Chapter Two #2
But Travis wasn’t supposed to know that Brantley was running on the assumption that some crooked FBI agents were holding Kylie captive somewhere.
That wasn’t the information Brantley had given him to justify his crazy assumption.
No, that was the information Travis had gleaned from the electronic board in the conference room.
The one they probably didn’t want him to see.
But he’d seen it.
Now that he had, Travis couldn’t deny he had the urge to call Max, find out what the fuck the man knew.
He headed back toward the town proper, windows down so the cool breeze could clear his cluttered brain.
By the time he reached the house, he felt better.
Calmer, at least. There was still a burning sensation in his gut, the one that usually led to him going off half-cocked, but he was doing his best to ignore it.
As soon as he pulled into his driveway, he felt some of the stress lift. That was what happened these days when he came home to Gage and the kids.
When he stepped inside a minute later, he heard laughter coming from the kitchen. He followed the sound, eager to see his children, his husband.
“Hi, Daddy!” Avery shouted as soon as he walked into the room.
“Hi, Pop-tart!” Kade called, making Maddox laugh as he always did when Kade called him that.
“Hi, Pop-sicle,” Haden said, grinning from ear to ear.
The kids were experimenting with what to call them, insisting they both couldn’t be called Dad or Daddy. Because Travis referred to his own father as Pop, they were keeping along those lines for some reason.
“What’s for breakfast?” he asked, his gaze darting to Gage, hoping the man didn’t hear the tension in his voice.
Gage, leaning against the counter with a cup of coffee, met his gaze, held it. Yeah, he definitely heard it. The former police officer had damn good instincts.
“I’m havin’ cereal,” Avery supplied.
“Waffles!” Kade shouted with glee.
“Ceweal,” Haden offered.
“Where’s Kate?” Travis asked.
“In her woom,” Haden answered.
“Room,” Avery corrected. “R. Rrrrr. Ruh-ruh. Room.”
“Ruh-ruh-woom,” Haden mimicked.
The kids giggled.
“Have you checked on her?” Travis asked, moving closer to Gage.
He could feel his husband’s steady gaze as it caressed his face, an attempt to read his mind.
“I was about to.” Gage lowered his voice. “You okay?”
Travis shook his head. As much as he wanted to leave Gage out, to pretend not to have this potentially life-altering information, he knew he couldn’t.
They’d been through too much together, and though neither of them had gotten over losing Kylie, they’d found solace in one another.
They worked together as a unit, taking care of the kids and each other.
He owed it to Gage to be honest with him.
“You wanna talk about it?”
“Yeah. Let me check on Kate first.”
Gage sipped his coffee and nodded.
With the kids continuing to tease each other, Travis headed for the stairs. He heard Kade shout, “See ya later, Pop-corn!” causing more giggles. Travis couldn’t hide his smile as he ascended the stairs slowly.
When he reached Kate’s door, he knocked and waited for her to invite him in. That was one of her new rules. Evidently, when you were almost eight, you’d earned the right to have people knock. Or so she’d told them.
“Who is it?”
“Me,” Travis answered.
“Come in.”
He opened the door, then leaned a shoulder against the jamb, watching his daughter as she sat in her bed with her journal in her lap.
“Whatcha workin’ on?”
She didn’t spare him a glance, just kept writing. “I’m writin’ down my dream.”
That had become her thing for the past few months.
She claimed that it was important to write down dreams because they might come true if you did.
Travis didn’t have the heart to tell her that wasn’t possible.
Especially not since she continued to dream about her mother.
According to his cousin, Piper, the psychiatrist, it was normal for children to hold onto hope, and writing in a journal was a positive way for Kate to process the loss of her mother.
“What’d you dream about?”
“Mommy,” she said simply.
“Did she talk to you this time?”
Kate nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“What did she say?”
His daughter looked up, her brown eyes serious when she said, “She told me to hang on a little while longer.”
“Hang on for what?” he asked.
Kate put her pen on the paper again and shrugged. “I don’t know. She didn’t say.”
Well, that wasn’t helpful. The good thing was that Kate had weekly sessions with Piper, so Travis knew she would be getting the help she needed to get through this difficult time.
“You wanna come down for breakfast?”
Still not looking at him, she said, “In a minute.”
“All right.” Travis turned to leave.
“Shut my door, Daddy-O!”
