Chapter 37
Singing River Hospital
They had moved her mother to a private room in anticipation of Adeline’s arrival. She appreciated not having to go to the morgue to do this.
Adeline’s lips quivered.
Her mother was dead.
“You want me to go in there with you?”
She peered up at the man standing next to her. The sadness in his eyes tore at her already broken heart. Wyatt had always loved her mother. Had checked on her often; Irene had told Adeline so. This was hard for him, too.
Dragging in a breath for courage, Adeline shook her head. “I need to do this in private.”
Wyatt pulled her into his arms, held her tight to his chest. “I understand.” The softly spoken words reverberated against her temple. “I’ll be right out here if you need me.”
“Okay.” She pulled away from his strong arms and faced the door that stood between her and her mother’s body.
Her mother had always been there for her. No matter what happened and no matter how far Adeline had run. She had been able to count on her mother when and if she needed her.
How could she be gone?
Adeline reached out and opened the door.
Her hand shook. She wanted to back away.
To deny this awful truth. No. She would not be a coward.
Her mother deserved every ounce of courage Adeline could muster.
The son of a bitch who’d done this had to be stopped.
Adeline wanted his ass so bad it hurt. She would make him pay.
Stepping into the room, she closed the door behind her and leaned against it. Before attempting to move toward the bed, she took a good long look.
Her mother looked peaceful. The sheet was folded down at her shoulders, wasn’t covering her face. Somehow she found comfort in that insignificant detail.
Potassium chloride. The bastard had killed her mother using the same technique he’d used in Laurel on the cop. Same one he’d tried to use to kill his wife, but the smaller dosage had allowed his wife to pull back from the edge.
They hadn’t been able to pull Irene back. Maybe because of the recent heart attack. Maybe because of her age. She hadn’t responded to the attempts to resuscitate her.
Now she was gone. And the bastard who’d done this had just walked away. The hospital’s CCTV had shown him walking out an exit and then walking across the parking lot to God only knew where . . . just as he’d done in Laurel.
Adeline banished the thoughts as she pushed away from the door and walked to the bed. Tears blurred her vision and she swiped them away with the back of her hand.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” Adeline’s face crumpled with the agony flooding her. “I should have figured this out before now. I shouldn’t have been so stupid.”
She reached beneath the sheet and took her mother’s cold hand in hers. An aching sob expanded in her throat. This wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.
“Anyway.” Adeline cleared her throat. “He won’t get away with hurting you like this. I’ll stop him. I promise.”
The idea that her mother might have survived this attack if she hadn’t had that heart attack—if Adeline hadn’t stressed her out—had more of those hot tears streaming down her cheeks.
She’d always been a bad daughter. Her parents had deserved far better.
Adeline shouldn’t have left nine years ago. She should have told Cyrus to go screw himself and stayed right here with her mother.
Selfish. That was what Adeline had been. She’d been a selfish, indifferent daughter and now her mother was dead because of her.
I will get you, you bastard. Wherever Daniel Jamison went, whatever he did, Adeline would find and stop him.
Leaning down, she kissed her mother’s forehead. “I love you.” She bit back more of the tears, steadied her voice. “No one else could have been a better mother. I will always be your little girl. Yours and daddy’s.”
She fingered the edge of the sheet, told herself to go ahead and cover her mother’s face. It was time. There was nothing more Adeline could do here. Nothing else to say.
Getting the bastard who’d done this was all that mattered now.
Raised voices outside the room drew Adeline’s attention to the door. Hope pushed aside some of the pain in her chest. Maybe they’d found that son of a bitch. She stormed across the room and jerked the door open.
Wyatt stood between the door and Cyrus.
Adeline looked past Wyatt, the agony inside her instantly morphing into white-hot fury. “What do you want?” Wyatt stepped fully aside, allowing Cyrus to feel the full brunt of her glare.
Cyrus hiked up his chin and glared right back at her. “I want to see her.”
“I told him to leave,” Wyatt explained. “I can call security.”
Unable to shift her gaze from Cyrus’s, she could have sworn that for a single moment she’d seen misery in those beady brown eyes. Whatever she’d thought she saw, it cleared in one blink and was immediately replaced by the condescension she’d always associated with the man.
