“Call the house! Carly...” My head was spinning. “Carly...she said...”
What the fuck was I doing, talking to him? I dropped him and called the house.
“You’ve reached–”
I cut Laureen off before she could finish. “Get Carly! I have to talk to her.”
My stomach twisted even as I spoke.
“Bobby?” Laureen’s voice had a bad, quavering vibe. “Is that you?”
“Get her, Laureen.”
Voices were starting to rumble around me.
“She’s not feeling well, sir. She had...she had one of her migraines and I...um, well, I had her lie down. Nobody is to disturb her–”
I lowered the phone, staring at Ryan. “She left the house, Ry.”
***
If ever I’d wished to be able to split myself in two, it was now. Part of me needed to be able to focus on what was going on here and now with Haley Haskell, the blonde-haired child who had my mouth and my nose, and apparently hated lima beans with the same passion I did. Her real father was full of stories that made my chest ache.
“Okay, now if anybody calls...”
I listened with half an ear to everything the techs were saying. More than ever, I appreciated the fact that I had been born with a halfway decent brain. It also made me wish I’d appreciated it sooner, that I’d done something better with my life, something that would have kept me from ending up in a place that endangered my daughter.
My phone buzzed and I grabbed for it. Carly had hung up on me after I told her to haul her ass back to the house.
Haley wasn’t the only one who was in danger thanks to me. I couldn’t imagine my life without Carly, but if I’d just gone a different way that day, she wouldn’t be out there on the road, in harm’s way because of me.
I swiped my thumb across the screen, the image of Carly’s face already burned across the surface of my memory.
“Go back home,” I said, my voice ragged.
“If you’d done that from the beginning, pretty boy, none of this would have happened.”
Ice spilled through my veins at the sound of Ridley’s voice.
Ridley.
Motherfucker.
Slowly, I stood up.
“Where’s Carly?”
“What the fuck is she doing away from the house, Bobby? Why’d you guys let her leave?” he demanded.
It scared me shitless, that question. Because he wasn’t angry. His voice was shaking.
“Where is Carly?”
“She’s...” His voice trailed off. Then, after a couple seconds, he cleared his throat. “She’s in the back of my SUV. She’s fine. But...I had...I had to knock her out, Cantrell. Why’d you guys let her leave?”
“We didn’t let her do shit,” I growled, turning my head to see Ryan moving closer. Automatically, I angled the phone so he could listen in. They were supposed to be tapping my phone now, but I wasn’t about to take any chances that they hadn’t started recording yet.
“She left. And for the fucking record, Ridley, it’s your fault. Something you did made her think you needed to be followed,” I said. Even as the words left my mouth I realized it was the wrong thing to say.
I knew Ridley had a thing for Carly, that his reason for hating me was because she’d chosen me and not him. He would never think anyone was worthy of her. Up until this moment, however, I’d thought he’d be more the type to throw me in front of a bullet instead of kidnapping Carly. Now I saw his attraction was really obsession, and that meant Carly had gone from being protected by him to needing protection from him.
Ryan closed his eyes and shook his head.
On the other end of the line, Ridley shouted, “It’s your fault, you lousy fucking con! If you hadn’t gone sniffing after her like she was some bitch in heat...she’s always falling for pathetic, miserable pieces of shit like you!” His voice hitched and he swore. “But that doesn’t matter now. This got out of hand. Listen to me. You fucked up and now you have to fix it.”
If I could have reached through the phone and strangled him, I would’ve done it without a second thought. Since that wasn’t an option, I closed my hand into a fist, squeezed it until my knuckles popped. “And how do I do that, Ridley?”
“Go to your house.” That word was filled with bitterness. “You took off to Monterey, and you saw the news report. I guess Ryan finally decided to fill you in. I asked Carly, but she was too busy yelling at me...you...” He hesitated and then in what sounded like sheer bravado, he demanded, “You know about your kid, right? That girl Carly was so pissed off about? It’s your own precious little girl, Cantrell. Seems like somebody decided to make you pay for killing that guy and he grabbed your little girl. You want to make it right? Here’s your chance.”
“I already know about Derrell Mitchell, Ridley. He was caught on a gas station security camera.”
Three hours south...
With a grim realization, it hit me that the gas station was probably one of the ones on the highway leading up to the turn-off to the house Jake had left me.
Somebody held up a piece of paper in front of me.
Keep him talking.
I lifted my gaze up and met Tuite’s eyes. His gaze was hard as stone. He didn’t like me, but he wanted to get Haley back, so he’d work with me. I nodded my understanding.
“A couple hours away from Monterey, Ridley. You know what’s a couple hours away from here, man? The house. That’s where I’m supposed to be going now. Why don’t you tell me where the hell you are, where you’re taking Carly?”
“She’s...” He stopped and cleared his throat again. “Look, man. He doesn’t want them. I know that. He just wants you. He wants you to hurt, like he’s hurt. Just get to the house. You have to do it fast too. Don’t go letting the cops know or anything.”
I rolled my eyes at that. I was surrounded by cops.
“You hear me?” Ridley demanded. “He even gets a glimpse of a cop, anybody other than you, and he’ll hurt the kid. I...look, man. I never wanted the kid to get hurt. He just...he wanted something that would get to you, and I knew when I heard Carly talking to Ryan about your girl that you cared about her. I figured that would...”
I was going to kill him. It didn’t matter what happened to me after. I was going to kill him.
“He isn’t going to hurt her,” Ridley kept going.
“You trying to convince me of that?” I asked him softly. “Or yourself?”
“Just get there, okay?”
“And what are you going to be doing?” I asked, turning back to look at the room.
My gaze lingered on Tuite and then Ryan. Getting away from this many cops wouldn’t be easy. Getting to the house that was nearly three hours away from here without a car, without getting arrested...yeah. That was a problem. But I’d do it. To save Haley, I’d do anything. I owed her that.
“I’m meeting up with him.”
“You...” I sucked in a breath. “Carly’s with you!”
“I know. But if I don’t show up...look. I have to go. Carly isn’t going to wake up for a while and I...just get there.”
He ended the call.
The phone fell from my numb hand to bounce off the carpet as I looked up at Ryan. My entire world was going to be at that house, at the mercy of two men who wanted to see me hurt.
My eyes met Ryan’s. “What am I supposed to do?”
***
It was a quiet, tense ride back in the plane.
Another larger plane was flying the rest of the team down, or so I’d been told. Some of them were probably already on the road, driving. The trip could be made in three hours. If you obeyed the speed limit. Cops didn’t have to worry about that so much, so I was thinking they could get there in almost two.
We’d gone over everything three times now and Tuite was going over it with me a fourth when I turned my back on him and stared out the window. I was ready for him to bust my ass, but to my surprise, he lapsed into silence.