Chapter 22 #2
“I need to know what happened with the woman in New York,” she said.
“Okay.” With shaking hands, I scrolled through my contacts and found my father’s name. I tapped it and raised the phone to my ear, holding my breath as it rang. My heartbeat was so loud and hard that I felt my pulse blast through my veins.
“Memphis,” he answered.
“What happened with the woman who was blackmailing you?”
“You made it clear that you didn’t care about the outcome. You had your chance—”
“My son is missing.” My voice cracked. “What happened? Please.”
“What do you mean, missing?”
“Just tell me!” I screamed the words, the hold on my sanity beginning to break.
Before I could hear my father’s response, Knox ripped the phone from my hand. “Talk. Now.”
A tear sped down my cheek as I stared up at Knox. His jaw ticked and his nostrils flared at whatever my father said. Then he dropped the phone from his ear and ended the call.
“What?”
“He refused to pay. Told her to fuck off. Hasn’t heard from her since.”
“Oh, God.” A hand flew to my mouth to hold in a sob.
How could I have been so foolish? In the past weeks, I’d let myself have hope. I’d let myself be blind. My father had never intended to help me. Not once.
I was about to crash to the sidewalk when a strong arm banded around my back, holding me up. “He called her bluff. And she called his.”
“Does he have a name?” Winn asked.
Knox shook his head. “No. He didn’t get one.”
“This is my fault,” I whispered. “I should have dealt with it myself.”
“No. This isn’t on you.” Knox took my face in his hands, his thumbs wiping furiously to dry the tears. “We made this decision together.”
“It was the wrong decision.”
The anguish on his face only made my tears fall faster. “I know.”
“What do we do? Where is he?”
“We’ll find him.” Knox pulled me to his chest, holding tight as he spoke to Winn. “What do we do?”
“I know you don’t want to hear this, but I need you both to wait.”
I growled into Knox’s chest, the terror morphing to frustration and despair. “I can’t sit in that car and do nothing. I can’t watch mothers walk into the center and pick up their children. I can’t.”
“Walk to town if you want,” Winn said. “But we’ve got a lot of people looking for Jill. I’ll check in with the team and be back with an update shortly.”
“Then let’s go.” He let me go and grabbed my hand, pulling me down the sidewalk as we set off toward Main.
My legs were stiff and wobbly over the first two blocks, but then they began to warm and my strides lengthened. We walked in silence but the dull scream in my head grew louder with each step.
If my father had no idea who the woman was who’d tried to blackmail him, there was one person who would.
I stopped so abruptly that my hand slipped from Knox’s firm grasp.
“What’s wrong?”
“We have to know who this woman was. Even if it’s not her, we have to know.” The time for burying my head in the sand was over. I’d made the mistake thinking that in Montana I was unreachable. Maybe this had nothing to do with the blackmail but I wasn’t going to take that chance.
“You’re going to call Oliver,” Knox guessed.
I nodded and dug out my phone, finding the number I’d hidden under a fake name.
“Yes,” he answered, his voice as cold as the winter air.
“Who knows about us?”
“No one.”
“Someone,” I corrected. “Because someone is trying to blackmail my family for money to keep my son’s paternity a secret. Who?”
“Shit,” he hissed.
“Who is it, Oliver?”
“I don’t know.”
My fury spiked. “Don’t you dare lie to me. This involves my son. I promised you I’d be quiet, I walked away, but you will tell me. Or my next phone call will be to your wife.”
“Do that and I will take your child.”
“You will never touch my son. I will use every dollar of my millions to ruin your life.” Whatever it took to keep Drake safe. If that meant doing my father’s bidding, so be it. “Who?”
The other end of the line went silent. So quiet I wasn’t sure if he was still there. But then he breathed and I knew he’d chosen self-preservation over his secrets. “No one knew about us.”
“Then why did the FBI stop by my house before I left the city? Someone has to know, Oliver. Who?”
There was a rustling noise in the background, then the closing of a door. “When did the FBI approach you? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We weren’t exactly on speaking terms. And I told them nothing.”
“What, exactly, did the FBI agent say?” There was an edge to his voice. Fear. Good. I was fucking terrified. He could be scared too.
“Nothing. The agent asked if I knew you. I told her I didn’t.” A half-truth. By that point, Oliver had been dead to me. “I didn’t realize you were being investigated.”
“I’m not.”
Liar. “If the FBI knows, then someone else does.”
“Maybe a friend of yours. Someone who’d know you had money and thought they could con you out of some.”
“No. I told you before I left, I didn’t tell anyone we were together.” Because he’d asked me not to. And I was a goddamn idiot.
“It certainly wasn’t me,” he said.
My free hand balled into a fist. “Other than your wife, who would care that I had your child?”
“It is not my wife.”
“Then who? Please?” I hated begging this man, but for Drake, I’d drop to my knees if that meant getting him home safe.
“It might be this woman I was seeing. We weren’t together long. Six months. My time with her began shortly after my time with you. She was . . . demanding.”
“You mean she knew you were married.”
