Twisted

by HELEN HARDT

  I wouldn’t bring it up, but if she did, I’d support her in getting a test. To do a test, though, we’d need Mathias’s DNA. Getting that could be a problem.

  I looked at my phone for the time. Nearly lunch. I was meeting Talon and Joe at the main house to discuss the future lawmakers ring. I had a lot to tell them.

  * * *

  “Yeah, that’s what he said.” I took a bite of my juicy hamburger. “‘The devil is in the details.’”

  “It could mean nothing,” Talon said.

  “Or it could mean everything,” Joe contradicted. “It could be one of his obscure clues, like Melanie said.”

  “But how likely is it that Bryce’s uncle figured the whole thing out just by using a computer program to twist and realign the symbol? It could have come up as anything.” Talon sipped his iced tea.

  “True,” Joe said. “But there’s no denying that it’s a form of the female symbol. The other meanings may or may not be accurate.”

  “Mathias has the phoenix tattoo,” I interjected. “Another symbol of evil or the devil.”

  “Look,” Talon said, “I’ll be the last person to take Mathias’s side, but lots of people like the symbolism of the phoenix. Most people probably don’t even know that occultists associate it with the devil. Hell, Jade was going to get one herself. Thank God she didn’t.”

  “My mother was no help,” I said. “But that’s no surprise.”

  “And she won’t budge on Dad?”

  I shook my head. “Just says he’ll come to us when he’s ready to. Oh”—I swallowed—“she seemed to indicate that he was being held captive somewhere.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t take anything she says too seriously,” I said. “But that’s what she seemed to be getting at.”

  “We have to find him,” Joe said.

  “How? Larry won’t say anything,” Talon said. “And Wendy doesn’t even know what the truth is.”

  “She might know,” I said. “Ruby has this theory that there are reasons behind all of Wendy’s lies. That she’s very calculating.”

  “Larry did say she was a genius,” Joe said.

  “Larry’s a psycho,” Talon said. “Don’t forget that he took part in everything they did to me. He didn’t just stand idly by and watch.”

  “Tal, they’re all psychos. That’s a given.” Joe cleared his throat. “In fact, there’s something we really need to consider.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “We need to consider that Dad might be just as psychotic as the rest of these people.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Ruby

  After I’d gone through what happened with Mark and my father the previous evening for about the nineteenth time, I was finally let go.

  I was supposed to go back to the hotel, and I would, but Ryan had texted me that he’d be late getting into town because he was talking to his brothers. I could only imagine what about. So I decided to take advantage of some extra time and go visit my aunt and uncle, Erica and Rodney Cates. Erica was my father’s sister and had been in and out of mental hospitals her whole life. Their daughter, Gina, who had been a patient of Melanie’s, had supposedly committed suicide because she had never been able to deal with the sexual abuse by my father when she was younger.

  My father—a fucking model citizen.

  Melanie and I thought she had probably been murdered, most likely also by my father, who’d made it look like a suicide.

  I was surprised when Melanie told me my uncle had dropped the lawsuit against her. Did he have new information? That’s what I aimed to find out. I drove to the townhome they’d rented in the city, left my car, and knocked.

  I didn’t expect my uncle to answer, so I was pleasantly—or unpleasantly—surprised when he came to the door.

  “Detective,” he said.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  He opened the screen door. “What the hell? Come on in.”

  I entered and followed him into the living room.

  “Have a seat,” he said.

  I sat down on the couch.

  “So what do you want?” he asked, sitting in a chair across from me.

  “My friend Melanie told me you dropped the lawsuit against her.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m glad you did, but I want to know why.”

  He stood and paced nervously before sitting down again. “Do I really have to tell you? You of all people should know what kind of a man your father is.”

  “You’ve always known that, so I don’t buy it. Why did you drop the lawsuit? Do you have new information on Gina’s death?”

  “Wouldn’t the cops get that before I do?”

  “As far as the cops are concerned, it was a suicide. No one’s probing.”

  “You are.”

  “Yeah. I’m trying. But you know as well as I do that my father never leaves a trail. He’s been getting a little more nervous lately, though, now that Wade and Simpson are out of the picture.”

  Rodney sighed heavily. “I never would have hurt my little girl in a million years.”

  “Then why did you let my father hurt her?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Bullshit. You always knew what kind of man he was. How could you leave her alone with him? How?” I grasped the seat cushion to keep from standing and drawing my gun.

  “You don’t understand.”

  “What don’t I understand? That my father’s a maniac? Believe me, I get that. He would have raped me if I hadn’t gotten away. I’d probably be a slave to some drug lord right now if I hadn’t taken control of my own life when I was fifteen.”

  “So you know, then.”

  “That my father deals in human beings? Yeah. Your friend Wendy Madigan filled me in, though I had kind of figured it out on my own.”

  “None of us ever meant it to go this far.” He rubbed at his forehead. “I never meant for Erica or Gina to be involved in any of this. It’s been hell on them both.”

  “Since Erica is crazy and Gina’s dead, yeah, I agree. That’s hell for sure, especially when you could have prevented it.”

