Chapter Thirty-Six

He was too cute to resist.

The way he wagged his tail, and dazzled her with his puppy-dog eyes melted Sophie.

“Fine, you win,” she cooed, kneeling to scratch Johnny Cash’s soft white chin. He lifted his snout for her, letting her rub him. When she rose, she reached for his leash from a hook by the front door.

She spun around, hunting for a key and found a note by the door. “Aha,” she said, like a treasure hunter who’d found the X marking the spot. She unfolded the sheet of white, lined paper. Inside it was a key and a short letter. It was her first real note from Ryan.

By now, Johnny Cash is probably trying to convince you to take him for a walk. He’s a bit of a junkie, I must confess. He will pretty much do anything to run those little legs. I have a hunch he might be training for an Irondog triathlon somehow.

Please don’t feel that you have to give in, even if he bats those big brown eyes. He is a well-trained boy, and he will be fine inside the house during the day. Just take the key, and lock the door behind you.

Oh, I suppose this would be a good time to let you know that you can have the key. I have nothing to hide from you, and my house is your house. If you feel like going for a swim, the fence is high enough that the neighbors won’t see you if you swim naked. If you do that, it would be great if you could send me a photo, as I think a shot of you in my favorite outfit would do wonders for me.

Also, I want to see you before you leave, but I don’t know when I’ll be back. I promise to call when I’m done, and then I’ll come see you, no matter how late it is. Because I can’t stay away from you, Sophie. I swear, I can’t.

I’ll be thinking of you. I’m always thinking of you.

Always…

Sophie grinned wildly as her heart beat like a hummingbird’s wings. She tucked the note inside her clutch purse from last night. Smoothing a hand over the pink cotton of her sundress, she was grateful that she’d left this outfit behind last weekend, because it was far easier to walk a dog in this little number than in her violet evening dress. She had no change of shoes though, so she’d be walking him in her Louboutins.

She shrugged happily. So be it.

She lowered her shades over her eyes, opened the door, then locked up behind her. Johnny Cash trotted happily by her side for the next twenty minutes as she click-clacked around Ryan’s neighborhood, soaking in the wide lawns, the gorgeous houses, and the palm trees that were ever present in their desert town. Her skin heated up from the hot morning rays, and her shoulders started to bake. The dog panted heavily, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. When she returned to Ryan’s block she spotted a young man walking up the steps to his house. The guy was wearing jeans and a red T-shirt. He knocked on Ryan’s door, then shifted back and forth on his feet.

He glanced around, scanning the porch, tapping his feet as he waited.

Odd. She tugged the dog closer to her.

As she neared the house, the guy was fidgeting, his right hand rubbing up and down his left arm, which was covered in tattoos. He sighed, seemingly in frustration, then muttered something under his breath. His jaw was unshaven.

She narrowed her eyes.

Was he a neighbor? He looked too young to own a home. A deliveryman? He didn’t have a box or package with him. The pool guy? No supplies in his hand.

He turned and walked down the porch steps, heading to the sidewalk.

She flashed back to last night, to those names, to the details her brother had shared. Gangs, brokers, getaway drivers. Her pulse jumped. Was he one of those guys?

Oh God. Her skin prickled with fear.

Wait.

Her logical brain took over, and she talked herself down. The people John was looking for were older—much older than this guy who barely seemed old enough to drink.

Still…

His eyes were on his car, and Sophie followed his gaze to a tan Buick parked in front of Ryan’s home.

Recognition kicked in. She remembered who he was. She’d seen him at the community center. Her friend Elle had given his buddy a hard time when he’d catcalled Sophie a few weeks ago while shooting hoops with this guy.

She breathed more easily now.

Sophie reached the walkway to Ryan’s house at the same moment the young man arrived at the sidewalk. His T-shirt had a basketball team logo on it. She straightened her spine as a flurry of nerves skated over her skin. She was grateful to have the dog by her side. The collie’s ears pricked up, and he went on canine alert.

But Sophie didn’t entirely feel that she needed protection.

Something about his brown eyes seemed almost…hopeful. He kept running his palm up and down his arm. A nervous gesture, perhaps?

He stopped short when he saw her. Classic deer in the headlights.

“Good morning. Were you looking for someone?” she asked, opting for directness.

“I’m looking for Ryan Sloan. Is he here?”