“Yes,” he muttered.
“How would this woman know about me?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Unless she had me followed. I wouldn’t put it past her.”
He’d come to my townhouse twice after our breakup. Once, the night he’d asked me to forget his name. The night he’d offered me money. The night I’d told him about the baby. Then, just days later, he’d come to sign his parental rights away.
If she’d been following him, maybe she’d kept following me too. Out of jealousy? Spite? Curiosity? When I’d had Drake, she must have guessed that Oliver was the father.
“A name. Give me her name.”
“Averie Flannagan.”
“Averie Flannagan,” I repeated and Knox immediately took out his own phone, moving two steps away to call Winn.
“Goodbye, Oliver.”
“Memphis.” He stopped me before I could end the call. “This changes nothing.”
“Nothing,” I agreed and the line went dead.
Don’t give up.
We’d find Drake. We had to find Drake.
“Winn’s going to run her name,” Knox said. “See what she can find.”
“If she came to Montana, I doubt she would have stayed in Quincy. Maybe we should call some other hotels in the area.”
“There aren’t many. The closest is fifty miles away.
” He held up a finger and scrolled through his phone.
Then he dialed a number and pressed it to his ear.
“Yeah, hi. My name is Knox Eden. I’m the owner of The Eloise Inn in Quincy.
I had a guest who bailed on a room charge this week.
I’ve been calling around because I guess she’s done it to a few hotels in the area.
Any chance you’ve got an Averie Flannagan staying at your place? ”
There was a pause, then Knox clasped my hand and began marching down the sidewalk, retreating the way we’d come.
“No problem. Do me a favor, I’m going to call the local sheriff. Don’t let her know I called. Appreciate it.” He shoved his phone in his pocket and began to run.
Any other day and I’d have a hard time keeping pace, but adrenaline and fear had me matching his pace, stride for stride, as we sprinted for the daycare center.
We ran right for my car, Knox hollering to Winn as he opened the door. “There’s an Averie Flannagan staying at the Mountain Motel on the way to Missoula.”
Winn snapped her fingers at an officer and took off for her own SUV. “Follow us. Stay close.”
Knox whipped us out of the parking lot and when one of the cruisers tore away, with Winn right behind, he drove with white knuckles toward the highway.
The miles passed in a blur, but no matter how fast we drove, it wasn’t fast enough. My knees bounced. My stomach churned.
“This is my fault. I should have called Oliver sooner. At Thanksgiving.”
“No,” Knox said. “This woman is crazy. If she really took Drake, she’s crazy. You couldn’t have stopped this.”
“We could have paid her.”
“And she would have asked for money until we had nothing left to give.”
“What if she did something to him?” My voice was barely audible. “What if she hurt him?”
Knox didn’t answer. Probably because those same questions were in his mind.
So we drove in silence, speeding along the road, until a small, U-shaped motel came into view along the highway, tucked into a grove of evergreens.
I gasped. Three sheriff cars were in the parking lot, each with their lights flashing.
“Winn must have called it in.”
I refused to blink as we got closer and closer, until Knox slowed to ease off the highway.
An officer in a tan shirt and matching pants walked out of a room. Behind him, escorted by another cop in uniform, came a woman.
A blond woman about my height. Her hands were handcuffed behind her back.
“I know her.” I shook my head, hardly believing my own eyes. “That’s the FBI agent who came to talk to me.”
“What?” Knox said. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” What the hell?
Knox parked beside a car with New York plates. The moment the tires were stopped, I was out my door. The sound that greeted me when my foot hit the pavement was the best sound I’d heard all day.
A cry. From a little boy.
My little boy.
I took off running. So did Knox.
“Hold up.” An officer held up his hands to stop us but we pushed past him anyway just as Winn came striding out of the hotel room with Drake in her arms.
“Thank God.” I hauled him to my chest and burrowed my nose in his neck, peppering him with kisses. Then I felt over every inch of his body, making sure he was whole. “You’re okay.”
“He’s okay.” Knox wrapped his arms around us both, his cheek on Drake’s hair. “We found him.”
We found him.
“You’re never leaving my sight again,” I said, holding Drake tighter.
Knox and I clung to him, even as he wiggled and squirmed to be set free, only pulling away when a familiar voice carried from the hallway.
“I wouldn’t have let anything happen to him.
” Jill, handcuffed and being pushed out of the room by an officer, had tears streaming down her face.
The moment she spotted us, she froze. Her mouth opened and closed, like a fish out of water gasping for air.
But before she could speak or make some bullshit excuse, I spun with my son and strode toward the Volvo.
Knox wasn’t far behind.
Neither was Winn.
“Is there any reason we need to stay?” I asked her.
“No. Go home. We’re taking them both into custody and I’ll question them myself.”
“Thank you.”
She stepped closer, running a finger over Drake’s cheek. “Drive safely. I’ll see you soon.”
Knox put his hand on her shoulder, then he took Drake and buckled him in his seat.
I slid into the backseat, waiting for Knox to get behind the wheel.
He met my gaze in the rearview.
Then drove us home.