Twisted

by HELEN HARDT

  “She was your mother, Ryan, in every way that matters. It’s okay to think of her as your mother.”

  He took a long gulp of the water. “Our father never let us see her body.”

  “He was probably trying to protect you.”

  “I’m not sure any of us ever forgave him for that. That was another knife that had twisted in my gut when he died. Or rather, when he faked his death. I always felt guilty about not forgiving him. And now?” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I find out that woman wasn’t even my mother, and that my father is most likely not dead.”

  I sat quietly beside him, not saying anything. I didn’t know what to say anyway. I just wanted him to know I was there. That he could depend on me.

  He took another sip of water. “You’ll never believe this either. According to Wendy, she was the brains of the whole operation.”

  This didn’t surprise me. I had already come up with that theory on my own. A wisp of gratitude swept through me. Now I didn’t have to voice it to Ryan.

  “She came around a lot, even before my mother died. She was based in Denver as a journalist for the National News Network. She was smart, a good reporter, as far as any of us knew. She won awards for her work, and all this time she’s been a complete sociopath.”

  “Intelligent criminals know how to cover their tracks.” I should know.

  “I never thought much about her coming around. Now I know why she did.”

  “To see you? To see your father?” I asked.

  “Both, according to her. And here’s the most twisted thing of all. Do you want to know why she orchestrated Talon’s abduction?”

  My stomach spiraled into knots. I did want to know. Needed to know. “Why?”

  “Because my mother was pregnant with Marjorie. According to Wendy, my father had promised never to have sex with my mother again, and in her warped mind, he had cheated on her with his own wife.”

  He took what was left in the glass of water and splashed it over his face. “Can you believe that? She had a ten-year-old boy tortured and raped because my father had sex with his wife.”

  My heart dropped to my stomach. My father was just as much to blame for what happened to Talon when he was taken. After all, he actually helped do the deed. But in an obscure way, I was actually relieved that he hadn’t been the catalyst for what that poor boy had endured.

  “My brother was taken, tortured, raped…” He sniffled, and another tear rolled down his cheek.

  I ached to brush it away for him, but I didn’t want to draw attention to it. He wouldn’t want that.

  “On the orders of the woman who is my biological mother. And those same orders were to let me go. All these years, Talon was my hero. He had saved me. Let me get away. And now?” He stood and threw the empty glass against the wall. Shards scattered over the floor. “All these years later, my own mother is the hero? My own mother is the reason I got away? And my own fucking mother is the reason my brother went through hell?” He turned to me, his eyes tortured. “How the fuck am I supposed to live with that?”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Ryan

  Ruby didn’t answer me. I didn’t expect her to. Though the question wasn’t rhetorical, there was no answer she could’ve given me that would’ve been satisfactory anyway. She was living with her own demons.

  She picked up her purse that she had dropped to the floor when she had first come into the bedroom and walked to the phone on the desk. “I’m just going to call housekeeping to get this cleaned up.”

  That was Ruby. Always cleaning up. Always taking care of things. That’s what cops did.

  A few seconds later, she said, “I’m going to get dressed. We’re going to go down to the bar and have a drink. To give them a chance to pick up and vacuum, okay?”

  I simply nodded.

  She gathered all of her clothes and went to the bathroom. I sat back down on the bed.

  My brothers and I had always wondered all these years, before we had even told Marjorie the truth, why our father had swept this whole thing under the rug. Why we were never allowed to deal with the shitstorm of that summer. Talon should have been in therapy long ago, along with the rest of us. If we had been able to deal with it, if we had been able to…

  Christ. Daphne Steel might still be alive today. Joe, Talon, and Marj had been denied their mother.

  I was angry. But no longer at my brothers and sister. No longer with Ruby. I was fucking enraged with my mother. My biological mother.

  Oddly, though, someone else bore even more of my anger.

  My father. Bradford Steel.

  He had never let our family heal. I still didn’t know what the real relationship was between Wendy and my father. I might never know. And I couldn’t bring myself to be angry with my father for having sex with his own wife and giving us our little sister. But I was angry. Despite the fact that I wouldn’t exist if he hadn’t, I was damned angry at him for fucking Wendy when he was married to Daphne. I was even angrier about him not letting us heal from Talon’s ordeal. I had watched both my brothers struggle all those years after the abduction. My father could’ve helped them avoid all of that.

  Instead, he’d left us to flounder. Oh, he’d taken care of the family after his wife had taken her life, raised us to understand hard work and the value of money. But he had never let us heal. Then, seven years ago, he left us again, that time physically.

  And then something occurred to me. He’d “died” seven years ago, the year Marj had turned eighteen. A legal adult. He’d waited until all of his children were legal adults. There had to be something there.

  * * *

  Ruby and I sat in a booth in the hotel bar, a bottle of Steel Cabernet between us.

