I was just as glad to be out of Larry Wade’s presence. This was far from the first time I had spoken with him, and he never remembered who I was. At least that was what he claimed. He made my skin crawl more each time. Clearly he feared my father. He had seemed to fear Simpson too, when he was alive. He had systematically refused to roll over on the two of them to either me or the Steels, no matter what we offered.

Maybe Ryan would be able to get the information out of him while I was gone.

No. Why delude myself? That wouldn’t happen. Larry was a game player first and foremost. He would never roll over.

But there was something he did do. He gave hints. I had heard the whole story, about how Melanie had figured out where to find the information about the future lawmakers club. His mind didn’t work like a normal human’s. He dealt more in riddles.

And what if…?

What if that was why he’d hired Jade to be the assistant city attorney? What if that was why he had given her the assignment to research the Steels?

Maybe that had been his way of finally bringing the two worst offenders, Simpson and my father, to justice. He thought Jade would uncover things and start thinking.

And she had.

Of course he must’ve known that would culminate in his own demise as well. So maybe that wasn’t how it had happened.

Then again, according to Larry, he had let Talon go, and he’d paid dearly for that, almost with his life.

It was all just too coincidental, otherwise. Damn it. Larry Wade had been feeding us clues this whole time.

I had to go back in and tell Ryan what I figured out.

No, I couldn’t do that. What if Larry was finally talking? One look at me and he’d clam up like a mute. I had to stay out here.

I whipped out my cell phone to check my messages. I had turned off my ringer while we were talking to Larry. No new calls. Then I went to my e-mail. How was it possible that I had fifty-seven new e-mails since I had left the office only an hour before?

All work and no play…

I answered a few, until I got to one from an address I didn’t recognize. It was a government address, similar to the one I used. I just didn’t know the name.

It contained only one sentence.

Tell my son I need to see him.

Wendy Madigan. She’d gotten hold of a cell phone again, obviously. She knew my number. She had texted me before. So why had she e-mailed me this time? Why not e-mail Ryan, if she wanted to see him?

How was she getting our contact information, anyway?

She knew I was a detective, so my e-mail address wouldn’t have been hard to figure out. A standard government e-mail for the city. All she had to figure out was the name. R.Lee probably hadn’t taken her too long.

I wouldn’t e-mail her back. Besides, whatever phone she had stolen this time was probably back with its original owner by now. Or maybe she had found a contraband phone somewhere in the ward and had hidden it. The woman was cunning. I’d give her that. Still, I wasn’t going to respond.

Instead, I logged in to work and traced the e-mail address. It belonged to one of the psychiatrists she was seeing for medication and therapy. Christ! How could a doctor be so negligent as to let a patient hijack his cell phone? She had graduated from orderlies to physicians.

Something niggled in the back of my mind. Something Ryan had told me about his first meeting with Wade.

Mathias isn’t dead, and even he isn’t the most dangerous.

Not too long after that visit, we’d become embroiled in Ryan’s DNA test. None of us had given that statement a second thought.

But according to Larry, someone else was even more dangerous than my father.

I smiled to myself, not because I was happy, but because I had come up with something that I knew the Steel brothers wouldn’t.

They would never suspect a woman. Not that they were sexist, or even chauvinist. They were just gentlemen. And now, because the woman I was thinking about was Ryan’s mother, they probably didn’t want to suspect her at all.

Wendy.

Larry had been talking about Wendy.

And if he was telling the truth…

Ryan was in no danger from Wendy. I felt that in the depths of my bones. She was, first and foremost, a mother.

I didn’t think for a minute that Wendy would hurt any of the other Steels, either. She was so obsessed over Bradford Steel, she probably wouldn’t harm any of his children.

Or would she?

Had she been the mastermind behind Talon’s abduction? She had all but admitted that at one point, but she’d denied it several times over as well.

I’m on to you, Wendy.

She wasn’t as crazy as the Steels thought.

No. She played her cards in a very calculating manner. When it benefited her to be crazy, she acted crazy. I had the sick feeling that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Wendy Madigan had never lost her grasp on reality. To the contrary, she used reality. She twisted it to suit her purposes. But she never did anything without having a damned good reason for her actions.

Even he isn’t the most dangerous.

My God. Ryan’s mother was the true mastermind behind everything.