Trumped Up Charges

Chapter Six



Hadley’s world was in a tailspin. Adam was an apparition who’d moved into the nightmare and taken control. She wasn’t complaining. She wasn’t sure how she’d get through this without him. As it was, she was holding on to sanity by a thread.

With the girls missing, the reasons she’d had for avoiding all contact with him had become meaningless. Every priority in her life had shifted or disappeared altogether.

Every priority except Lila and Lacy. Her life had centered on them from the moment she’d first held them in her arms. She’d give her life to keep them safe.

Only now it was others she had to depend on to do that for her. Detective Shelton Lane, whom she didn’t fully trust and who didn’t fully trust her. A hostage negotiator she’d never met. Adam Dalton, the man she’d vowed never to rely on again.

And now the father Adam had never mentioned before and whom he admittedly had no emotional attachment to had been added to the list.

Hadley tossed some underwear into an overnight bag. “Tell me more about R.J. What’s his story and claim to fame?”

“Which version do you want?”

“How many versions are there?”

“There’s my mother’s. She says he’s a gambling, heavy-drinking womanizer with no redeeming qualities. She divorced him when I was four.”

“Smart woman.” Hadley added two pairs of shorts to the suitcase. “Do you remember him at all from when you were a kid?”

“Very little. I remember riding with him on a gigantic horse, but then I suspect all horses are gigantic when you’re that young. R.J. is still into horses and owns several thoroughbreds. Which reminds me, you may want to take a pair of jeans and some boots with you. This is a working ranch of sorts.”

“I don’t plan to be there long enough to rope and brand.”

“Just saying, it’s a rustic environment.”

She took a pair of jeans from her closet. “Any other memories of R.J.?”

“I have a vague recollection of his holding me as we swung by a rope and dropped into the water.”

“Was that a frightening memory?”

“Evidently not. I still love grabbing hold of a gnarly rope, swinging out over an old Texas swimming hole and dropping into a pool of splashing water.”

“When I met you, you never even mentioned your biological father. When did the two of you reconnect?”

“We haven’t.”

“Don’t tell me we’re just going to drop in on a gambling drunk you haven’t seen since you were four?”

“I’ve seen him once. We didn’t work on bridging the disconnect.”

“When was that?”

“Yesterday. In fact, I was there for the reading of his will when I heard about the kidnapping.”

She added a pair of red cowboy boots and then zipped her bag while she tried to make sense of that last statement.

“Okay, Adam. Simplify. Is R.J. dead or alive?”

“He’s alive—for now—and reportedly ready to get reacquainted with his offspring. He’s about to get that chance with me.”

Adam picked up her luggage and started toward the door.

“At least call and tell him we’re coming.”

“Why? If he didn’t like surprises, he wouldn’t have shown up for the reading of his own ridiculous will.”

The sound of engines and skidding tires gave warning that the next round of media shots were about to fire.

“Let’s get out of here while we still can,” Adam said. “I’ll explain what little else I know about R.J. on the way to the hospital.”

“If we can get out,” she said, fearing they were blocked in.

“We’ll get out,” Adam assured her.

He proved it with some forceful maneuvering to push through reporters and cameramen from a local TV station. Once in the truck, he started the engine and lay on the horn, sending the wolf pack scattering.

One of the vans didn’t move. Adam went around them, taking out one of her mother’s prized flower beds and leaving deep ruts in the lawn.

Hadley didn’t notice the sign until they were backing past it.

CHILD KILLER

Printed in what looked like dripping blood. Her insides recoiled violently.

“They’re not dead. Lacy and Lila are alive. Why would anyone say such a thing?”

Adam reached over and gave her hand a quick squeeze as he gunned the engine and left the hideous sign behind. “Pay no attention. It was put there by a couple of women with a twisted sense of justice.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I ran them off at daybreak. Should have known they’d come back.”

“Child killer, but they’re not talking about the kidnapper, are they?” The sick truth knotted in the pit of her stomach. “They mean me. They don’t even know me. How could they be so cruel?”

“Takes all kinds. Some are gullible enough to believe everything they read in the paper or on the internet.”

They wouldn’t be the only ones to come to that conclusion. “Why do you believe me, Adam? No one else seems to.”

“I know you?”

“That’s not much of an answer.”

“But it is the truth. No one could fake the fear and torment you’re going through now. Besides, you talked of having kids the first time we made love. You said you wanted a large family and couldn’t wait to get married and have a baby.”