  “I can’t believe you just paid for a bottle of your own wine,” she said.

  “What can I say? It was the best on the wine list.”

  She took a sip from her goblet. “I wish I had some words of wisdom for you, Ryan.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s far from okay. But what you need to remember is that no one holds you responsible for what happened to Talon.”

  “I know that.” It didn’t change how I felt in my mind, though.

  “I went to see Melanie,” she said.

  I widened my eyes. “You mean for therapy?”

  She nodded. “It helped. Helped a lot, actually. I’m going to try to see her once a week, as my schedule allows. We talked about a lot of stuff, and one of the things was how I’ve always felt responsible for my father’s crimes. It’s why I became a cop, and why I’ve tried to atone for what he’s done by being the best cop I can be. I haven’t been able to put him away yet, but I’ve put away a lot of other shitheads.”

  “You’re not responsible for his actions.”

  She smiled. “No, I’m not. And neither are you responsible for your mother’s actions.”

  I couldn’t help a slight chuckle. I’d walked right into that one. “I know that.”

  “I know you do. I also know that doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “You know what scares the hell out of me? Having to tell my brothers all of this.”

  “Why should that scare you? They love you just as much as they ever did.”

  “How can I tell Talon? How can I tell him that my mother had him tortured to punish our father for getting his mother pregnant? That I was let go simply because I was hers?”

  “Doesn’t he already know? Seems to me you told me that Wendy had pretty much told Joe and Talon as much.”

  “True. But that was before…”

  “Before what?”

  “Well, first of all, before they knew the truth about my parentage. And second of all, when we all thought Wendy was just a nutty liar.”

  “Wendy is a nutty liar.”

  “I’m not so certain of that anymore.”

  Ruby looked down at her wineglass for a minute.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I’ve been doing some
thinking about Wendy,” she said. “I have a theory that I haven’t had a chance to discuss with you yet. Part of it you already figured out yourself, that Wendy has been in more of a position of control than any of us ever thought. But there’s something else I’ve been considering.”

  “And?”

  “Don’t get me wrong. Wendy is a completely twisted psychopath. And yes, she’s a liar. But I’ve dealt with many psychos in my day, Ryan, and something about Wendy stands out. The woman is smart. Not just run-of-the-mill smart, but genius smart. When she lies, I’m pretty sure she lies on purpose. For a reason. She may play the crazy liar at times, but I think she always knows what she’s doing.”

  I shook my head. “Honestly, baby, nothing would surprise me about the woman.”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to discuss this with you before now.”

  “It’s okay. We’ve all been busy. By the way, were you able to get a trace on the number of the text that warned you not to go home last night?”

  “Unfortunately, no. It appears to have come from a disposable phone, which has, of course, disappeared into thin air.”

  “At least that means it probably wasn’t my mother,” I said.

  “Not necessarily. Your mother seems to know how to get what she wants. She could have easily gotten an orderly to smuggle in a disposable phone for her.”

  “Shit.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “Just when I thought there might be something she isn’t responsible for.”

  “The police were at my apartment today. Nothing seemed amiss. It could have been a hoax.”

  “I don’t care. I want you here, where you’re safe.”

  “I understand. One thing I’ve tried to pride myself on over the years is not doing stupid things.” She let out a nervous laugh. “You know, like driving a hundred and fifty miles an hour and then answering the phone.”

  “Touché,” I said. “But I was—”

  “It’s okay,” she interrupted. “I honestly get where you were coming from. Do you think I haven’t considered taking off? Just leaving all this shit behind? Believe me. I’ve been tempted more times than I can tell you.”

  I forced out a laugh. “When I first became attracted to you, I never dreamed we’d have so much in common.”

  “You mean DNA we wish we could escape?” She shook her head. “Neither did I.”

  “You still think your father had something to do with Juliet and Lisa?”

  She nodded. “Why else would he have called me and told me not to talk to Shayna? His involvement might be ancillary, but he’s in it somehow. And now that Wendy pretty much validated that they were in human trafficking, it makes even more sense.”

  I guffawed.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Just the fact that you used the phrase ‘makes sense.’ As if any of this could actually make sense.”

  She took a sip of her wine and smiled. “True enough. You deal with something for so long, and it begins to seem normal. I see it all the time in my work. Cops have to fight against that.”

  I finished my wine and poured a glass. “We have to find your father, Ruby. And we have to find my father too.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Ruby

  “Well, we both know where to start,” I said.

  Ryan nodded, sipping his wine. “Yeah. My mother.”

  “Or…” My mind whizzed rapidly. “Since your mother hasn’t been forthcoming, and we never know whether she’s telling the truth…”

  “But you said yourself that she always knows what she’s saying, whether it’s the truth or a lie.”

  “True, but that doesn’t really help us because we don’t always know the reasons behind why she says what she says. We can try Larry Wade again, but honestly, I’m not sure he’s been privy to some of the stuff that my father, Simpson, and Wendy have cooked up.”