Smiling, Travis reached back and grabbed the doorknob, pulling the door closed. He headed back down to his first-floor office, mentally preparing to tell Gage that Brantley and Reese thought their wife was alive.
While Brantley got coffee, Reese headed into the conference room and reviewed the timeline that Archer and Atticus had put together. He had to admit, there was a lot more information than he had initially anticipated. And not because he thought Archer and Atticus would slack off.
No, he honestly hadn’t thought there was that much information in the chaos that Holt had put together.
Seeing it now, it told a fairly decent story, starting back when Meredith Prescott and Decker Bromwell crossed paths when he was in the ninth grade.
It grew from there. They even had notes on the Adorites, including Samuel Adorite’s death.
What they didn’t have were Meredith’s whereabouts.
If he were a betting man, Reese would say she was no longer sitting in that New York brownstone watching someone else’s kid.
If there were a hint of truth to this theory, Meredith Prescott would’ve spent the past twenty years on the run, moving frequently to keep off the radar.
Now would be no different. While Decker claimed to know where she was, Reese wasn’t sure that was the case anymore.
Then again, if he did, the chances of him giving up her location were slim to none.
Which meant they needed to get a team on it soon.
“I think we need to go to Dallas and have a sit-down with Max Adorite,” Archer stated when Brantley joined them.
Or they could do that.
Reese accepted a cup of coffee when Brantley passed it over and waited for Archer to elaborate.
“We know that an FBI agent was blackmailing Meredith Prescott into testifying to a murder. What we don’t know is whether there’s any merit to the accusation. Just because she didn’t see it happen—according to Decker—doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
“And what?” Atticus grinned. “You just wanna walk up to a mob boss and ask him if he offed someone? I see that turnin’ out well.”
“I think that’s exactly what we’ll do,” Brantley stated.
Reese couldn’t help it, he grinned, hiding it behind his coffee cup. He could absolutely see Brantley confronting Max. The man was not the least bit intimidated by the notorious mob boss.
The problem was, perhaps he should be. While Max seemed like a laid-back kind of guy, he had a black heart.
His attempt to transition to legal activities after marrying Courtney hadn’t quite taken root.
Not entirely. From what Reese had heard, Max was actually in the process of solidifying his territory by restructuring his entire organization.
The news proclaimed the Southern Boy Mafia was on the verge of a turf war with Sabrina Moroso, and that rivalry had been strengthening ever since she killed her brother to take over as head of her family.
Whether it was accurate that they were at odds or merely speculation was anyone’s guess.
But Reese knew Max well enough to believe it was the former.
“When do we leave?” Simon asked, looking far too eager to sit down with the mob boss.
Brantley looked his way, and Reese knew he wasn’t hiding his anxiety well.
“I’ll do whatever’s necessary to get this closed,” Reese told him.
And he meant it. He didn’t look forward to confronting Max or potentially seeing Madison while he was there, but he would do it in order to get this over with.
Hell, he would walk through fire naked if it would get them one step closer to finding Kylie, provided she really was alive.
And no, Reese wasn’t sure he was buying all of it, but he had to admit, it didn’t sound quite as crazy to him as it probably should.
“It’s after eight, now. We’ll need a few hours,” Brantley told the room. “I’ll book the hotel and send you the location. Anyone wanna ride with us?”
Simon raised a hand. “I wouldn’t mind.”
“I’ll catch a ride with Atticus,” Archer said, looking at his partner. “If that’s cool with you.”
“Yup.”
“We need to be on the road no later than two,” Brantley said before looking at Reese. “You can call Max and get us a sit-down for tonight or first thing tomorrow.”
Reese nodded. He wasn’t eager to talk to Max, but as he said, he would do whatever was necessary to get through this.
“We’re gonna run by the hospital, see JJ and Baz,” Brantley told Simon. “We can swing by and pick you up when you’re ready.”
Simon nodded.
With that, Reese followed Brantley out of the barn, Tesha trotting beside them. He plastered on a neutral expression and pretended his stomach wasn’t twisting in knots. It would serve no purpose to let Brantley know he was already dreading this plan.
“I’m gonna shower before we go,” Brantley said when they walked into the house. “Join me.”
Reese closed the door and turned, expecting to see Brantley standing there, waiting for a response. But he wasn’t there. He was strolling across the living room.
Okay then. Clearly that was a command rather than a request.
“Now, Reese!” Brantley called when he turned down the hallway.
Evidently his husband was past the point of saying please. Or asking nicely.