Only then she’d pictured Adam in that family.

Never had she pictured a situation like this.

* * *

HADLEY SENSED THE tension the second she stepped into the hospital room. Her mother looked upset and more sickly than she had yesterday. She was pale though her cheeks and eyes held a feverish cast.

Matilda was standing near the bed. Her eyes were red and moist with tears.

“Her brother Quinton is alive,” Janice announced. “Matilda lied when she said he was dead. Detective Lane is the one who finally set that record straight.”

Hadley shuddered as old images rushed her mind. The pervert who’d tried to molest her fifteen years ago was now a seasoned criminal and Lila and Lacy could be at his mercy.

They had to find him. Matilda had to help them. Hadley had to handle this in a way that assured she would.

“It’s good to have the truth out in the open,” Hadley said. “I’m sure Matilda feels the same.”

Matilda nodded and mumbled a greeting.

“Is there any news?” Janice asked.

“Nothing since we talked last night.” Hadley walked over to her mother’s bed and took her hand. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“My granddaughters are missing and I’m stuck in this noisy quagmire of a hospital. I feel exactly the way you’d expect me to feel.”

“I meant physically, from the surgery.”

“I’m fine. Get me out of here. I can’t do anything to help you from this bed.”

“You’re getting well. That helps.” Hadley lifted her hand to her mother’s forehead. “You may have a little fever.”

“I have a minor infection. It’s nothing to worry about. The doctor will explain it to you. The nurse is supposed to call him when you get here.”

“Where is the nurse?”

“Having breakfast in the hospital cafeteria. Matilda and I needed a little privacy.”

“I told her the total truth,” Matilda blurted. “I’ve apologized. I’ll pay the money back she gave me for Quinton’s funeral. I did wrong and I’ll pay back every penny.”

“It’s not the money that matters right now,” Hadley said. “It’s not even that you lied about Quinton being dead.”

“I explained that to your mother,” Matilda said, her voice breaking as if she was on the verge of tears again. “He threatened to kidnap Alana and take her out of the country, said he’d sell her as a sex slave if I didn’t give him five thousand dollars to bail him out of trouble.”

A threatened kidnapping had worked for Quinton before. Had that emboldened him to do more than threaten this time?

“Listen carefully, Matilda.” She waited until Matilda made eye contact. “We can’t change the past, but it is imperative that you tell the truth now. Do you know where we can find Quinton?”

“I don’t. I swear I don’t. I would tell if I did.”

“When was the last time you talked to him?” Adam asked.

“Monday afternoon.”

“Where was he?”

“In my kitchen, but I swear this was the first time I’ve seen him since I claimed he was dead and paid him off. I wouldn’t have let him come to the house then except he called and promised me he’d turned his life around. He sounded sincere.”

“How did the visit go?” Adam asked, his voice steady and his tone more civil than Hadley could have managed.

“Okay. He was only there about a half hour. I didn’t want Sam or Alana to come home and find him there.”

“Do they think he’s dead?”

“Yes. I told them he’d died in car wreck in Vegas and that his girlfriend hadn’t let me know until after the funeral. They didn’t like her, so they believed me. I wanted him out of their lives for good, out of all our lives. Sam was young and impressionable. I couldn’t chance Quinton leading him astray.”

“Quinton is in Dallas,” Hadley said, thinking out loud. “I need to inform Detective Lane of that.”

“You won’t have to wait long to do that,” Janice said. “I’ve already called him. He’s on his way to the hospital right now to question Matilda.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Matilda insisted. “I’d never do anything to hurt any child, especially not Lila or Lacy.”

“I believe you,” Hadley said truthfully.

“But the police won’t,” Matilda said. “They’ll arrest me and take me to jail. It will be in the newspaper and Alana will be embarrassed. She’ll feel ashamed to have her mother mentioned as a suspect. So will Sam.”

“Cooperate with the detective, Matilda. If you do, they won’t arrest you.” Hadley actually felt sorry for her, but if Quinton had Lila and Lacy, Matilda could well be the key to getting them back.

The nurse returned and looked distressed to find them all in the room. “Is there news about the girls?”

“No, but we cleared up a few things about who might have kidnapped them,” Janice said.

“That’s good news,” the nurse said as she checked Janice’s temperature, pulse and blood pressure.

