Heartless Legacy (Heartless Heirs of Canyon Falls #4)

89. Holden

Chapter 89

Holden

I watch as Thea leaves the table, dumping her half eaten tray of food in the trash. I’m on my feet, following behind her, ignoring the curious looks I get from Pax. I haven’t followed Thea in a few days. I’ve got some free time on my hands right now. My steps are silent as I trail her through campus, and through the brush behind the old groundskeepers’ shack, continuing a few miles to a torn down cathedral. She ducks inside the crumbled doorway and I inch closer, listening for footsteps.

“Did anyone follow you?” She asks.

“No.” The person she’s meeting answers. “I did exactly what you said, and I wasn’t followed.”

“Good. I really appreciate this. Thank you.”

“I should be thanking you. If you hadn’t helped me, I’d be heading to the guardians.” The person gives a nervous chuckle, then says, “Okay, so I’m not sure how much of what’s on here is real or if it’s all just the musings of an old woman. I tried asking the men in my family about their marriage contracts, but they didn’t really want to talk about it. No one did, except my great-great aunt and her friends and even they couldn’t all agree about their generation’s Trium or even the twelve families. I’m sorry, but they’re really old.”

Thea says, “Don’t apologize. Even if there’s nothing credible, I’m sure I’ll enjoy hearing the stories, just as much as they enjoyed telling them to you.”

This time the guy’s laugh is more genuine. “They did. I haven’t seen aunt Beth that lively in a very long time. We’ve all kind of assumed she’d be dying soon, but I guess she’s been depressed because nobody really goes to see her. I’m having tea with her again on Sunday, and I’m taking her for a drive. She wants to show me the house she grew up in.”

Neither of them walk back my way when they leave, so I don’t get a look at who Thea was meeting with or what he gave her. Whoever it was, was one of the amnesty prospects and in return for whatever Thea did for him, he’s asking about his family marriage contracts.

Basic contract information would be in the archives. So what else is she hoping to find out about the Trium and the other families?

Finn walks into my computer room and says, “We need to look into the Palm Springs police department.”

“Already working on it. Turns out the watch commander on duty for you was also on schedule the day Thea was arrested.”

Police Sergeant Zackery has a very colorful employment record and social media life. I pull up the information I found on him. Sergeant Zackery has been bouncing around police departments across the country for over a decade. He landed in California six years ago after he left the New York Police Department following an inquiry into a pattern of misconduct.

A young woman accused him of harassment after he pulled her over for a routine traffic stop. She alleges he pulled her over, citing she failed to stop at a stop sign. The complaint goes on to say he offered to let her off with a warning if she agreed to go on a date with him. He played it off as a joke when she declined his offer.

A week later, Zackery showed up at the coffee shop close to her campus. She dismissed the run in until she spotted him at her gym and at the nightclub she worked at. With each incident, he made it seem like running into her was a coincidence, but she grew increasingly uncomfortable. When she saw him outside her boyfriend’s house after his car was broken into, she filed an incident report accusing him of stalking.

I can appreciate being so invested in a woman that you follow them around, but even I know where the line is. Thea and I have an understanding, and I’m not a threat to her. This guy’s behavior was escalating and I’m glad the woman went to the cops.

That wasn’t the first complaint about Sergeant Zackery’s behavior, but it was the first one to reach Internal Affairs. The woman he stalked was the goddaughter of a decorated captain in the New York City Fire Department, who liked to have lunch with the deputy mayor of the city.

What eventually sent the good sergeant running was Internal Affairs, uncovering possible ties to the unsolved murders of sex workers in his precinct. A lot of them were women that he’d crossed paths with.

Finn whistles as he reads the file over my shoulder. “Seems like Zacky boy has a really nasty gambling habit.”

He’s maxed out his credit cards and his bank account struggles to maintain a positive balance, thanks to his affinity for spending money he doesn’t have. I’m sure he’s the one who was on that phone call I heard, and the payout he mentioned likely helped fund his habit.

If I can find out who Sergeant Zackery places his bets with, I can use that to pressure him into giving up information about the other people involved in Thea’s arrest and transfer to Rockridge. Finn hums as he sharpens his blade, while I go back to what I was doing before he showed up.

My dad has a lot on his plate and there’s only so much he can do as an FBI agent without breaking the law. I don’t know how deep he is into his investigation of the missing Rockridge patients Pax told us about. I’m hoping to find something that ties that place to the off books facility Thea burned to the ground. I just need to locate a weakness in Rockridge’s firewall.

I hover my pointer over the privacy policy link and click it. As I’m scrolling through the page, I see the word cookie has a hyperlink, and click on it just to be thorough. The webpage opens to the website editor. I change the page to html and read through the garbled letters and symbols. “ East coast site?”

“What was that?” Finn asks, briefly looking up from the spot he’s polishing on his knife.

“Have you ever heard of Rockridge having more than one site?”

“Nope. Just the one we don’t talk about. Home to our nearest and dearest problem children.”

