“We told you,” Talon said. “They were a clue. They were kind of dropped in our lap.”
“Whatever, mon. I don’t ask questions unless I’m paid to.” He looked up. “The sun’s almost down. Once it’s dark, we head out. Let’s get something to eat in the meantime.”
I didn’t think I could eat. I’d done okay during our practice runs during the day, but I’d had to talk Talon down. He’d freaked at first about breathing underwater. Said it reminded him of being in that dark basement.
That had been hard for him to admit, but I’d talked to him gently and he’d been okay. The second trial run had gone smoothly.
Still, as I looked at my brother, I could see something dark in his eyes. This bothered him.
“It’ll be okay, Tal,” I said. “Come on. Let’s eat something.”
“Not hungry.”
“Neither am I, but you know as well as I do we can’t do this without sustenance.” I nudged his arm. “Come on.”
“I need to call Jade.”
“Okay. There’s time for that. Give her a call.”
I wanted desperately to call Ruby, but I couldn’t. I didn’t need to remind Talon of that though. Right now, just as the yacht was anchored, Talon was looking for his anchor. His anchor was Jade.
I didn’t have my anchor, but that wouldn’t stop me.
I would go forward and find her.
If it was the last thing I did.
Chapter Twelve
Ruby
“Since when do you care who hurts me?” I asked. “You tried to rape me. Or have you conveniently forgotten that?”
“Believe it or not, Ruby, I haven’t raped anyone in the last decade.”
I didn’t believe it. “Maybe you have and maybe you haven’t. That still doesn’t excuse the damage you inflicted before then. On Gina. On Talon Steel. Even on me. And on myriad others.”
He sighed. “I understand that. All I can say is that I have my regrets.”
“What about murder? Are you going to try to tell me you had nothing to do with the murder of Jordan Hayes? The receptionist at your old high school?”
“I did not. Tom did that.”
“And the business card that was planted in her apartment? Joe’s business card?”
“Again, Tom. After Joe was beginning to prove that Tom wasn’t the upstanding mayor everyone thought he was, Tom went insane.”
“Because he wasn’t insane before that?” I said sarcastically.
“He wanted to pin Jordan’s murder on Joe.”
“What about the business card left at Talon’s house by the housekeeper? The same MO. Are you telling me that was Tom as well? Because Felicia told the Steels that the masked man who threatened her into doing it had strange icy-blue eyes. And Melanie said the same thing about the man who abducted her from her loft and pushed her into that garage and left her to die.”
“My eyes are brown, Ruby.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re wearing the freaky lenses right now, Theo.”
“And that makes me the only suspect?” He lifted his brow. “Have you forgotten what color of eyes Simpson had?”
My veins froze. I had never met Tom Simpson, but Joe said that Bryce looked a lot like his father. Bryce’s eyes were blue, but they were a warm blue. A gentle blue. Yet that same color in the eyes of an ice man…
Had we been wrong all this time?
“Tom was determined to bring the Steels down. He found out Jade had been digging, and he sent the rose as a warning, trying to frame Larry at the same time. He went so far as to have Larry’s fingerprints changed in the database to match the set on her ex’s business card. And then Joe… Tom thought Joe was a hothead, and when he and Melanie got more involved, Tom was determined to take them both out.”
“Joe is his son’s best friend.”
“Do you think he cared about that?”
I let out a huff. “No, I don’t. I don’t think any of you have ever cared about anything other than money and saving your own sorry asses.”
“That was Tom to the very end.”
“And Larry?”
“Larry was trying to get everything out in the open without having Wendy come down on him. Why do you think he asked Jade to research the Steels? He was leading her to clues. That’s how his mind worked. Rather than squeal, he set people up to figure things out for themselves. He was brilliant in his own way. The problem with Larry was that he had no common sense, so Tom and I didn’t always trust him.”
“Yeah. You had him beaten to within an inch of his life for letting Talon Steel go, didn’t you?”
“Actually, we didn’t. That was all Wendy.”
Wendy. That name again. Ryan’s biological mother. We’d already figured out that she had been the true mastermind behind Talon’s abduction, and she claimed to be the true mastermind behind everything. I’d spoken to Melanie about it on more than one occasion. Melanie was convinced that Wendy was the ultimate id with narcissistic personality disorder and delusions of grandeur.
Melanie was no doubt right. But one thing she hadn’t factored in was Wendy’s creative brilliance.
I didn’t bother asking my father whether he was telling the truth. I already knew he was. The very marrow of my bones knew. Wendy had arranged Talon’s abduction to punish his father for getting his mother pregnant with Marjorie. It only made sense that she was the one who punished Larry for letting him go.
“Larry seemed convinced that you and Tom were the ones who had him beaten.”
“Larry wasn’t aware of the ultimate power Wendy had over the rest of us.”
“You mean over Brad Steel.”
“No, Ruby. I mean over the rest of us.”
“Then by all means, Father, enlighten me.”
He sighed and pushed up the sleeves of his black shirt. The phoenix on his left forearm was still as bright as I remembered. “I don’t expect you to understand any of this.”
“I’m pretty sure I won’t. I still want to hear it. How did a little cheerleader like Wendy have power over any of you? She moved after her sophomore year. Plus, you claim Larry didn’t know how dangerous she was. Larry already told the Steels that you weren’t the most dangerous, which would indicate that Wendy was. Who else could he have been talking about?”
“I didn’t say Larry didn’t know how dangerous she was. I only said he didn’t understand the power she had.”
“Semantics, Theo. Let’s skip over the bullshit and get down to one thing. The goddamned truth.”
“You trust me to tell you the truth?”
I had to laugh. “No, not really, but at the moment, you’re all I’ve got. So spill it.”
He opened his mouth to speak when the door to his office burst open. “Boss, we’ve got a problem.”
“I’m in a meeting, as you can see,” my father said.
“Sorry, but you’re needed elsewhere.”
“Handle it, please.”
“Some new ones have gone rogue. We need your help.”
“You don’t need my help. Show them who’s boss.”
I looked at the masked man’s eyes. They were a familiar brown. This was one of the men who had raped Juliet.
And new ones? Were they bringing new women to the compound? I stood. “Take me to the ‘new ones.’”
My father shook his head. “No.”
“I demand it, damn it. In fact, I demand that you let them go. And not just them. All of them. Juliet. And where the hell is Gina?”
“Ruby.” My father gritted his teeth. “Not now.”
“Look,” the other guy said, “our contract is coming due, and—”
I jerked my head back to him. “Contract? What you people are doing here is illegal, not to mention immoral. The laws don’t exist. Who the hell cares about a contract?”
“Ruby,” my father said calmly, “you don’t understand. This business has its own laws, and we can’t default on a contract.”
“Why not?”
“Do I have to spell it out for you? They’ll kill us.”
“Hopefully not before they torture and rape you,” I couldn’t help saying.
Something in my father’s fake eyes changed, but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was.
“Who the fuck is this woman, boss?” the man asked.
“She’s not your concern.”
He eyed me, his tongue slithering along his lower lip. “Let me take a stab at her. Please. God, that body…”
Disgust crept up my throat. “You’re not getting near me, you psycho.”