They all went back into the kitchen, where Liam and John had been working on Lydia’s case. John shut the door and then rounded on Teddy.
“What has happened to my daughter, Teddy?”
The younger man blanched but stood his ground. “She needs help, Mr. Hunter. I got to her before anything happened, but we were lucky this time.”
“What are you talking about?”
Teddy proceeded to tell John about Diana’s recent behavior. When he got to the part about the two who had tried to attack his daughter, John went to pick up his gun.
“John, you can’t go around shooting frat boys,” Liam said.
“Watch me,” he snapped.
“You are a detective. A representative of the law. You do not go around shooting kids, no matter how much they deserve it.”
“It’s okay, Mr. Hunter, they won’t do it again, I made sure of it,” Teddy said.
John paused for a moment and looked at the boy standing in front of him. “Thank you, Teddy.” His tone was grave because he knew if it hadn’t been for Teddy, the unthinkable could have happened.
“There’s no need to thank me, sir. She’s like my sister. I only wish I could have done more.”
John nodded. “Do you know who they are?”
Teddy shook his head. “No, sir. I don’t really hang out with those guys. They’re all grade A idiots. But don’t you worry, I’ll recognize them if I see them again.”
“Good. I’ll speak to the local precinct. They’ll need to handle this because if these kids tried to do this to Diana, there’s a good chance they’ve already done it to other girls.”
“I think so too, sir.”
“Why don’t you go up and get some rest? Your room is where it’s always been,” John said with a small smile.
“Thank you, sir,” Teddy replied.
“No, thank you, Teddy. Thank you for protecting my little girl.”
Teddy nodded and left.
“You need to tell her, John.”
John sighed. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. What if it makes things worse?”
“Can things get worse? The girl thinks her mother abandoned her. I’m pretty sure finding out that her mother didn’t kill herself will make her feel better than she does right now,” Liam retorted indignantly.
John sighed. His partner had a point. “I guess you’re right. I’m going up to check on her.”
He walked up the stairs slowly. Liam was right. He needed to tell Diana that Lydia had not committed suicide but been murdered instead. But things would get tricky when he did this. He knew that. He knew his daughter. She’d probably want to get involved. It would be dangerous, because even though they’d found out little so far, they had discovered enough to realize that there was a good chance someone powerful was involved. And though he wanted to protect her, he knew it would be much more perilous to let Diana keep believing her mother had killed herself. She’d end up imploding.
He quietly opened the door to her room and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. She was sleeping on her side. She looked so innocent. His little girl. He walked in quietly and sat down on the edge of the bed, watching her sleep. A tear formed in the corner of his eye. If it hadn’t been for Teddy, he could have lost her. He’d been so focused on the case that he hadn’t taken the time to find out how his daughter was doing. And he’d nearly lost her too.
“My little girl,” he whispered.
She fidgeted, and he froze. He didn’t want to wake her up. She needed to sleep after her ordeal. However, he saw her eyes open slowly. She turned over and saw him. “Daddy?”
“Hi, baby,” he whispered softly.
“Daddy!” she cried and launched herself into his arms.
“It’s okay, darling. I’ve got you.”
She sniffled into his chest and looked up at him. “Teddy?”
He nodded. “Teddy brought you home.”
“He saved me, Dad.”
“I know, honey. You go back to sleep. We have some things we need to talk about in the morning.”
She nodded and lay back down. “I’m happy Teddy brought me home,” she whispered as her eyes closed.
“So am I. You have no idea how much.”
She smiled and within moments, she was asleep. He sighed. Tomorrow was going to be a difficult day.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Diana was sitting at the kitchen island across from her father, holding a cup of coffee. He looked relaxed but she knew this was the calm before the storm. She was in for a massive lecture that she knew she deserved. She’d been reckless, and she’d landed herself in a lot of trouble. If it hadn’t been for Teddy… a shiver ran through her at the thought of what could have happened.
“You’ll be pressing charges.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
Diana nodded. “Yes.” And she knew she would. Not for herself as much as for any other girl who had been, or would be, subject to unwanted attention from those guys. Yes, she would be pressing charges.
“Good.” He paused for a moment. “Diana, I need to tell you something.”
She looked up at him. “What is it, Dad?”
“It’s about your mother.”
Immediately, she shut down. She did not want to have a conversation about the woman who had abandoned her and her father. The woman who had taken the coward’s way out. “I’m not interested,” she said as she rose to her feet.
“Sit down,” her father snapped. She froze. He’d never used that tone of voice with her. “I’ve had it with you acting like a spoiled child.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I have something important to tell you about your mother, and I don’t care whether you want to hear it or not. You will sit down, shut up, and listen.”
“I don’t want to talk about her,” Diana stated adamantly.
“I said, I don’t care. Sit down,” her father snapped.
Diana sat, even though she wanted to be anywhere else but where she was. But she knew well enough that she’d pushed her father too far and she wouldn’t be getting out of it.
“Fine,” she snapped. “What do you want to tell me about Lydia?”