“You just knocked on his door,” she said, pointing to the house. “It seems he’s not in. But would you like me to pass on a message to him?”

He shook his head. “No. I’ll stop by another time.”

He turned toward his car, gripping the handle.

“Wait. I’ve seen you at the community center. Playing basketball,” she said, trying to figure out who he was. “Why are you looking for Ryan?”

“I need to talk to him.” He opened the door and got into his Buick.

“What’s your name?”

But he didn’t give her his name. He yanked the door shut and took off.

Sophie and Johnny Cash waited until his car disappeared around the corner. Her heartbeat slowed down, and she patted the dog on the head, glad she’d had a companion. She had no idea what to make of that young man. Why on earth would he need to talk to Ryan? Then it hit her. He might not be T.J. Nelson or Kenny Nelson, but could he be related to one of those men? A son perhaps?

A chill shimmied through her.

When Ryan returned from Hawthorne, she’d tell him he had an unnamed visitor. For now, he had more important matters on his mind. Once inside his home, she locked the door, then checked again to confirm it was closed, then checked once more. She peered out the living room window, making sure the guy hadn’t circled by again. The street was quiet. She called a cab and headed home.

Today was not the best day to go skinny-dipping.

* * *

Surprise her.

That was his strategy. It was a tactic he’d relied on in the military from time to time, and his mother needed to be treated like the enemy today with a sneak attack.

She was always most vulnerable when she didn’t expect something. As he turned into the parking lot in Hawthorne, showing his ID at the gate, his stomach churned. He hated manipulating her like this, but he’d spent the drive fortifying himself, talking back to his fears, and kicking them aside.

Today he was on a mission, and his one and only goal was finding the facts.

Once inside the visiting room, after a hug and a hello, he launched into one of her favorite topics. “Did you hear Anthony Geary retired from GH?”

Her green eyes lit up. He hadn’t seen them so bright in months. “I watched his final episode. It was amazing,” she said, smacking her palm on the wooden table in excitement.

Yup, that did it. Like a fisherman casting a rod, he’d dropped the lure in the water. She was the fish taking the bait.

She chattered on about the show, and because Ryan had listened to a soap opera podcast on the five-hour drive, he was up to speed on which long-lost twin had reappeared, who had been kidnapped and sequestered away in a mansion, and who was pregnant with a secret baby.

Soon, she was laughing, and he’d done it—he’d lulled her into a false sense of security. Tension curled through him, but this was the only chance he had to shock her into stumbling into the truth.

“I think Sonny has to be behind the kidnapping,” she said, chatting about the show as he nodded a yes while reaching into his pocket to remove the pattern subtly. Under the table he unfolded it. Then he laid it on the wood surface, jammed his finger against the center of the paper, and interrupted her.

“Who are T.J. and Kenny Nelson, and why are their names hidden in a code inside your prize dog jacket pattern?”

She fumbled her next words as her jaw dropped and her eyes widened. “What did you just say?”

“Mom, I know what this is. Don’t lie to me now. Please, God, after all I’ve done for you, don’t lie to me now,” he said, desperation infusing his tone. “Who are they and what role did they play in my father’s death?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled, dropping her gaze to her hands, twisting her fingers together.

“You do, Mom. You do. You gave me this pattern; you asked me to keep it safe. I did that.” He tried to keep the exasperation from seeping into his voice. But that was damn near impossible. “I believed it was some kind of sign of hope for your future,” he said, brandishing the paper, faded and wrinkled from age. “I kept it safe for you. I was even going to have a friend make the damn jacket for you as a gift, to cheer you up. And when she did, she figured out it wasn’t a pattern. It has addresses in it and those addresses correspond to names, and one of those names is the man doing life for murder, and two of the others might be the broker and the getaway driver in the crime.” Her face remained stony even as she blinked several times. He pressed on. “Those other two names match the initials you told me last time I was here, when I asked you who were Stefano’s friends who were looking out for his son. You asked me if they were T.J. and K.” He leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms out wide in a waiting stance. “The initials all line up. Talk to me, Mom.”

She pursed her lips together and squeezed her eyes shut. Her face looked pinched, as if she were sucking all her own secrets into her mouth and holding them in with her breath.

Ryan huffed through his nostrils. Enough. This was fucking enough. He wanted to slam his fist into the wood. To knock the damn table over on its side. To throw things. But he wasn’t that kind of a man. He didn’t do that on the ice, and he didn’t do it in here. Violence begets more violence. Fear spawns more fear. He had to rely on his head and his heart.

