“We’re not entirely sure yet.” He sets his card out next to my father’s. “If you think of anything else, please give me a call.” His steely gray gaze shifts to me. “Ready?”
“I . . . uh . . .” Now that we’ve found my aunt, I don’t want to leave. But I guess that’s the appropriate thing to do. Betsy will need time to process all this. I can’t blame her. She was picking weeds from her garden when we showed up, dragging with us a past that she hoped was dead and buried.
Betsy pulls a pad of paper from the fridge and scribbles down a phone number. “You know where I live. Here is my number.” She presses the page into my hand. “Please call me. And tell your mom I said hello.” She hesitates. “Maybe I could contact her, when she’s better.”
“She’d love that.”
“And maybe you could come over again another day, if you’re staying in Austin? It’d be nice . . . to have family of my own again.” Betsy gives me one of those small, tight-lipped smiles.
“I will. I’m not going anywhere.” I absently reach for Noah, my fingers grazing his bicep. He’s definitely stuck with me now.
It isn’t until we reach the massive two-story foyer that Betsy suddenly exclaims, “Wait! I do . . . yes, I do remember something.” She frowns, as if she’s trying to grasp a thought that’s flittering just out of reach in her memories. “The man . . . he walked with a limp.”
CHAPTER 58
Commander Jackie Marshall
May 4, 2003
I climb over the police tape and march forward into a circus show of flashing lights and people.
The last time I was at this seedy motel, it was to get Betsy out of Austin.
Now . . . I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I got woken up by a call from dispatch to tell me that an officer’s been shot and I needed to get out here.
Silas steps into my path.
That son of a bitch . . . I have nothing to say to him. I try to skirt him, but he grabs my arm. “Hold up, Jackie.” His eyes flash around us, checking to see who’s watching. “You can’t go in there.”
“The hell I can’t!” I try to shake his arm off me, but he squeezes tighter.
“Canning’s orders. Only a special team is allowed in there right now. They’re making me wait outside too, and I’m the damn DA!”
“You are not the DA, yet,” I grit through my teeth, adding quietly, “and you never will be if anyone finds out what you really are.” It was all I could do to keep from vomiting, walking up to that hotel room two weeks ago to find Abe facing off with none other than my brother, in a hotel room with a prostitute.
My by-the-book, righteous, this-side-of-the-law big brother. And not just any prostitute. A fifteen-year-old.
A fifteen-year-old who also happened to be Dina’s half-sister.
“God damn it, Jackie! I made a mistake! Don’t you dare act like you’ve never made one!” He tugs me farther back, into the shadows, away from prying ears. “She said she was twenty-one! I didn’t know how old she really was, and I sure as hell didn’t know who she was.”
“Oh come on! One look at that girl and I knew she had to be related to Dina.”
“Well, yes. She was a striking girl, but—”
I make a sound of disgust. “The fact that you’d cheat on Judy with a hooker! It would kill that sweet woman if she ever found out.”
Silas holds his hands up in surrender. “You’re right. That’s why Judy can never find out. My kids can never find out. It was a mistake. I made a terrible mistake.”
“And just how many ‘mistakes’ have you made?” I glare at him, daring him to lie to me.
He hesitates. “Twice. And only once with someone under eighteen.”
“How the hell would you know! You thought Betsy was twenty-one!”
“I’m never going to do it again, I swear, Jackie. It’s been difficult at home lately, and with work . . . I just needed to get some—”
“Oh, I know what you needed to get,” I spit out. “What I had to do that night . . . You cost me one of my very best friends, Silas! Worse, I had to chase that girl away so you could protect your precious job and reputation.”
“Don’t pretend you weren’t helping yourself out, too.” He has the nerve to look smug.
“You are right about that.” I jab him in the chest with my finger. “Your ‘mistake’ could have cost me my future, something I’ve worked my tail off for. But to be honest? I was worried about what this would do to your family. To my son.” That boy thinks the sun rises and sets by his uncle.
The only other man he might adore more is the one I just betrayed.
“I’m going to regret covering for you every damn day for as long as I live.”
Silas flinches. “I didn’t mean to—”
“I don’t want to hear it. If I ever catch you with a girl again, I will not bail you out.”
“I promise, I—”
“And don’t fool yourself into believing you’re outta the woods yet. The only reason Abe hasn’t said a word is because he’s protecting Dina, but if he finds Betsy, this will come out, eventually. And it will ruin all of us.” I turn to leave.
Silas grabs hold of my arm again. “Abe won’t be looking for Betsy anymore,” he says softly.
CHAPTER 59
Noah
Klein eases the car into a parking spot. “Let’s go.”
I grit my teeth against the urge to tell him to go fuck himself, to take me home, to give me back my goddamn phone so I can call Silas and ask him why Klein showed Betsy a picture of Silas and Betsy said, yeah, that looks like the guy she was with that night in the hotel room.
Couple that with the limp, and the fact that my mother was protecting someone that night—someone who she’d put ahead of Abe—and I don’t have to ask Silas anything, because deep down, I already know.
I just can’t believe it.
And so I numbly climb out of the FBI sedan. Unable to meet Gracie’s gaze, feeling as if I might heave my stomach’s contents on the sidewalk.
I’m trapped in a never-ending nightmare that keeps getting worse.
“What is this place?” Gracie asks as we follow Kristian down a narrow path of what appears to be a condo complex, either side walled by six feet of brick and canopied by mature, leafy trees. Behind the walls are pint-sized backyards.
Tareen trails us through one of the small black gates and past a door, closing it behind him to seal us in.
“It’s an agency rental,” Klein finally explains. “Sometimes we use it as a safe house. Right now we’re using it for our case.”
“Against Mantis and Stapley?” Gracie’s gaze takes in the honeyed wood and dove-gray walls. There isn’t much in the way of furnishings—a black leather couch, a flat-screen TV, built-in shelves peppered with books, a teapot on the stove in a masculine-looking kitchen of dark wood and stainless-steel appliances. One abstract painting on the wall directly ahead of me.
I feel Klein’s eyes boring into me. “No. Our case against Silas Reid.”
The air leaves my lungs.
“We’ve been investigating him for five months,” Tareen offers, ducking past us and disappearing into a room.
It dawns on me. “You were after someone else,” I mumble. “That’s what my mother said in that message. ‘Since you’re so hell-bent on arresting someone’ . . . or something like that.”
Klein heads to the fridge, stocked with soda cans and water bottles. He holds up a Coke in offer and when Gracie nods, tosses it to her. Gesturing to the couch, he takes a seat in the chair across from it. The sound of his soda can cracking open carries through the quiet condo, as we wait for an explanation.
“Last November, we were contacted by Amy Bivens.”
I frown. “My uncle’s secretary?”
“Ex-secretary. He’d fired her earlier that week. Anyway, she claimed that she overheard an alarming private phone conversation that made her think Silas Reid was looking for a prostitute for himself. An underage one.”
“He wouldn’t be dumb enough to do that over the phone,” I counter.