She practically spat her mother’s name out. She couldn’t bring herself to refer to that woman as her mother.
Obviously, by the way her father’s face darkened, that had been a mistake. “You will never again refer to your mother like that or I swear, even if I’ve never laid a hand on you, I will take you over my knee and spank you.”
Diana glared at her father. “I will refer to her anyway I like. She was supposed to be my mother, but she chose the easy way out. She was a coward, and she left me, so I can call her whatever I want.”
“You are an ungrateful, spoiled little brat,” her father growled. “Your mother loved you more than her own life, and this is how you repay her? By insulting her? How dare you? Did you ever stop to think, for even a moment, about her? Or are you so damned selfish that you’ve made this all about you? Let me tell you something, Diana, the world does not revolve around you, no matter how brilliant you are. And no matter what you think your mother did, you don’t have the right to judge her or to treat her with anything less than complete dignity.”
Diana’s eyes had widened. Her father had never spoken to her like this. She’d always been daddy’s little girl.
“She left us both, Dad. How can you forgive her?”
John glared at her. “First of all, your mother did not kill herself. Secondly, even if she had, I wouldn’t be walking around with my head stuck up my own backside like you are doing. Instead, I’d have enough respect for her to realize the choice she made was the only one she felt she could make at the time. And I damn well wouldn’t be pretending she didn’t exist!”
Diana’s mind had come to a screeching halt. “What did you say?” she asked, her voice trembling.
John sighed, a hand on his head clutching his hair. “Your mother didn’t kill herself. S
he was murdered.”
“No,” Diana gasped. “You’re lying,” she said as she covered her ears with her hands, her eyes closing tightly. “I don’t want to hear another word.”
“I thought you’d be happy to know your mother didn’t commit suicide.”
Diana opened her eyes, tears shining in them. “I’ve been blaming her all this time. The things I’ve said and thought about her. If she didn’t kill herself, I’ve been hating her all this time for nothing.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m a monster,” she whispered.
John sighed and shook his head. He put his hands on her arms and forced her to look at him. “You aren’t a monster, baby. You were just lost for a bit there.”
Diana sniffled. “Dad, I cursed her very existence. I wished she hadn’t been my mother.”
He got up and circled the island. Hugging her from behind, he whispered, “Mom loved you very much. She’d understand.”
She shook her head. “How could she? Even I don’t understand.” It was as if a spotlight had suddenly exploded into life, shining straight on all she’d said, thought and done over the past few months. And it wasn’t a pretty picture. She’d been wallowing in self-pity without a thought for anyone or anything else, including her mother’s memory. No matter what her father said, she was a monster.
“We all deal with pain in our own way,” he said softly.
Diana nodded. Then it really hit her. “Mom didn’t kill herself?”
“No, honey, she didn’t. She was murdered, and it was made to look like a suicide.”
A shiver ran through her. She hunched her shoulders and tears spilled down her cheeks. “Why would anyone want to kill mom?”
“I don’t know, baby, but I’m doing my best to find out.”
“How long?” she asked.
“How long what?”
“How long have you known mom didn’t kill herself?”
“I suspected from the beginning, but I’ve been certain for the past three months.”
“Three months?” Diana asked softly. And then she erupted. She wrenched herself out of her father’s arms and turned on him. “You’ve known for three months, and you didn’t say anything?” she shouted. “How could you? You knew how I felt. You knew I hated her because I thought she’d killed herself. And you let me keep on hating her when you knew she hadn’t done it!”
“I didn’t have any proof,” he shouted back. “I didn’t want to raise your hopes for nothing. What if I’m wrong? What if I’m so desperate to think that she didn’t leave us of her own accord that I’m seeing stuff that isn’t there? I couldn’t do that to you.”
Diana’s anger fizzled out at the pain on her father’s face. “But you’re sure now?”
He nodded. “Pretty sure. Liam and I have been investigating the case in our spare time. It’s not as if we can get it reopened,” he grumbled.
“Why not?” Diana asked.
John sat back down and started explaining the situation to her about the Deputy Chief Constable’s office and their involvement in what he and Liam believed to be a cover-up.
“We can’t go into the precinct shouting conspiracy because we’ll end up suspended, and we’ll lose all access to some very valuable resources. So, we’ve been investigating on the sly, but it’s been slow going. Doesn’t help that there’s nothing basically to investigate since there’s no body, no crime scene, and we have no idea who would want her dead.”
He choked on the tail-end of his sentence. Sometimes, he simply couldn’t separate Lydia from the case, like now with his daughter sitting across from him, staring at him intently. He swallowed back the lump in his throat.
“I could help,” Diana said softly.
John shook his head. “No, it’s too dangerous. We have no idea who’s involved and who we can trust. I don’t want you poking around and getting into trouble.”
“Come on, Dad. I can help. I promise not to go poking around anything, but maybe if you tell me what you have so far, I might find something you’ve missed.”
