Chapter 82
She’d been there before. Hope stood inside the Barratts’ home and just looked around.
Talk about expensive.
Technically, her niece Cara was right. Under the Texas penal code, Alex and the trio of limo drivers he’d shown up with to collect them had abducted Cara. At least, Alex had—when he’d scooped Cara over his shoulder and carried her to the limo he’d ridden in on.
They’d been babysitting—Miguel’s kids and Sam’s bestie Mora’s. Alex had had her mom on the phone—and they’d been told to go with Alex to a safe place, and her mom would explain when she got there. But…they’d already been in the limo at the time they’d heard from her mom.
Some of them hadn’t wanted to get in those limos. Hope had been one of them. So…kidnapping? Coercion? Maybe.
Only Cara had protested after that. It was that whole problem with Alex thing Cara had going on. But Alex hadn’t really given Cara much choice, either. Family loyalty meant they all had to be on Cara’s side. At least until they knew why they were here and everything.
The entire place was opulent. No denying that. Of course, the guy was a billionaire. It seemed weird that their neighbor was related to a billionaire. Billionaires had an entirely different kind of life.
Hope didn’t remember the time when her own family was rich.
She knew they had been—she had very vague memories of the house they had lived in.
Coleson Manor. Now, all she had seen were pictures her Bonnie-mom had in a handful of albums. There weren’t many.
Hope used to pore over them—looking at pictures of her parents, before they had died.
She really wished she remembered them better than she did.
Her arms tightened around the little girl in her arms. Emilia Rose could get heavy, but Hope didn’t mind. And she wouldn’t tell anyone that.
She was still weak. The bullet hadn’t caused that much damage, but the heart attack after sure had. She was getting better. That counted for something. Emilia Rose had fallen asleep in the limo ride over.
Now they all stood in the entrance to this place.
“Is it a castle?” Raine asked. She reached up and tucked her hand into Hope’s hip pocket.
She did that sometimes, when she felt nervous.
She was the most anxious of Miguel’s children.
Jago was the most adventurous. Hope looked at that little monster, just to make sure he wasn’t already causing havoc.
He just gave her an angelic smile—looking like a miniature version of his father, in that moment—and stood there, holding her nephew Nicholas’s hand.
No, those two little monsters weren’t fooling Hope. There wasn’t anything diabolical that she hadn’t tried herself at some point before.
Still, she was exhausted.
But that was going to remain her little secret. “It’s…a…yes, I guess it is kind of like a castle. The lady who lives here, she used to be a cop like your daddy and Aunt Heather. Then she married Neighbor Alex’s cousin and moved here to live with him.”
“Oh.” Raine looked up at her, that nervous look in her big brown eyes that made Hope want to just scoop her up and hold her. “Do they have any little girls?”
“No. But I think there is a little boy here.”
“Oh. No girls. Me play with Milan and Frankie and Nalla then.”
“That sounds like a good idea. You can play with Milan and Frankie and Nalla until Daddy comes to get you.”
She would kind of like Raine’s daddy to get there and just explain to Hope what was happening and everything. All she knew was that a bunch of limos from this place had shown up at her house, and collected them all like Pokemon cards. And now they were here.
And…all she knew was that it had something to do with Heather.
Hope was trying not to freak out again. But somehow, it was always Heather.
She had sent everything she had collected in the last fourteen months to Madison’s server. And they had discussed what she had found long into the night that night. Everyone knew now.
It did feel like some of burden had been lifted off her shoulders, though. She didn’t have a secret any longer. Someone who actually went after the bad guys had it now.
And it wasn’t her sister.
Yes, she was happy about that, too. Major Crimes knew. And that meant they could protect Heather.
That was all Hope had really wanted.
“So…what exactly is going on?” Hope asked.