn’t been. But he was getting nervous. He’d just made an irreversible error.
He’d proved that my hunch was correct.
He was involved in the disappearance of Juliet and Lisa. Why else would he care if I talked to Shayna? The capture of Wade and suicide of Simpson were getting to him. He was in this alone now, and sooner or later, he’d trip up.
Now, more than ever, I was all in.
I made a quick call to the LAPD and filled them in, hoping they’d give Shayna some protection. Then, knowing Shayna wouldn’t, I called the FBI. They promised to look into the possibly illegal phone tapping, but I wasn’t optimistic. This was small potatoes to them.
I longed to call Ryan and tell him I’d talked to Shayna and to my father, to tell him about my theories. But no. I’d leave him alone for now. He was still recovering from a concussion, after all, and even more than that, his entire world had recently been turned upside down. I had to let him deal with everything. Plus, I had a buttload of work to get done. The PD was of course overworked and understaffed, and I was still catching up from my vacation time in Jamaica.
Come tonight, though, if I hadn’t heard from Ryan, I was driving to the ranch.
Chapter Eight
Ryan
“We’ve got nothing to talk about, Tal.”
My brother—half bro— Oh, hell.
Talon shook his head. “The hell we don’t. We’ve come this far. Two of those degenerates who raped me have been taken care of.”
I couldn’t help but notice how much easier the word “rape” left Talon’s lips. He was truly healing. I was so proud of him, of his strength. And I felt like a self-absorbed little shit. Talon had been through so much—way more than finding out his mother wasn’t who he thought she was. I closed my eyes as he continued.
“One’s behind bars and the other is dead and buried. Only one is at large. We’ve come so far, Ry, but damn it, none of it is worth shit if it costs me my little brother.”
There he sat, sipping iced tea—my strong, determined half brother.
And as long as I still considered him my half brother, I wasn’t ready to talk.
Was it even my parentage I was grieving? Or was it the loss of trust in my siblings? In my woman? If she even was my woman.
“You should have told me about the DNA test.”
He sighed and put his glass of tea back down on the table. “You’re right. Jade and Melanie warned us.”
“Why didn’t you listen to them?”
“Because we truly thought the test would be negative. I did, at least. Joe wasn’t so sure. But we figured if it did turn out to be negative, you’d never have to know and you wouldn’t be hurt by it at all. We could spare you the worry.”
“Spare me the worry? I’m a big boy. You think I’ve never dealt with worry? I’ve known worry since I was seven, the day you were taken.”
I regretted the words as soon as they’d left my mouth. Again, Talon had been through so much more than I ever had, and he’d been the one who spared me the same fate. I owed him everything. I owed him my life.
Then it dawned on me what was so horrible about this whole thing. I was no longer the full brother of my hero, and that cut into me like a hunting blade slicing my innards into hash.
Nothing could be done. It was what it was. I was the son of Bradford Steel and Wendy Madigan. I was half brother to my siblings. Nothing more, nothing less.
They’d made it clear that they still thought of me as their full brother. I didn’t doubt their sincerity. So why did I feel like less of a Steel?
I still had the right father to be a Steel. I just wasn’t a legitimate Steel.
Yet I was, in the eyes of the law. Daphne Steel’s name was on my birth certificate.
“It’s all so twisted, Tal.”
He nodded. “Agreed. But this doesn’t have to be a big deal, Ry.”
I widened my eyes, clenching my hands into fists. “Did you really just say that? I find out I have the DNA of a complete loony tune, and it’s not a big deal?”
“Easy for you to say.”
“My mother wasn’t exactly mentally fit either.”
He had the truth of that. Both he and Jonah had inherited Daphne Steel’s depression. I’d never been depressed a day in my life. “I understand that. I just don’t want to wake up one day and find I’ve lost my grip on reality.”
“You won’t.” He looked me straight in the eye. “I won’t let you. I promise.”
“You have no control over what my brain does. How can you make that promise?”