  “No one regrets that more than I do.”

  “You let this happen under your nose, Rodney. You don’t get the privilege of having regrets.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “I need to ask. Is Gina truly dead?”

  “Of course. Why would you even question that?”

  “Because I didn’t see the body. And it’s come to my attention lately that sometimes dead people aren’t actually dead.”

  “We found her dead in the car in the garage. We cremated her.”

  “So you actually found the body?”

  “No. Erica did.”

  “And you saw it later?”

  “No. The coroner had taken it away by then.”

  My mind whirled. “Let me get this straight. You never saw your daughter’s dead body?”

  “No. I can see her in my nightmares, though.”

  I nearly gagged. “Please spare me the sanctimonious sadness. You let my father rape her. She couldn’t have meant that much to you.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t understand.”

  “Believe me, I’m glad I don’t. But don’t change the subject. You’re telling me that you never saw Gina’s body? Only Erica did?”

  He nodded. “That’s right.”

  I stood this time and paced around the room, my rubber-soled shoes catching on the worn-out carpet. “Are you sure about that? That Erica saw the body? That it was actually Gina?”

  “Of course I am! Erica wouldn’t lie about something like that.”

  “Wouldn’t she? Or maybe she wouldn’t know the difference. Her mental state has never been stellar.”

  “She loved her child! We both did.”

  Again, I had to hold back a gag. As much as I wanted to argue the point that no one who let a child be raped loved her, I kept silent on that subject. “How much of a hold does my father have over
Erica?”

  “Erica knows what he is, but he’s still her brother.”

  “I’ve seen the death certificate, Rodney. It says you were the reporting party. How could you report it if you never even saw a body?”

  “Erica was beside herself. I had to be the one to talk to the authorities.”

  “You’re lying. If the coroner came before you got there, he’d put down Erica as the reporting party. Don’t try to put one over on me.”

  “I’m not. I swear.”

  He sounded sincere, but that meant nothing. These future lawmakers had obviously been bred to lie. Whether it was a lie or not really didn’t matter. My father had somehow gotten into secured databases before to change records. The Steels had uncovered those doings. Someone could have easily changed the reporting party on Gina’s death certificate to Rodney. And in some offbeat way, it made sense that my father would do that to protect his sister from any possible interrogation.

  “I need to talk to Erica.”

  He shook his head. “She doesn’t want to see anyone. The nurse is with her now.”

  “A live-in?”

  “No. We can’t afford that. Insurance pays for a nurse for four hours in the evening.”

  “I see. What if I ask the nurse if it’s okay if I speak to her?”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Why not?”

  He stood, shoving his hands into the pockets of his pants. “Because there’s no nurse. I lied. I figured if you thought there was a nurse, you’d leave her alone.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Rodney, I don’t want to harm her. I just want to talk to her. Gina was my cousin. And as much as I’d like to forget my bloodlines, this involves my father. She might have information that could help me find him.”

  “That’s just it. She doesn’t want you to find him.”

  “After what he did to Gina? How can that be?”

  “She’s afraid of him. We both are.”

  I widened my eyes. I hadn’t considered that, though I probably should have. My father had a warped perception of loyalty to family ties.

  “Please. I just want to talk to her. If she gets agitated, I’ll leave.”

  “I’m sorry. No.”

  Since the woman was crazy as a loon anyway, talking to her was probably futile. I decided not to push it. Maybe Rodney had other information.

  “Look, my father was in town last night. He came to the station. He had to have had help. Did he get it from you?”

  “No. He wouldn’t trust me to help him.”

  “Who would he trust? Wendy?”

  “Not likely, and she’s locked up in psych.”

  “I know. Who else?”

  “Simpson.”

  “Dead. Who else?”

  “Only one other, though they had a falling out a long time ago. And he’s also dead.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “Steel. Brad Steel.”

  * * *

  I sat in the hotel room, typing on my laptop. Ryan still hadn’t arrived, and I hadn’t gotten a text from him in a couple hours. I was starting to worry.

  I’d also been worrying about how I was going to tell him about the conversation with my uncle, specifically that, according to him, Brad Steel was one of the people my father trusted…or at least had in the past. That didn’t bode well for Ryan’s father.

  Rodney could very well be lying. I didn’t trust any of them as far as I could throw them.

  But what if he was telling the truth? What did that say about Ryan’s father and his involvement in this mess?

  I didn’t want to think about it. One thing was certain though. If Bradford Steel was alive, we needed to find him. Without him, there would be no closure for any of us.

  I jolted when the door handle turned. Relax, it’s only Ryan.

  I smiled as the door opened.

  Chapter Forty

  Ryan

  Ice froze in my veins.

  It wasn’t a new thought to me, but it was the first time any of us had voiced it.

  Our father might be as psychopathic as the rest of these people.

  Talon nodded. “Joe’s right.”

  “I know he is,” I said. “I just don’t want to think about having two biological parents that are so mentally deficient. What the hell kind of DNA is floating around in my cells? I don’t get it. What happens to people to make them this way? To do these kinds of things?”