I search through the code until I find a html link, which I copy and paste into another browser. “Then what’s this?”

He scoots his chair closer. “A business with a similar name?”

The name of the facility is Rock Mountain Psychiatric and Rehabilitation Facility. The website designer is the site administrator for both. It’s possible he could have mixed up the links.

“What’s that?” Finn asks, when I click on the community events tab.

“Just some article about arts and crafts the patients made. They were good enough to be donated to a school fundraiser.”

A knock sounds at my front door. Finn gets up to answer it and comes back with Thea in tow. She steps into my computer room, checking out the layout and picking up things without asking. I’m reminded of the time I came back and found all of my stuff unplugged and rearranged. I catch her eye and the sly smile on her lips, as if she’s remembering the same thing.

Finn steps up behind her, placing his chin against her shoulder. “If you’re here to case the joint, don’t bother. We don’t keep our challenge items around.”

She pats him on the cheek. “I wouldn’t waste my time on your challenge items. You have way more interesting things for me to play with.”

“Like my dick?” He asks like an eager puppy.

“Like those throwing stars you promised me, and if that was a lie, then I’m sure I can find something in your knife collection to amuse me. How do you feel about canary yellow?”

He looks torn between telling her she can do whatever she wants with his knives and threatening to stab her with them. I’m sure that was the point. I spin my chair around when she drifts closer to me. “If you unplug my computers, again, you’ll find yourself tied to my bed with the cords.”

“You think so?”

“I know, so . So unless you’re interested in acting out a captive kink, leave them alone.”

She chuckles, in that throaty way she has, and leans towards my desk, hand outstretched. She stops halfway, the amusement on her face shifting to shock, disbelief, then anger.

“Why the hell do you have a photo of my mother on your computer screen?”

Thea

I blink, thinking I have to be seeing things, but I’m not. There’s a photo of my mom just hanging out on Holden’s screen. I straighten, putting space between us, waiting for him to answer. “Start talking, Holden.”

He spins in his chair, and has the nerve to ask, “Where?” Like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

“I’m not in the mood for your games.”

“Who’s playing games? Which one is your mother?”

I jab the screen. “Her. The woman holding the paper mache elephant.”

He clicks the read more link under the photo. “Caroline Bochaump?”

“Hailee LaReaux!”

He slides his chair to the side and pulls me closer. “Look. The name on the article says Caroline Bochaump.” He’s staring at my profile as I read it for myself. “That’s your mother?”

He sounds sincere, and a bit confused about the whole thing. Turning to look at him, I ask, “Are you-. Did you really not know?”

Finn’s moved closer. He asks, “How would we know? The only mother of yours we’ve ever met is Moira.”

My anger deflates, just to be replaced by bitter heartache as I stare at my mom’s beautiful face. Touching the screen, I whisper, “Mama.”

I can’t believe I’m looking at a picture of her. The photo was taken after the last time I saw her. She didn’t have that tattoo on her hand before.

“Where is this?” When neither of them answers, I repeat. “Where was this photo taken?”

As always, it’s Holden who breaks the bad news, no matter how painful it might be to hear. “It was at a rehabilitation and treatment facility in Connecticut.”

I grab the mouse, zooming in on the photo. Rock Mountain Rehabilitation and Treatment Facility. The name is a dead giveaway. “It’s a league owned facility, isn’t it?”

“We believe so.” Finn’s knife is out, as if there’s a threat ready to spring out of the computer. “We literally just stumbled across this hospital’s connection to Rockridge, right before you knocked on the door.”

“Can you access patient records to see-” I swallow thickly, and push down the feelings threatening to spill out of my mouth. Now is not the time to get emotional. “Can you see if she’s still there or get a record of her time there?”

Holden clicks through screens and brings up a prompt box. He types so fast and clicks so much, I can’t follow what all the strings of code, numbers and symbols say. “Their files are behind a firewall that seems impenetrable.”

“You can’t get through?”

He looks over at me, a half smile on his face. “I said it seems impenetrable. I’ll get in. I just need some time.”

I hate the look in mom’s eyes. So eerily familiar to the one I sometimes see when I look too long in the mirror. The longer I look at the photo, the more the reality of the situation sinks in. After my mother left me, she either ran or was dragged to the other side of the country. Either way, at some point, she was in a league facility.

“I’m not getting any hits on the name Caroline Bochaump anywhere in Connecticut.”

I’ve been telling myself she’s dead. I made peace with that. Looking at this photo and being confronted with the possibility that she’s alive opens a crack in my heart. “You didn’t get any hits on my name either. You wouldn’t if someone was intentionally hiding her.”

Like they did me, burying her identity so deep to keep her under their control or to sell her off to someone else. Malcolm took me. He could’ve taken her too.

Holden says, “Once I get the patient records, I’ll dig into the families’ names that are sponsoring them.”

Finn asks, “What are you over there plotting, Pet?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“That’s right. No plotting is happening.” That’s because I already have a plan.