“How can I not? It’s the same promise you made to me countless times when I was heading into darkness. You and Joe were the ones who convinced me to get help. You never turned your back on me, Ry, and I promise I’ll never turn my back on you.”
And again, what my brother had been through stabbed me in the heart. “Talon, I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything. For what you went through.”
“It’s water under the bridge. I’m married to the love of my life, and I have the best therapist in the world as my sister-in-law. I’m doing okay. I also have the best little brother on the planet, and I don’t want to lose him. You were always there for me. Now it’s time for me to be here for you.”
“I just wish…”
“We all do, Ry. We all do. But it honestly doesn’t matter to Joe, Marj, and me. You’re still our brother, just as you always have been. The only person this matters to is you.”
“Of course it matters to me! It would matter to you if the situation were reversed.”
“Yes, it would. I can’t begin to know how you’re feeling. But I’m still your brother. So is Joe. And Marj is still your sister. We’re sorry that we violated your trust. We thought we were doing what was best. I wish we could take it back, but we can’t. I understand you won’t forgive us right away, but we’re here for you, no matter what.”
I can’t begin to know how you’re feeling.
Talon’s words lanced through me.
No, he couldn’t know how I was feeling, but I sure as hell couldn’t even imagine the hell he’d been through and how it made him feel.
I sighed. Time to grow up. Time to forgive. “I do forgive you, Tal. I’m just not sure I can forget so easily.”
“Bro, I get it. Forgetting is the hard part. It doesn’t happen. But day by day, remembering gets a little easier.”
He was talking about his abduction, the torture, the rapes. Again, I felt like a whiny-assed, snot-nosed kid. “You didn’t have to forgive them.”
“You’re right. And I didn’t. They don’t deserve my forgiveness.”
But my siblings did deserve mine. That’s what he wasn’t saying but what he meant. And he was right.
“No, they don’t. But you deserve mine. I already said it. I forgive you for not telling me about the DNA test.”
“And Joe and Marj?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“And Ruby?”
That was a horse of a different color. “I don’t know.”
“You’ve got a good thing going, Ry. She kept it from you for the same reasons we did. To try to keep you from being hurt.”
“I know. She’s told me the whole story.”
“I won’t tell you what to do, and I don’t expect you to forget all this overnight. But think about it. She’s good for you, and you’re good for her.”
“We’re both the progeny of nutcases. We at least have that in common.” I let out a chuckle. Hell, I could laugh or I could cry.
“We all are, bro,” Talon said. “This thing with Dad gets weirder by the minute. I still can’t wrap my head around him financing those three. I’ve been over and over it in my mind, and something doesn’t add up. He must have known who took me. He must have fucking let them.”
“Not according to Larry. He still claims you were never meant to be taken.”
“But according to Wendy…” Talon rubbed his chin.
“Which one is more mentally stable?” I laughed out loud. “Now that’s a million-dollar question. But seriously, as far as we’ve been able to tell, Larry has never lost his grip on reality. Wendy has.”
“True, but Larry also wasn’t always in the confidence of Simpson and Mathias. He was more of a yes man, a follower. I’m not sure he always knew what was going on.”
“Could be. He knew the truth about me, though. The one time I went to see him, he kept telling me I had my mother’s nose. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, since only Marj looks like Mom. Then, when I went to see Wendy, I saw it. I have her nose.”
“But you’d seen Wendy many times before when we were kids, when Dad died.”
“I know. But I wasn’t looking for anything then. None of us were.”
“True.”
“I can’t believe Dad—” Dad. My father. “Tal, do you think that call I got actually came from Dad?”
“No. I don’t. I think it’s Wendy playing with your head.”
I nodded. “You’re probably right. She’s already proven that she can get her hands on cell phones while she’s in psych lockup. But it wasn’t her voice.”
“So she got some male patient to make the call. She’s smart, cunning. That’s been apparent since we’ve known her.”
“She gave me up.”