Janice dropped her head back to the pillow.

“Has Dr. Gates been by this morning?” Hadley asked.

“Very early this morning, before his first surgery. He asked that I let him know when you got here. Shall I let him know now?”

“Please do.” Hopefully there wasn’t a problem, but he’d said Janice needed to stay calm and that wasn’t happening.

The nurse made the call. “He wants you to meet him in the third-floor surgery waiting room in thirty minutes.”

“Perfect. In the meantime, I’ll buy Matilda a cup of coffee while she waits for Detective Lane.” And to make sure she didn’t cut and run.

“And I need to make a few phone calls,” Adam said.

“Not so fast, Adam Dalton,” Janice ordered. “I’d like to have a word alone with you.”

* * *

JANICE SENT THE NURSE out of the room before she started in on Adam.

“Do you have no decency?”

Her tone was sharp. She was gearing up to take all this out on him. He could take it, but getting riled up wasn’t what the doctor had ordered for her.

“I’m not a saint,” he said, striving to keep this low-key. “But, yeah, most folks think I’m an all-right kind of guy.”

“I disagree. You’re taking advantage of a horrifying situation to insinuate yourself back into Hadley’s life.”

“I offered my help. Hadley accepted it. That’s all that’s going on here.”

No way was he going into his and Hadley’s past relationship with her mother. He couldn’t have explained it if he wanted to.

“I knew when I met you that you were trouble.”

Maybe he was more like R.J. than he thought. Not that Janice was an authority on Adam. The only time they’d been together was the night of the traditional meet-the-parent dinner.

It had been a week into their whirlwind courtship, only two nights after he’d asked Hadley to marry him. Janice had made it plain then that she didn’t think a marine about to ship out to Afghanistan was any bargain as a son-in-law.

“I don’t want Hadley hurt by the likes of you again, Adam. You broke her heart. And now you just show up when she’s frantic and vulnerable and pretend to be some kind of hero.”

If that was true, it had been the fastest recovery of a broken heart on record.

“I’m not pretending anything, Janice. I only want to help if I can. You’re in the hospital. The girls’ father isn’t around. I’d think you’d be glad Hadley has someone to lean on.”

Janice’s eyes narrowed. “What did Hadley tell you about Lacy and Lila’s father?”

“Nothing. Is there something I should know about him, like why he’s not as desperate as Hadley is to find their daughters?”

Adam didn’t understand why the big secret. He was certain Detective Lane had asked about the girls’ father and he wouldn’t have settled for the brush-off Adam had gotten.

“The twins’ father is none of your business. When this is over and the girls are safely home again, walk away from Hadley, Adam. Do it even if she feels indebted and asks you to stay. She deserves better than you.”

He couldn’t argue that. But he deserved a straight answer about why Lacy and Lila’s father wasn’t even concerned enough to be here. He’d ask again before they met with Fred Casey.

This time he’d demand the truth.

* * *

SHELTON LANE FIGURED IT was his lucky day when he saw both Matilda Bastion and Hadley standing in the hall outside Mrs. O’Sullivan’s hospital room. This case seemed less like an abduction and more like a sick murder case with every new piece of information he uncovered.

Not that he was ready to make book on that fact yet, but Hadley O’Sullivan had definitely not leveled with him. He couldn’t think of one good reason why a mother who was desperate to find her daughters would lie to the police when asked what should have been a simple question.

If his theory was right, Hadley O’Sullivan might just be the coolest liar and the best actress on the planet. And Adam Dalton was either in it with her or he was as gullible where she was concerned as everyone else around her seemed to be.

He could see how Adam could be taken in by her. Hadley was a damn good-looking woman. She had all the tools for getting under any red-blooded man’s skin. A gorgeous mass of red hair that looked even more enticing when it was disheveled. Great legs. Bodacious breasts.

And she was smart enough that even if she was guilty, she might get off scot-free if he didn’t play his cards right and follow every police procedure in the manual.

He walked up and joined them. “Hello, ladies.”

“Any progress?” Hadley asked.

“None to speak of, but I’m hopeful that will change any minute now.”

He studied Hadley. Her eyes were shadowed with the same torment he heard in her voice. That and the edgy fear that defined her had been constant since he’d first met her.

It was also what kept him hoping his theory was wrong.

“I need to see Hadley alone for a few minutes before we talk, Matilda. Why don’t you wait here? Hadley and I will be in a small conference room just down the hall. I’ve already gotten clearance for us to borrow it.”

