Chapter 30 #3
He was now sitting in prison for life, cultivating the groupies that had followed Wade Bryson, and getting love letters from women who thought he was handsome and simply misunderstood.
It made Brianna sick to her stomach to even think about it.
Turning on her heel, she marched down the hall to the conference room where her father and uncles were having a meeting. The same meeting she’d been reviewing the budget for, in fact.
Her dad and uncles didn’t come into the office every day. They were starting to work toward their retirement, cutting their hours little by little. At most, they worked one or two days a week, and only in an administrative capacity. They’d given up field work years ago.
Opening the door to the conference room, she could see them gathered around the table. Her father, Logan, was there, of course, then Uncle Jared, Uncle Jason, and Uncle Reed. They were all drinking coffee and had dug into the platter of donuts in the middle of the table while laughing and talking.
She placed the file folder she’d been carrying on the desk along with her coffee cup. Four smiling men turned her way, apparently having no idea what subject she was about to bring up.
They all greeted her warmly, and her father reached out to place his hand on hers for a moment.
She’d talked to him about hugging her too much in the office or calling her sweetheart or kitten in front of the other employees.
They might all know she was a nepotism hire, but she didn’t want to remind them too often.
Luckily, she’d earned the respect of most of her co-workers. The others? She didn’t worry about them. They probably would never respect her, no matter how well she did.
“We need to talk about next quarter’s budget,” she said without preamble, flipping the folder open.
Four smiling faces immediately turned serious, shooting glances at one another.
Yep, they’d all known. Not just her dad.
“Did you actually think you could slip this in and I wouldn’t notice?”
Their identical guilty faces told the tale. Yes, they had thought that.
Her gaze went from man to man and finally to her dad.
“I think I’ve earned the right to know what’s going on.”
This was one subject she wouldn’t let him get away with anything. She’d had far too many sleepless nights, nightmares, and general trauma to deal with in her life to make it easy for him.
“You have,” he said, his voice quiet in the room. “And I was going to tell you. I didn’t think you’d find out so quickly.”
Her uncles weren’t talking, and she had a feeling they’d all discussed this before and made the executive decision that Logan would take the lead.
And she didn’t like that thought at all. They’d been talking about her when she wasn’t there.
“Well, I did, so here we are. So, I’ll just ask straight out.
Why are we closing the Bryson investigation?
Are we truly not going to keep an eye on the daughters anymore?
Who made that insane decision?” She searched the faces of the dearest men she’d ever known.
She trusted them with her life. “Who did this? And why? Why on earth?”
Jared gave her father a look and shook his head slightly.
“They’re gone again,” Jared said. “Up in the middle of the night and left. We haven’t been able to find their trail.”
“They’re getting better at it,” Reed replied. “They gave no sign at all that they were going to do it. They were there at midnight and gone by three in the morning. They left pretty much everything behind. I’m guessing they already have new identities and hair colors.”
The room spun, and Brianna had to suck oxygen into her lungs.
It had been one of her greatest fears all these years that the two daughters had inherited their family’s murderous ways.
It had also been a comfort when she found out that her dad and uncles had kept a loose eye on the Brysons, trying to keep tabs on them as much as possible without camping a team on their front lawn.
“They’re gone? You have no idea where they are?”
“None,” her father confirmed. “We haven’t given up, but right now, we have nothing to put a full-time person on. This is something we’ll work on personally.”
“Their car?” she asked hopefully. “Traffic cameras didn’t catch their escape?”
Jason scratched at his chin, his expression sober.
“Brianna, honey, they didn’t escape anything. They’ve done nothing wrong, and they’re not prisoners. They’re free to live their life just as we are. And when we say they left it all behind, they left everything, including their cars, their clothes, and pretty much all of their belongings.”
“Then how did they leave? Do they have credit cards? Can’t we track those?”
“Bus?” Reed replied. “Maybe a friend helped? Maybe they had another car parked around the corner? We’ve checked traffic cameras in the area. This isn’t their first time disappearing, and I doubt it will be their last. Poor girls. They just want to live their life in peace.”
“You don’t know that,” Brianna said sharply, her head swiveling toward her uncle. “You can’t possibly know that.”
“You’re right,” Reed conceded. “I can’t know it one hundred percent, but damn, all this time these women have done nothing illegal, not even a parking ticket.