John paused for a moment. “Okay, but only as long as you promise me you won’t go off on your own. Remember, I’m the one with the experience. And the gun.”
Diana nodded quickly. This was more than she had been expecting. Her mind was already working furiously on certain changes she’d be making once she got back to school, but they weren’t anything her father had to be made aware of just yet.
One hour later, everyone had gathered in the dining room. Diana had convinced her father that Teddy’s hacking skills could prove useful. He had loved Lydia too, so he deserved to be in on the investigation she argued. Though reticent, her father had finally agreed.
“Okay, Liam, tell them what we know so far.”
Liam began to explain how John had first become convinced that Lydia hadn’t killed herself, thanks to the message she’d managed to get to him with her “suicide” note. He then explained about the cremation order from the Deputy Chief Constable’s office.
“Now, we’ve been doing some investigating on the quiet, but as you can imagine, we can’t go around asking questions at the Deputy Chief Constable’s office. They’ll kick us out so fast, we won’t know what hit us.”
“And if we do get found out, whoever is involved will know we’re onto them, and they’ll go to ground. We’ll never find them.”
“Do we know who was in charge of filling out orders that day?” Diana asked.
Her father shook his head. “There’s no way for us to find out.”
“Are they recorded digitally, or are they paper forms?” Teddy asked.
Liam shrugged. “I’m really not sure, but there’s a good chance a digital record is kept. Since they’ve rolled out their new computer system, it’s become pretty much mandatory to complete digital forms in all the precincts.”
Teddy surged to his feet. “I’ll be right back,” he said as he rushed out of the room.
Moments later, he walked back into the dining room with his laptop. “You do know that hacking is a felony, right?” Liam asked the younger man.
Teddy looked up at him. “Who said anything about hacking?” he asked with an innocent look.
“Right,” Liam replied, giving him a do-you-think-I’m-stupid look.
“Look, you guys have said yourselves you’ve been spinning your wheels for months. I can hack into the records and maybe find out who issued the order. It might give you a little more to go on. Or,” he paused, “You could just keep doing what you’ve been doing.”
John nodded. “He’s right, Liam. Go for it, Teddy. Just make sure they can’t trace it back to us.”
“Please. This isn’t my first rodeo.”
John gave him a look, and Teddy sobered. “Nope, I’ve never, ever hacked into a government agency before. I’ve never hacked into anything. In fact, I don’t hack. This will be my first time.”
John nodded with a grunt. Diana had been quiet the whole time. She’d been thinking about everything she’d heard, wondering what they weren’t seeing. And then it hit her.
“What about the therapist?” she asked.
Everyone was paying attention to what Teddy was doing but John turned to look at her curiously. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well, have you looked into the therapist? I mean he’s the one who said Mom was depressed and suicidal, when she obviously wasn’t.”
John’s eyes widened. “You’re right,” he whispered. “Someone must have gotten to him, somehow. Liam, we need to find out who the therapist is and have a little chat with him.”
Diana said, “Maybe just find out who he is? If you start talking to him, he might alert whoever’s involved, and that’s the last thing we need. Teddy can dig into his past, and maybe we can find something out that way. If we can’t, then you can go talk to him.”
John grinned. “My daughter is definitely a genius.”
CHAPTER NINE
IT HAD BEEN two months since Diana had discovered her mother had been murde
red. In that time, they’d continued the investigation but come up with precious little. They had managed to find out who had signed the cremation order, but Ms. Jillian Stoltz had disappeared off the face of the planet. After a few discreet inquiries, they discovered she had received a large deposit into her bank account on the day the order was issued, which would most likely help toward addressing the serious gambling problem she had. But that was all they could find because the payment had traced back to a shell corporation in the Cayman Islands.
They’d also looked into the therapist. Robert Baldwin had been with the hospital for three years and, at first glance, he seemed to be aboveboard. Then they had found that he had received a payment for $50,000 on the day Lydia had died. Unsurprisingly, it traced back to the same shell corporation. When her father and Liam had gone to question him, the man had been tight-lipped. There was little they could do since it wasn’t a formal investigation. A week later, Baldwin turned up dead. The official story was that he had committed suicide. Naturally John didn’t believe it, and neither did Diana. And that was precisely why her father had sent her back to school with a warning to stay out of the case. He wasn’t going to put her in danger.
She promised her father she’d keep away. At least for now. They didn’t have any other leads for the moment, anyway. However, that didn’t mean Teddy wasn’t still digging around. He was determined to follow the very long and complicated trail of the shell corporation back to its source.
Diana had returned to school with new determination. She would make her mother proud, and she would help her father find out who killed Lydia and why. She signed up for a criminal psychology class and a forensic science class. She had been tempted to transfer completely from medical school, but she decided she wanted to finish what she’d started. It would mean a lot of work, but she knew she could do it.
It was on one of those really hectic days that she was approached by two men. She had been rushing to one of her classes, when they stopped her.
“Diana Hunter?” one of them asked. She sized them up. If she were to go by the movies, then these two would be the poster boys for government agents.
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