“Don’t you dare shut down on me again,” he seethed, the words curling out of his mouth like hot smoke. “Don’t you try that routine with me. I have a right to know what I’ve been carrying around for you. It’s not a secret anymore. The pattern was made. The names are revealed.” He thumped his fingertip against the table. “Jerry. T.J. Kenny. They were in your pattern, Mom. Yours.” He pointed at her for emphasis. “I want to know why the addresses, and therefore the names, of those men were hidden. Because for eighteen years, you tricked me into thinking this was special to you. I kept it safe. Because I fucking love you, Mom.”

His throat hitched, and wild tears threatened to rain from his eyes. He stopped speaking, pressed his thumb and forefinger over the bridge of his nose, and pinched, keeping them at bay. “I love you, and I love Dad. I came to see you all the time, even when I was in college, even when I had leave from the army. I’m the one. I came here. I saw you. And I have been a messed-up son-of-a-bitch most of my life because of this. Please, I’m begging you. Tell me something.”

She parted her lips and bit nervously on her thumbnail. Her eyes welled up. She dug into her thumb then whispered. “Ry,” she said, like a fearful creature. “They told me not to say a word about anything. That’s why I gave it to you. To get rid of it. To hide it.”

He knit his brow. “Who? Who told you not to say a word?”

“Those men.”

“Why didn’t you just have me throw it out?”

She glanced from side to side then under the table, as if she were sweeping the room for spies. Leaning across, she lowered her volume even more. He practically had to read her lips. “I thought I’d gotten rid of that stuff already. But then the cops came, and I still had it, and I couldn’t have you throwing out something the cops might think was evidence,” she said, her lips quivering. “I didn’t want to put that on you, or make you responsible for that. I had you keep it knowing no one would ever look inside my sewing pattern.”

His chest burned with shame. He’d been played a fool by his own mother. But why? What was she so afraid of? “Why did you have it in the first place? Why did you put their addresses in there?” he asked, pressing on like a cross-examiner.

She twisted a strand of her hair, back and forth, tight against her skull. “They were just my notes. That was all. They were notes about who I was meeting, and I was taking on so much extra sewing work to pay off my debt, so I wrote things down on my patterns.”

“But this wasn’t on a pattern. It was in a pattern.”

“I know,” she said through gritted teeth. “But I didn’t want anyone to know I was meeting them.” She dropped her forehead in her hands and hissed, “About the drugs. And I told you why. I wanted to try to stay clean about the drugs in case I ever got out, and I fought so hard to have my conviction overturned.”

He drew a deep breath. “You put their addresses in a pattern because you were meeting them about drugs, Mom? C’mon. Why would you do that?”

Her jaw was set hard. “I told you. I wanted to keep you all safe from them. I had to protect my babies. I had to.”

“So you put the info on Stefano’s accomplices in a pattern to fucking protect us? You told me not to say anything about the drugs because you were trying to get out of here, but then you hid their addresses in a pattern. Something doesn’t add up.”

She flinched, but didn’t answer, then brushed something unseen off her shoulder. Fuck. This was spiraling again.

“Or was there something else going on? Did they have something else on you?” he asked, grasping at straws, but hell, he had to try something. Because it made no sense why she would need to shield all those names so badly.

She covered her eyes. “I was scared. That’s why I hid the info. That’s why I didn’t want anyone to know the addresses and who I was meeting.”

“Why? What did they have on you? Why were you so afraid of them? What did you have to hide? What was so important about those names that you asked me to hide this pattern? Because if it was that goddamn important, it sounds like it was more than drugs. It sounds like you gave me your own notes to plan a murder. Is that what it was? Was this your goddamn blueprint that you gave me?”

“No!” She raised her voice—the same tone she’d admonished him with when he was a kid. “That is the truth. I put their addresses in there because I needed to remember them. That’s all.”

But the dots didn’t connect. He pressed on. “Were you meeting them to plan the murder of my father?”

“I told you, I didn’t do it,” she said in a whispered shout. “I told you I didn’t kill him. Are you ever going to believe me?”

“I know you didn’t pull the trigger, Mom. Everyone knows that,” he said, exasperated, as he scrubbed his hand over his chin. “But you’ve told me other things that have turned out not to be true. So I want to know this—were T.J. Nelson and Kenny Nelson working with Stefano? Were they his accomplices?”