Every couple of years, they have to give up the lives they’ve created and any friends and move on.
Get new names and new jobs. That cannot be easy.
In a way, they’re just as much victims. Yes, they’re alive, and a lot of people aren’t, but they’re barely living. I’d call it existing, to be honest.”
“We’ll find them again,” her father assured her. “It will just take time.”
“And until then what?” Brianna asked, her voice higher and more panicked. She wanted to jump out of her skin. Didn’t they see this was bad? This wasn’t good at all. “We just sit around and wait for one of them to slit our throats like—”
She broke off then, choked with too much emotion. Images from the past crowded her head, making it hard to think clearly. That day…
The horror of it all. She still remembered the copper smell heavy in the air. Tanner and her dad had never let her see Katie’s body, but she’d smelled the blood and seen the blood-soaked sheet. Later, she’d read the police report. Jake Bryson had slashed Kate’s neck.
His own sister.
How many nights had she woken up screaming, covered in sweat, smelling that same scent? She’d stumble to a window and push it open, gulping in fresh air no matter the temperature outside to clear her lungs as tears ran down her cheeks.
She’d see Jake Bryson’s face, hear his voice. She’d be transported back to that room in that house in Florida, handcuffed to a chair. Helpless.
Like it just happened yesterday.
Her fingers automatically moved to the scar on her arm where he’d cut her. She’d been sure she was going to die right along with her dad.
She could still see the hate in Jake Bryson’s eyes. He’d hated her. He’d hated pretty much everyone, and he hadn’t felt any remorse about the people he’d killed. None.
He still didn’t have any.
“We’ll find them again,” her father repeated, his tone firm. “This has happened before, you just didn’t know about it because you were too young. We’ll find them again. They’ve disappeared before, and it takes a little while to track them down, but we always do.”
Taking a few slow breaths, she forced herself to nod in agreement even as a voice in her screamed that this wasn’t right.
“What if you don’t track them down this time?”
She was proud of how even her question came out, how devoid of strong emotion she sounded.
Almost like a regular, normal person. Not one haunted with nightmares.
“We always do,” Jason replied. “They use variations of the same aliases each time, among other things. In this world we live in, it’s almost impossible to live offline, although they’ve done a pretty decent job so far. It’s only a matter of time.”
“I’m just going to ask the question out loud,” Reed said, leaning forward. “Brianna, do you feel unsafe? We can put a security detail on you, if it would make you feel better.”
It wasn’t that she was scared. That wasn’t it.
In her day-to-day life, she didn’t feel threatened or frightened.
She didn’t think that the Bryson daughters were out there plotting her demise.
It was simply what they represented. When her dad kept an eye on them, it felt like something was within her control.
It was something she could count on in an unpredictable world.
It was at night, when she was sleeping, that it was the worst. When her brain would dig up all the horror and make her relive it over and over, sometimes with far more violent variations. Some dreams didn’t have happy endings.
“No, I don’t need a security detail,” she finally answered. “I’m not scared. I’m simply concerned about the situation.”
“We have it personally in hand,” her dad replied. “Please trust us with this. We won’t let anything happen to you or anyone, for that matter.”
She knew that. Her father would die before letting anyone get close to his wife, family, or friends.
“I know,” she said, flipping the folder closed. “I was simply taken off guard when I saw the budget. But now that I know you’ve taken this on yourselves, I don’t need to worry about it.”
“I should have told you sooner, sweetheart,” her father said. “I’m sorry about that. I dropped the ball on this. I forgot that you’d see the quarterly budget this morning.”
“He was planning on telling you,” Reed piped up. “He was going to invite you to lunch today.”
That sounded like her dad. Tell her bad news while plying her with milkshakes and cheeseburgers, as if she were still a teenager. Hell, it might have even worked.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said, forcing a smile at her father. “You can still take me to lunch. Your treat. And I warn you, I’m starving.”
“Sounds like a deal I can’t beat. I’d love to,” Logan declared with one of his patented grins.
Brianna’s mother had always said her husband’s smile was magical. Maybe it was. Her own mood was already lifting, her trust in him complete and total. If the Bryson daughters could be found, her dad would find them. End of story.
But… Just in case… It wouldn’t hurt anything or anyone, right?
She might just look for them herself.
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed Broken Justice. There will be more stories in the Cowboy Justice Association world. Coming soon!