Ruby didn’t answer me. I didn’t expect her to. Though the question wasn’t rhetorical, there was no answer she could’ve given me that would’ve been satisfactory anyway. She was living with her own demons.

She picked up her purse that she had dropped to the floor when she had first come into the bedroom and walked to the phone on the desk. “I’m just going to call housekeeping to get this cleaned up.”

That was Ruby. Always cleaning up. Always taking care of things. That’s what cops did.

A few seconds later, she said, “I’m going to get dressed. We’re going to go down to the bar and have a drink. To give them a chance to pick up and vacuum, okay?”

I simply nodded.

She gathered all of her clothes and went to the bathroom. I sat back down on the bed.

My brothers and I had always wondered all these years, before we had even told Marjorie the truth, why our father had swept this whole thing under the rug. Why we were never allowed to deal with the shitstorm of that summer. Talon should have been in therapy long ago, along with the rest of us. If we had been able to deal with it, if we had been able to…

Christ. Daphne Steel might still be alive today. Joe, Talon, and Marj had been denied their mother.

I was angry. But no longer at my brothers and sister. No longer with Ruby. I was fucking enraged with my mother. My biological mother.

Oddly, though, someone else bore even more of my anger.

My father. Bradford Steel.

He had never let our family heal. I still didn’t know what the real relationship was between Wendy and my father. I might never know. And I couldn’t bring myself to be angry with my father for having sex with his own wife and giving us our little sister. But I was angry. Despite the fact that I wouldn’t exist if he hadn’t, I was damned angry at him for fucking Wendy when he was married to Daphne. I was even angrier about him not letting us heal from Talon’s ordeal. I had watched both my brothers struggle all those years after the abduction. My father could’ve helped them avoid all of that.

Instead, he’d left us to flounder. Oh, he’d taken care of the family after his wife had taken her life, raised us to understand hard work and the value of money. But he had never let us heal. Then, seven years ago, he left us again, that time physically.

And then something occurred to me. He’d “died” seven years ago, the year Marj had turned eighteen. A legal adult. He’d waited until all of his children were legal adults. There had to be something there.

---

Ruby and I sat in a booth in the hotel bar, a bottle of Steel Cabernet between us.

“I can’t believe you just paid for a bottle of your own wine,” she said.

“What can I say? It was the best on the wine list.”

She took a sip from her goblet. “I wish I had some words of wisdom for you, Ryan.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s far from okay. But what you need to remember is that no one holds you responsible for what happened to Talon.”

“I know that.” It didn’t change how I felt in my mind, though.

“I went to see Melanie,” she said.

I widened my eyes. “You mean for therapy?”

She nodded. “It helped. Helped a lot, actually. I’m going to try to see her once a week, as my schedule allows. We talked about a lot of stuff, and one of the things was how I’ve always felt responsible for my father’s crimes. It’s why I became a cop, and why I’ve tried to atone for what he’s done by being the best cop I can be. I haven’t been able to put him away yet, but I’ve put away a lot of other shitheads.”

“You’re not responsible for his actions.”

She smiled. “No, I’m not. And neither are you responsible for your mother’s actions.”

I couldn’t help a slight chuckle. I’d walked right into that one. “I know that.”

“I know you do. I also know that doesn’t make it any easier.”

“You know what scares the hell out of me? Having to tell my brothers all of this.”

“Why should that scare you? They love you just as much as they ever did.”

“How can I tell Talon? How can I tell him that my mother had him tortured to punish our father for getting his mother pregnant? That I was let go simply because I was hers?”

“Doesn’t he already know? Seems to me you told me that Wendy had pretty much told Joe and Talon as much.”

“True. But that was before…”

“Before what?”

“Well, first of all, before they knew the truth about my parentage. And second of all, when we all thought Wendy was just a nutty liar.”

“Wendy is a nutty liar.”

“I’m not so certain of that anymore.”

Ruby looked down at her wineglass for a minute.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’ve been doing some thinking about Wendy,” she said. “I have a theory that I haven’t had a chance to discuss with you yet. Part of it you already figured out yourself, that Wendy has been in more of a position of control than any of us ever thought. But there’s something else I’ve been considering.”

“And?”

“Don’t get me wrong. Wendy is a completely twisted psychopath. And yes, she’s a liar. But I’ve dealt with many psychos in my day, Ryan, and something about Wendy stands out. The woman is smart. Not just run-of-the-mill smart, but genius smart. When she lies, I’m pretty sure she lies on purpose. For a reason. She may play the crazy liar at times, but I think she always knows what she’s doing.”

I shook my head. “Honestly, baby, nothing would surprise me about the woman.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to discuss this with you before now.”

“It’s okay. We’ve all been busy. By the way, were you able to get a trace on the number of the text that warned you not to go home last night?”

“Unfortunately, no. It appears to have come from a disposable phone, which has, of course, disappeared into thin air.”

“At least that means it probably wasn’t my mother,” I said.

“Not necessarily. Your mother seems to know how to get what she wants. She could have easily gotten an orderly to smuggle in a disposable phone for her.”

“Shit.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “Just when I thought there might be something she isn’t responsible for.”

“The police were at my apartment today. Nothing seemed amiss. It could have been a hoax.”

“I don’t care. I want you here, where you’re safe.”

“I understand. One thing I’ve tried to pride myself on over the years is not doing stupid things.” She let out a nervous laugh. “You know, like driving a hundred and fifty miles an hour and then answering the phone.”

“Touché,” I said. “But I was—”

“It’s okay,” she interrupted. “I honestly get where you were coming from. Do you think I haven’t considered taking off? Just leaving all this shit behind? Believe me. I’ve been tempted more times than I can tell you.”

I forced out a laugh. “When I first became attracted to you, I never dreamed we’d have so much in common.”

“You mean DNA we wish we could escape?” She shook her head. “Neither did I.”

“You still think your father had something to do with Juliet and Lisa?”

She nodded. “Why else would he have called me and told me not to talk to Shayna? His involvement might be ancillary, but he’s in it somehow. And now that Wendy pretty much validated that they were in human trafficking, it makes even more sense.”

I guffawed.

“What?” she asked.

“Just the fact that you used the phrase ‘makes sense.’ As if any of this could actually make sense.”

She took a sip of her wine and smiled. “True enough. You deal with something for so long, and it begins to seem normal. I see it all the time in my work. Cops have to fight against that.”

I finished my wine and poured a glass. “We have to find your father, Ruby. And we have to find my father too.”