  “Ry,” Joe said, “if we could identify what makes people do these kinds of things, we'd have fixed it by now.”

  “Dad had a good life,” I continued. “Great parents who loved him. A good work ethic. All the money in the goddamned world.” I shook my head. “I just don’t get it.”

  “Be glad you don’t get it,” Talon said. “That means you didn’t inherit whatever nutjob gene he was carrying. I’m thankful none of us did.”

  “But he was a model citizen,” I said. “Everyone knew and respected him and the Steel operation.”

  “Psychopaths often seem to have great lives to outsiders,” Joe said. “Look at Wendy. She was a respected newswoman. Tom Simpson was our mayor, for God’s sake, and Larry was the city attorney. We now know the secret lives all of them were leading.”

  I winced. “Are you saying that Dad had a secret life too?”

  Joe sighed. “I think that’s pretty clear at this point. I’ve talked to Melanie at length about this. Many psychopaths are never caught because they’re smart and they cover up their crimes. One thing about Dad, Tom, Larry, and Wendy. None of them are dummies.”

  I scraped my fingers through my hair. “I want to know my story. How I came to be.”

  “You know that,” Talon said.

  “No, I don’t. I don’t know for sure if Dad fucked Wendy.” Ruby’s odd theory hadn’t left my mind, and even though I’d discounted it at first, I’d been ruminating on it. “I wouldn’t put it past her to get her hands on his sperm and have herself artificially inseminated.”

  “Exactly how would she get her hands on his sperm? I doubt Dad ever deposited any specimens in a sperm bank. I know you don’t want to believe it, Ry, but Dad fucked Wendy.”

  “You’re right. I don’t want to believe it.”

  “None of us do,” Talon said. “We all thought more of Dad than that. But he did. You’re proof of that.”

  “Still, I want to look into it. I’m going to call all the sperm banks in Colorado—” I couldn’t help a raucous laugh. “Good God, what am I thinking? Dad would never donate sperm, and those records are probably sealed anyway.”

  “You’re thinking you deserve an explanation for what happened,” Joe said. “But it’s time for you to accept that there isn’t one—at least not one that makes sense to rational people.”

  “Hence us questioning Dad’s mental state,” Talon agreed.

  I couldn’t fault my brothers’ observations, but I just wasn’t ready to accept that I came from not one but two psychopaths. How the hell had all of this happened? Dad had loved Mom…er, Daphne. Yet my mother claimed he loved her and only her. “I don’t see any evidence that Dad loved Wendy as much as she claims,” I said.

  “I don’t either,” Joe said. “I wondered that from the beginning. If they were so in love, why didn’t she come into the picture after Mom died? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  I let out a sigh. “We may never get all the answers. None of these people can be trusted, including our own father.”

  Talon nodded. “I’ve had to accept that as well, even though I’d love to know why I had to endure the hell I endured. But the most important thing is to find Mathias and bring him to justice. We got two of them, and Wendy’s in psych lockup. Only one to go.”

  “Yeah, the most elusive one.” I regarded Talon—the brother I’d always considered my hero. I didn’t want to ask the next question, but I had to. “Tal…what do you remember about the day you were taken? What do you remember about how I got away?”

  Talon closed his eyes.
<
br />   “If you don’t want to talk about this, you don’t have to.”

  He opened his eyes. “It’s okay. But first, why do you want to know?”

  Wendy had already told Tal and Joe that I’d been spared because I was her son, and I didn’t want to confirm it. But I had no choice if I wanted Talon to answer my question. I quickly explained my conversation with Wendy.

  “I’m overwhelmed with guilt, Tal,” I said. “To think that I was spared because I’m that psycho’s son. It should have been me.”

  “Don’t say that,” Joe said.

  “I can’t help it. I have to know. Is that how it happened, Tal? Because I remember a guy holding me and you somehow hitting him in the groin. He let me go, and you yelled at me to run.”

  “Yes, that’s what I remember,” he said.

  “So it was you. You saved me. Wendy is lying.”

  “As much as I’d love to think it was all me,” Talon said, “the reality is that Simpson and Mathias could probably have easily handled two little boys. I was ten. I most likely didn’t do that much damage to his groin.”

  An anvil settled in my gut. Talon had admitted it. He probably wasn’t the reason I’d gotten away.

  “Don’t look so glum, Ry,” he said. “I’m glad you got away. I don’t hold any resentment toward you.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “Look. I can’t change what happened, and if I could, do you think for a minute I’d have you go through that hell instead of me? Hell, no. If I’d had a choice between myself and either of you, I’d have chosen me.”

  “Me too,” Joe said, sighing. “In a minute.”

  I studied my two brothers. They looked so much alike. Even though all three of us resembled our father, Tal and Joe were so similar in appearance. Now we knew why. Would I have gone in their places if I’d had the choice?

  The answer shot straight into my brain with no hesitation.

  Yes.

  I would have done anything to protect my brothers.

  “Me too,” I agreed.

  “That’s what brothers do,” Talon said.

  And I realized it didn’t really matter whether Talon was the reason I got away or not. He’d tried to help me get away, and he’d told me to run.