“Addy,” Cyrus said sternly, though his voice trembled ever so slightly, “I have the right to see her. Call security if you’d like, but I will not leave without seeing her.”
His man Everett hovered a few feet away. Adeline braced for war. No way was she letting this old bastard anywhere near her mother.
She opened her mouth to say as much but swallowed back the words. Her mother wouldn’t approve of her acting this way. Cyrus Cooper, bastard though he was, was still family.
“All right.” Adeline backed into the room, opened the door wider to facilitate the wheelchair’s entrance. When Wyatt sent her a questioning look she just shook her head. This was something she couldn’t exactly explain.
Adeline closed the door and moved to the side of the bed opposite Cyrus’s position. He stared at Irene for a long moment, then redirected his attention to Adeline. “Are they any closer to finding the animal who did this?”
A moment was required for her to set aside the years of animosity she’d felt for this man. She was doing this for her mother. “Yes,” she finally said. “We know who he is now. We’ll get him.” Her attention settled on her mother once more. “Soon. I won’t stop until I find him.”
“When you find him,” Cyrus said, drawing her contemplation back to him, “I want you to kill him.”
There was something in his eyes. An agony that nearly matched Adeline’s.
He was dead serious. “I’m . . .” She swallowed with difficulty, her emotions vacillating between disgust and empathy.
“I’m a cop, old man. Not an assassin.” She resisted the urge to reassure him about her objective.
She had every intention of killing the bastard. In the line of duty, of course.
“Not just one shot,” Cyrus cautioned, as if she hadn’t spoken at all. “Keep shooting until there’s no question he’s dead.”
Bewildered by the strange tension vibrating between them, Adeline dragged her focus away from Cyrus and back to her mother.
She smoothed her hand over her hair. She wasn’t giving the old bastard the satisfaction of seeing in her eyes that she would like nothing better than the opportunity to carry out his suggestion.
That was wrong. It wasn’t a suggestion, it was an order.
The kind he’d been giving his whole life.
The same kind that people around here had been jumping through hoops to follow.
“She loved you more than anything in this world,” he said quietly.
Adeline didn’t need him to tell her that. “But she stayed here when I begged her to join me in Huntsville.” She knew damned well her mother had loved her despite the frustrating decision. Mainly Adeline just wanted to defy anything he said.
Cyrus didn’t speak again for a while, just stared at Irene as if by sheer force of will he could change this reality. Even Cooper law couldn’t resurrect the dead.
“That was my doing.”
More of the disgust she always felt in his presence settled in Adeline’s stomach. “What does that mean?”
“It’s a long story,” Cyrus said, his voice weak, distant. “And complicated. You wouldn’t understand.”
What the hell? Adeline had tolerated about as many secrets and lies as any one person could be expected to stomach. It was past time for the whole truth. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Cyrus met her glare with an uncharacteristic softness. “Your mother and father dated for two years before they married.”
“I knew that.” Adeline had no idea what he was getting at. She was tired. The pain had settled into a dull ache. She had no patience for listening to a pointless story. Particularly from this man. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Your father and I . . .” The old bastard sighed. “We sort of competed for Irene’s affections. We both loved her.”
Oh yeah, right. “My mother would never love you,” she countered, allowing him to feel every ounce of disdain his claim elicited.
No way was she going to listen to this kind of crap.
She shouldn’t have let him in here. The ache in her chest protested with another harsh wave of pain.
She’d done this for her mother . . . arguing with him was wrong under the circumstances.
Just hear him out. She gave him her attention once more.
“Why are you telling me any of this? It’s irrelevant. ”
Incredibly, Cyrus nodded as if he agreed with her assertion. “I longed for her to choose me, but she loved your father. And I wasn’t about to try and take that from him. He’d suffered so much his entire life. I just wanted him to be happy.”
The polio. Adeline blinked, remembering.
Her father had suffered with polio as a child.
He’d been a fine, strong man when Adeline was growing up but his childhood and teen years had been very different.
She remembered hearing her mother say that Cyrus had always looked out for his little brother, especially while they were growing up.
Adeline had never known that side of her uncle.
Didn’t really believe it existed even now.
“I accepted your mother’s decision, but I . . .” Cyrus’s gaze rested on Irene then. “I never stopped loving her.”