  “I’ve gotten that same feeling,” Ryan said, “and Talon always maintained that Larry was more of a follower of the other two. Oh my God!”

  “What?” I asked.

  “I can’t believe I forgot about this. Remember the last time we saw Larry, and you came back in, saying you wanted to talk to me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I had been asking Larry about the symbol on Simpson’s ring. On all of their rings. Of course, he refused to talk about it, but then he said something interesting. He said, ‘I understand why you would want to know. The devil is in the details. Just ask your mother.’”

  I dropped my mouth open. “So maybe Bryce’s uncle was right. Maybe it was a symbol for evil.”

  “Melanie always said that Larry talks in riddles. It seems weird that he would use that cliché while we were talking about the ring unless he meant something.”

  I sighed. “I wish I could say any of this was surprising, but I’ve known for a long time just how evil my father is.”

  “But my father,” Ryan said. “My father also wore that ring.”

  “We don’t know for sure that he even understood what the symbol meant.”

  He lowered his brows. “My father would have known. Or he would’ve asked.”

  “You don’t know that, Ryan. And even if he did ask, they might have lied to him.”

  “A couple of months ago, baby, I might’ve bought that. But no longer. My father was clearly into this, maybe not as deeply as the others, but he was. Hell, he gave them money.”

  “Did you have any success uncovering his will?” I asked.

  “No. We haven’t found it yet. Joe is going to contact the attorney who read it to us. But if my father has paid him off, it may not do any good.”

  I took his hand across the table. “We will figure this out. We’ve come this far. I promise you I won’t quit until my father is behind bars where he deserves to be.”

  He finished the second glass of wine. “I know you won’t quit. I know my brothers won’t either. But I…” He sighed. “I don’t know how much more I can take of this.”

  He looked sad and forlorn. I understood why. He had come to me tonight, needing me, and I had given him what he needed. It clearly hadn’t been enough. Even I knew enough to know that sex couldn’t fix someone’s problems. It could relieve a little bit of stress, but that was about it. I rubbed the top of his hand. “The glass is probably cleaned up by now. Let’s go to the room and go to bed. Things will be brighter in the morning.”

  He attempted a smile but failed. “I love you, Ruby. I do. But I don’t know if things will ever be bright again.”

  * * *

  After a busy day at the office, I was getting ready to head back to the hotel that Ryan had booked for the week. My cell phone buzzed.

  “Detective Lee.”

  “It’s me. Shayna.”

  I looked around the office. Most of the staff and officers had taken off for the evening. I was alone and could speak freely. “Shayna. Are you all right?”

  “I still think I’m being followed sometimes. It could be my imagination.”

  “It could be.” Though I didn’t believe it. But I didn’t want to alarm her.

  “I got another text.” She choked back a sob. “It just said ‘help.’”

  “Did it come from a number?”

  “No. It just said private.”

  “Shayna, this is the second time this has happened. Please, I need your permission to access your phone records. We can figure out what’s going on.”

  “I’m…scared.”

  “These messages came to your cell phone number, correct? The one you blocked me on?”

  “Yes.”

  Good. I had that number. “Look. If you think this came from Juliet and Lisa, we owe it to them to look into it.”

  “I know. I know. I’m just so scared. So frightened.”

  “I understand. Haven’t the police been out to talk to you? I’ve called them.”

  “They have, but I don’t know much, and I’m—”

  The line went dead.

  Shit. “Shayna? Shayna?”


  No use. I quickly traced the number. It was a pay phone at a gas station in East LA. I called the LAPD—again—and told them what had happened. I didn’t expect them to do anything, but I had to try.

  Then my phone buzzed again.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Ryan

  Again I sat in the place I most didn’t want to be. The visitor’s room at psych lockup, facing my mother. I didn’t expect to be any more successful getting answers, but I had to try.

  “Where’s my father?”

  “I’ve already told you. I don’t know.”

  “Mother, you promised to be truthful with me, so let me be truthful with you. I don’t believe that you don’t know where my father is.”

  “I don’t. He calls me when he needs to.”

  “Then the hospital should have a record of his calls coming in.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Or does he call you on a cell phone?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “You’re not supposed to have access to cell phones here, but clearly you’ve been able to find one when you needed.”

  “But how could I find one to get an incoming call?”

  “Exactly.” Of course, I wouldn’t put anything past her. She might have a contraband cell phone hidden somewhere here. “So I’m sure you have no problem if I ask the hospital to see the record of incoming and outgoing phone calls.”

  “I certainly wouldn’t have any problem with you doing that, darling. But those are private records. You won’t be able to get access.” She smiled eerily.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Of course I would be able to. Money talked.

  “I do miss him, your father.”

  So do I. The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t say them. I had spent many years missing my father. Now, I didn’t even know him anymore.