“She did. For Dad. The one thing we know about Wendy is that she would have done anything for Dad. And I think that makes one thing abundantly clear.”
“What’s that?”
“Dad wanted you. He wanted you raised here, with us. And he paid Wendy handsomely to make sure that happened.”
“Yeah. Doesn’t make me feel any better, though.”
“Why not?”
“Because apparently Dad is just as screwed up as the rest of these people.” The grainy image of the future lawmakers club popped into my mind. I’d used a magnifying glass the last time I’d looked at it, and I’d noticed Dad and some of the others were wearing matching rings. I hadn’t been able to make out the design on the ring, though.
“Yeah, he might have been.” Talon stood. “Hey. Why don’t we head over to my place and take a look through that shit in the crawl space? You know, the boxes where Jade and Marj found Mom’s real birth certificate. Maybe we’ll find something. Like that ring.”
“Dad never wore a ring. He probably got rid of it a long time ago.”
“Then we’ll have Bryce search for his father’s. Come on. Maybe we’ll find something else. It can’t hurt.”
I wasn’t much in the mood to go riffling through my father’s old shit, but sitting here feeling sorry for myself wasn’t cutting it. Plus, I wanted to get a look at my father’s will, if possible. “Okay. Let’s go.”
* * *
The boxes Jade and Marjorie had gone through months earlier were still sitting in the room. They were full of old documents and yielded nothing new. Talon and I crept into the crawl space and lugged out several more old cartons.
Upon opening them, we found more old documents. Chattel mortgages, deeds of trust… Man, our father never threw anything away.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” I said.
“Well, I’m not stopping until we get through every fucking box,” Talon said.
I sighed. “All right. Let’s keep digging.” I opened another box and took out the first file folder.
And gasped.
“Tal!”
“What is it?”
I held up a document. “It’s a quitclaim deed signing over the Shane ranch to the Steel Family Trust.”
The Shane ranch was a small operation adjacent to ours. I’d had a relationship with the owners’ daughter, Anna Shane. They’d sold out quickly a couple years ago and moved to Hawaii. Though I’d attempted to get in touch with Anna a few times, she had never responded. We’d already ended our relationship amicably, so
I figured she just didn’t want to stay in touch.
When I first told Ruby about Anna and how she and her family had moved to Hawaii, Ruby had been skeptical about the whole thing. Now I wasn’t sure what to think.
“We bought the Shane ranch?” Talon said.
“It appears so. Why would they transfer it with a quitclaim deed? Seems someone should have insisted on a warranty deed.”
“Dad would have insisted on a warranty deed,” Talon said. “How could we not know about this?”
“Quitclaim deeds are more often used for gifts,” I said. “The Shanes wouldn’t have just given us the ranch.”
“No.”
“Our accountants must have paid them off. With big money. That’s why they went to Hawaii. I don’t get it. Why would we buy this? The Shane property wasn’t even worth that much.”
“I have no clue. I’m beginning to think…” He shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t know what to think.”
That was the truth. We had a team of accountants and financial advisors who handled our fortune, which we kept in the Steel Trust. My siblings and I didn’t bother ourselves too much with the day-to-day management of our money. We each took a sizeable draw and had more than enough to spend on whatever we wanted. Twice a year, we met with the team, and we’d never asked for an audit. This team had been highly respected and trusted by our father, so none of us had thought an audit necessary. But—
“The ranch was deeded to the Steel Family Trust. Not the Steel Trust. What the hell is the Steel Family Trust?”
Talon exhaled audibly. “I don’t have a fucking clue. Apparently Dad created a separate trust for…something.”
“We need to get an independent audit, Tal,” I said. “This is ridiculous.”
“Agreed. Our father obviously created a trust and never bothered telling any of us about it.”
Our father…
Who the hell was he?
I began digging through the file.
And my heart nearly stopped when I found a handwritten note.
Brad, do whatever you have to do to keep that trailer trash away from my son.
Chapter Nine