Hadley and Matilda both agreed to the suggestion. Once inside the small cubbyhole of a room used by doctors to meet with patients’ families, he closed the door behind him.

“Does this have to do with Quinton Larson?” she asked. “Matilda just admitted to Mother and me that he’s in the Dallas area.”

“Did Matilda tell you that?”

“She admitted that he was at her house late afternoon on Monday.”

“Interesting.”

“There’s more,” Hadley said.

He listened and made notes while Hadley filled him in on the details Janice had not shared in her brief phone call. He had to admit that the new developments made Quinton seem a considerably more credible suspect.

Still, he had questions to ask.

He put down his pen, put his elbows on the table and leaned toward Hadley. “Why didn’t you mention earlier that you and Adam Dalton had once been engaged?”

“That was a long time ago. I didn’t think it mattered.”

“Did you break up with him because of another man?”

“No. We broke up because of another woman. I didn’t do the breaking off. Adam did.”

“Yet you got married and pregnant soon after the breakup and he’s still single.”

“How do you know when we broke up?”

“Your engagement was announced in the newspaper.”

“My mother’s doing, not mine.”

“Are you saying you weren’t engaged at the time?”

“We were engaged—briefly.” She threw up her hands. “I don’t see why any of this is important.”

“Everything is important when children are missing. How long have you and Adam been back together?”

“We’re not back together. I hadn’t seen or talked to him since we broke up.”

“And the man you hadn’t heard from in over three years heard about the kidnapping and raced to the rescue.”

“You were there when he showed up at my door.”

“Right. You fell right into his arms. And he hasn’t left your side since, not even to go home last night.”

“He stayed with me last night because I was such a wreck I didn’t want to be left alone in that empty house.”

“Like I said, Adam’s a very thoughtful guy. I can see why you’d want him back.”

“I don’t want him back. He knows that. He slept on the sofa with his clothes on last night. What little sleep I got was in the bedroom that my girls were taken from. This isn’t a soap opera. My daughters are in the hands of a madman.”

“Did Adam break up with you because you were pregnant with someone else’s babies?”

Hadley jumped up so fast that her metal folding chair skidded behind her, banging against the wall as it fell.

“I get it, Detective. I get you. You have a sordid little mind and you think Adam and I got rid of Lacy and Lila so we could have a love fest without him being threatened by someone else’s children having come from my womb.”

“You’re putting words in my mouth.”

“To match the thoughts already in your head. Stop playing games, Detective. Find my girls.”

She stamped out and slammed the door behind her.

She had a temper. That proved neither guilt nor innocence. It did demonstrate she was capable of losing control.

* * *

HADLEY WAS STILL FUMING when she reached the waiting room where she was to meet Dr. Gates. The complications were becoming more and more entangled, the emphasis of the investigation losing focus. Having Adam around was partly to blame for that.

There was a time she’d have given half her life to have him back. Now she could be losing the most precious parts of her life because he was here.

This time she couldn’t blame Adam. His motives were pure. More than she could say for herself where he was concerned. The least she could do now was be honest with him about everything—whatever the cost.

Hadley located a seat in the crowded area and waited. After five minutes, she got up and paced. After fifteen minutes of doing nothing, her mind began to play tricks on her. She began to imagine everyone near her was the kidnapper.

A woman walked past her leading a little girl who looked to be a year or so older than the twins. The girl’s hair was tawny-colored and straighter than either Lacy’s or Lila’s, but seeing her created a longing in Hadley’s heart that was so intense it brought tears to her eyes.

If the kidnapper would only call and let her hear their voices.

Instinctively, she started to check her phone and make certain she hadn’t missed a call. Her handbag. She didn’t have it. She tried to think where she’d left it.

She’d hung it on the back of the chair when she’d sat down to talk to the detective. She’d gotten so caught up in her angry tirade, she’d forgotten it.

She spun around and retraced her steps, racing to the elevator. By the time she reached the tiny room, she was breathing hard and fast from the panicky run. She opened the door without bothering to knock.

Her purse was there. But not as she’d left it. A bulky brown package was stuffed inside the side pocket.

Her first name was printed in lopsided letters.

The same kind of letters that the kidnapper had used to write yesterday’s note. This had to be from him.

The kidnapper was here in the hospital, perhaps only steps away.