Again I sat in the place I most didn’t want to be. The visitor’s room at psych lockup, facing my mother. I didn’t expect to be any more successful getting answers, but I had to try.

“Where’s my father?”

“I’ve already told you. I don’t know.”

“Mother, you promised to be truthful with me, so let me be truthful with you. I don’t believe that you don’t know where my father is.”

“I don’t. He calls me when he needs to.”

“Then the hospital should have a record of his calls coming in.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Or does he call you on a cell phone?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“You’re not supposed to have access to cell phones here, but clearly you’ve been able to find one when you needed.”

“But how could I find one to get an incoming call?”

“Exactly.” Of course, I wouldn’t put anything past her. She might have a contraband cell phone hidden somewhere here. “So I’m sure you have no problem if I ask the hospital to see the record of incoming and outgoing phone calls.”

“I certainly wouldn’t have any problem with you doing that, darling. But those are private records. You won’t be able to get access.” She smiled eerily.

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Of course I would be able to. Money talked.

“I do miss him, your father.”

So do I. The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t say them. I had spent many years missing my father. Now, I didn’t even know him anymore.

“I’m sure you do, he being your soul mate and all.” I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes.

“I wish I could make you understand what your father and I mean to each other,” she said.

“I’ve asked you many times, Mother. Please. Help me understand.”

“I don’t think anyone can understand what it means to be a soul mate unless he or she has experienced that type of connection himself. Tell me, Ryan. Is that the type of connection you have with your police detective?”

No way in hell was I discussing my relationship with Ruby with this woman. “We haven’t been together long enough to know yet, Mother. Why don’t you tell me what kind of relationship you and my father have?”

She closed her eyes and smiled dreamily. Eerily dreamily. “It was a connection on all levels. Physical. Mental. Emotional. Spiritual. Even transcendental.”

“Transcendental? Are you telling me that you and my father existed on some alternate plane in the universe?”

She opened her eyes. “Sometimes it felt that way. Yes.”

Again, I had to keep from rolling my eyes.

“All right. What exactly do you mean by that?”

“That it was meaningful. We hungered for each other in a physical way. But it was so much more than that. We coveted each other.”

I had to stop myself from wanting to vomit. Thinking of my father and this woman together, knowing what I knew about her, made me want to be violently ill. And the fact that their union resulted in me…

I swallowed. “Why didn’t you get together then?”

“I moved away with my family after my sophomore year in high school. Even though we were separated, we wrote to each other, saw each other when we could. There was always a heat between us. An ache for each other. We couldn’t be in the same room together without ripping each other’s clothes off.”

That was a lie. Growing up, I had seen Wendy and my father together. She had come around occasionally. She’d even come around after my father had allegedly died. She was the one who had helped us keep Talon’s heroics overseas out of the mainstream media.

I said only, “Okay.”

“We had a love like ones you only read about. Like Romeo and Juliet.”

“Romeo and Juliet both ended up committing suicide,” I said.

“Still, we were like that. Star-crossed lovers.”

“Why did my father marry Daphne then? If he was in love with you, why didn’t he just pay her child support and not marry her?”

“Because Bradford Steel is a man of honor. He lived up to his responsibilities.”

A man of honor? I’d once thought so. No longer. “Did you ask him to stay with you?”

“I didn’t have to. I knew him well enough to know that he would do what he had to do. We were both seeing other people at that time.” She shook her head, rolling her eyes. “Daphne was never Brad’s type.”

“They always seemed happy enough to me.”

“How can you say that? You were only nine when she died. What could a nine-year-old possibly know about love and happiness?”

Enough was enough. “I know more about love and happiness than you possibly could, Mother.”

“Do you expect me to get upset? How could I? I only wanted a life of love and happiness for you, my darling son. I wanted only the best for you. Your father was the best.”

“Was it truly love you felt for my father?” I asked. “Or was it obsession?”

She smiled, the eerie smile I had come to know. “My dear, is there really any difference? What is love, anyway? What is obsession?”

I sighed, raking my fingers through my hair. “Please, Mother. Please help me find my father.”

“Why is that so important to you?”

“How can you ask me that? Because he’s my father, for God’s sake. Because he owes me a goddamned explanation for what has become my life.”

“Ryan,” she said seriously. “Please be careful what you wish for. I adore your father. He is everything to me. But he’s brought a lot of pain into my life as well. He married someone else. I had to give up my son for him. That’s the kind of deep connection your father and I have. I did whatever he asked. All because of the love I felt for him. The obsessive, coveting love.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “Sometimes the things we covet are the things that destroy us.”