She said nothing.

“Were you? Were you working with these men?”

She gripped the edge of the table, her eyes like glassy pools of desperation. “I didn’t do it. I told you I didn’t do it.”

“Were you involved?” he continued, a dog with a bone, not willing to relent. “Like the cops say you were. Like the state of Nevada says you were.”

“I didn’t do it.”

Wear her down. Just fucking wear her down. “Did you hire Jerry Stefano to kill my father? Did you? Did you hire him and plan it with those three guys? Did you go to their houses and plan the crime down to every last detail with the broker, and the shooter, and the goddamn getaway driver? Did you kill him for his life insurance money like they put you in Stella McLaren for?” he asked, his voice rising with each question.

He ran his hands through his hair, tugging hard on it because he was at the end of his rope, but he couldn’t let go. “Don’t you understand what this has done to me? I don’t trust people. I don’t believe people. I don’t get close to people. Because of this. Because of what happened,” he said, trying a new approach. Go for the heart. Try to pierce that damn organ in her. “But Mom, I finally met someone. Okay? I finally met a woman and, my God, I am in love with her, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” He softened momentarily as he thought of his sweet, sexy Sophie. He’d come so far with her, she’d shown him so much, and she’d opened so many possibilities in his life and helped him feel wonderful, amazing, incredible things. He hated the prospect of sling-shotting back to who he was before—closed off, shut down, and obsessed.

“I need some clarity, for once. I need it so I can have a normal life with the woman I love. Don’t you want that for me? Don’t you want me to be happy? Because I do, Mom. I want it so damn badly that I’m here, asking you to just tell me the truth.”

He waited. Seconds passed, spooling into minutes as Dora sat like a statue. Finally she broke her frozen stance, uncrossing her arms, and jerking her head away.

He threw up his hands. This was a lost cause. He was getting nowhere. Sophie was right. He’d have to find the answers in himself, because he wasn’t getting them from his mother. He pushed back in his chair and stood up to leave. He bent his head to his mom, and kissed her forehead. “I love you, Mom, but I need to go,” he whispered.

She grabbed his wrists, her bony fingers circling them. Her hands were papery and rough. “Do you love her?” she asked.

“Yes. So much.”

She exhaled. Deeply. It sounded like relief. “I’m happy for you, baby.”

“Me, too.”

“All I want is for you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” She gripped his hands tighter. “They told me they’d hurt you all.” Her voice was just a thread. “They told me they’d come after my babies if I said a word.”

He blinked. Holy shit. She was talking. He leaned closer, resting his chin on her head. “Said a word about what, Mom?” he asked, anticipation weaving a dangerous path through his blood.

“I tried to stop it.”

“Did you start it?”

A nod. He felt the barest hint of a nod of her head against his. Holy shit. “I’m telling you this now because I love you. Because you said you need this to be happy. And all I’ve ever wanted is for my babies to be happy. But they made me go through with it, Ry. And that’s why I did it. I did it for all of you,” she said, and then the words rained down. “Please don’t stop seeing me; please don’t stop coming. I went through with it because I had no choice. They told me they’d hurt you if I didn’t go through with it.”

Like a wrecking ball to his gut, her admission walloped him. He stumbled and gripped the wall behind him. His head was swimming. It was a roiling sea. Eighteen fucking years were compressed into this moment. Her words echoed across the vast cavern of time, clanging through the days, the months, and the pages on the calendar, stabbing him with a million cuts. His own omissions. His own secrets. Most of all, his foolish hope that his mother wasn’t a murderer.

“You had him murdered?” The question tasted like dirt.

“I had to keep you safe.”

“Why did he have to die to keep us safe? He didn’t have to die.” But even as the words came out of his mouth, he knew there was no point to them. The decision had been made eighteen years ago—whether for drugs, for money, for her lover, or from fear. He might not ever know why she did it. All he knew now was she did.

“I love you and your sister and your brothers so much and I do, I still do. I swear I love you so much. I love you, baby. I love you, Ryan.” She began weeping, a deep, dark keening sound like a bruised, battered thing heaving itself onto the shore, defeated.

Like Ryan.

He’d travelled here hoping for an answer, but never expecting to get one.

Instead, he’d received her confession.