Rogue Alliance

TWENTY-FIVE



On Thursday afternoon, Brennan waited in the parlor, cogitating on his latest discovery and how to tell Victor what he’d found. He’d spent the better part of the morning sifting through old newspaper articles in the library and running internet searches.

He sat perched on the edge of the sofa staring out the window at the open field encircled by ponderosa pine. The weather was starting to cool and the leaves would begin to change within the next month. Fall was coming.

Victor’s footsteps approached the sitting area. For just a split second he contemplated keeping the information to himself. He somehow felt closer to Shyla now that he knew a bit about her history. She’d had a tough childhood. She’d had to fight for survival. That he could understand.

But he wouldn’t hide what he knew. He waited.

“Hey, man,” Victor said, “where’ve you been all morning? I’ve been on the phone with our lawyer sorting through this mess. And you’re nowhere to be found. What gives? And why in the hell can’t you sit on the couch like a normal human being? Get off the back before you break it. God damn, it’s like talking to a child sometimes.”

Brennan ignored Victor’s foul mood. He’d been stewing since they’d been released. He knew Victor had already contacted Shyla and arranged to have her over the following evening. Brennan believed that Victor had feelings for her in his own way, but he also had doubts now. He wanted to dispel any chance of foul play, but both of them knew that something wasn’t right.

He stood up and shuffled toward the bar.

“I was at the library all morning going through old newspaper articles,” he said, “trying to dig up whatever I could find on Shyla.”

Victor stood rigid as Brennan poured a few hefty swigs of Scotch into sifter glasses.

“Well…what did you find?”

“I didn’t come up with anything recent,” he said, handing over one of the glasses. “but I did find some things which dated to about nineteen years ago. Funny thing is they were all local papers. It seems that Shyla was born and raised in Redding. And she’s changed her last name since.”

If Victor was shocked, he didn’t show it. Only his jaw clenched.

“Okay…so she was born and raised here. She never said anything about that to me. She said she’d just moved from Seattle. Maybe she just moved back from Seattle. She could have gone to college up there or something. She says she moved for the job. Maybe times were tough up there.”

Brennan could hear the hope mixed with doubt in Victor’s voice.

“I don’t know where she moved from or why,” he said, “but I know why she moved away. Or at least I can guess. According to her yearbook she graduated as Shyla Strauss from Redding High School in 1993 at age eighteen. Her mother died in the spring of 1990. She committed suicide. The month before that…her father died.” Brennan paused.

“At age fourteen Shyla stabbed her father to death in their kitchen,” he continued, “during the trial it came out that Shyla had been sexually abused by him for years and she just snapped out one night.”

Victor took a deep slug of the honey-colored drink. He turned and walked toward the window. The room was loud with the silence.

“It makes sense that she wouldn’t want to share such a thing,” he said, “I doubt she imparts that information to very many people at all. But still…”

“It’s hard to imagine she’d be trying to pass off as someone else in her own home town,” Brennan suggested, “she’d know that sooner or later you’d hear talk. She may not be upfront about her past, but I don’t think she’s going out of her way to hide it either.”

Victor’s eyes met Brennan’s. His determination was vivid.

“It still doesn’t explain Ricardo’s reaction. Are you sure you didn’t find anything on her beyond her graduation date?”

“No. But then again, after what she’d been through, maybe she kept a low profile.”

“Maybe,” Victor nodded, “well…there’s only one way to find out. I want you to go back to L.A. first thing tomorrow morning. I want you to dig around. Hell, go pay a visit to Ricardo. I’ll ring up our lawyer again. He’ll help us out.

“Shyla’s coming over tomorrow night and I want this put to rest by then. I want answers and I want them now.”