Chapter 27
Cooper called Harlow’s cell phone while he waited for Grayson’s plane to land. He needed to talk to Livie. “Hey, Princess,” he said when Harlow gave her the phone.
“Daddy! Did you come home?”
“No, not yet. Your mommy and I still have some things to do in Decatur before we can come back.” He loved that she thought of Myrtle Beach as home.
“But I miss you, and I want to play baseball with you.”
“And we will. I’ll be home in a few days.”
“How many days is a few?”
Talking to young children was tricky. He didn’t want to commit to how many because he didn’t know. It depended on what happened in the next few hours. “Uh, no more than a week.”
“A week is a long time, Daddy.”
“I said no more than that, but I’m hoping it’s sooner because I miss you.”
“Okay. I miss you, too. Can I talk to Mommy?”
She would ask that. “Mommy’s not here right now, but I’ll tell her to call you as soon as she can.”
“Where is she?”
“At the grocery store.” He hated lying to his daughter, but he didn’t have a choice. “I have to go, Princess. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Daddy. Sooooo much.”
“Let me talk to Harlow now.”
“Okay.”
“Hey,” Harlow said, coming on the line. “Has Grayson landed yet?”
“Should be any minute now. Is Livie behaving herself?”
“She’s a sweetheart, Cooper. I love having her here, and she and Tyler get along famously.”
“Good. I just wanted to say thank you for keeping her. Knowing she’s safe with you in Myrtle Beach is a great weight off my mind.”
“Don’t you worry about her. Just go find her mommy and bring her home.”
“That’s the plan. We’ll let you know as soon as we have her back.”
A Gulfstream landed as he disconnected, and he walked out of the FBO’s lobby to wait for Grayson.
As soon as Grayson exited the plane, they got in Cooper’s truck.
He already had the address to Schroder’s cabin in his GPS, and according to the GPS, they had an hour-and-a-half drive.
They were already two hours behind, and he didn’t let himself think of what Kendall might be going through.
If he went there, his emotions would distract him, and that wouldn’t help her.
“I have some more intel,” Grayson said.
“Let’s hear it.”
“Schroder took a leave of absence. Claimed a family emergency.”
“Which put him in the wind, with no one wondering why he’s not showing up for work.”
“Exactly. There’s more, and this part might explain his actions. I don’t know, but it’s disturbing. Schroder had a sister who died under mysterious circumstances thirty years ago. There was an investigation, but nothing could be proved, so her death was listed as undetermined.”
“Was there a report? Anything that hinted at what happened?”
“Both the father and the son were suspects.
They alibied each other. The detective on the case is retired, but I was able to talk to him on my way here.
He said the family was extremely wealthy, but they were strange.
The mother seemed afraid of her husband, and the boy, young Schroder, gave him the creeps.
As for the father, his word was the law in the family.
“He talked to the neighbors on the street, and they said the family was odd. It was only Schroder and his sister, and they were rarely seen. They didn’t play outside like the other kids in the neighborhood, and they were homeschooled.”
“Is there anything in Schroder’s background that might be suspicious in hindsight?”
“Just the detective’s instincts that said something was hinky about the whole family.
That was the exact word he used…hinky. Back then, DNA was only starting to be used, but he said his small police department didn’t have the knowledge or funds for it.
In the end, he didn’t have enough proof to make an arrest.”
“But he believes it was either the father or the son who killed the girl? How old was she?”
“Seven. He says he’s positive it was one of the two. That this case has haunted him for thirty years.”
“You said Schroder’s forty-six now, so he would’ve been sixteen at the time. Plenty old enough to commit a murder. Are the father and mother still alive?”
“No, they died in a house fire two years after Lisa, that’s the daughter’s name, was killed.”
“Like that’s not suspicious.”
“There was an arson investigation, but in the end, it was reported as an electrical fire. The arson investigator did write in the report that it was possible the wires had been tampered with, but he couldn’t say for certain.”
“Schroder would’ve turned eighteen by then. Did he wait until he was legally an adult and didn’t have to worry about Child Services to do it?”
“If he did do it that would make sense.” Grayson’s phone chimed. “It’s Jules. Hey, Jules, I’m with Coop and putting you on speaker.”
“Got yourself in the middle of a strange one,” Jules said.
Cooper couldn’t disagree. “You have more intel for us?”
“Yeah. I have to say this is turning out to be a fascinating story, and I’m hooked, so I did some more digging. It turned up a former girlfriend of Schroder’s and I called her. They dated in college, and she said he was fun at first. After a while, though, she said he started getting weird.”
“In what way?” Cooper asked.
“Talking about angels. He’d see a little girl and say what a pretty angel she would be. She said he also talked about his sister a lot, that she was an angel now and wasn’t suffering anymore, that she never cried anymore. She said he started weirding her out and she stopped seeing him.”
All of this was really disturbing. “I have a bad feeling about this whole thing and why he wanted Kendall.”
“Yeah, same here,” Grayson said. “We’re dealing with a mentally disturbed man. Thanks, Jules. We appreciate your digging deeper on this.”
“It’s like a bad B movie, the kind you can’t stop watching even if it is awful. I’ll call if I learn any more. Go find your girl, Coop.”
“That’s the plan.”
A chilling picture of Schroder’s past and potential motives painted a disturbing image of a man teetering on the edge of sanity. And he had Kendall. “Something’s been nagging at me. I think it’s possible that this is the man who kidnapped Kendall when she was seven.”
Grayson darted a glance at Cooper. “Kendall was kidnapped?”
“Yeah, right out of her front yard. She managed to get away and found help. The man who did it was never caught. I don’t know. That was over twenty years ago. Maybe it wasn’t him, but I can’t get the possibility out of my mind.”
“It would make sense as to why he’s fixated on her.”
“What I keep thinking.” Cooper had the sense that time was running out.
He glanced at the GPS. They still had thirty-five minutes to go.
He was already fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit and didn’t want to press his luck by going any faster.
The last thing they needed was to get stopped considering all the weapons they had on them and in the truck.
“When I left, Tyler was teaching Livie a bunch of jokes to tell you when you get back home,” Grayson said.
“Probably all the ones I taught Tyler.” Cooper knew his friend was trying to distract him from worrying about Kendall. It wasn’t going to work, but he’d play along.
“I’m sure, but you’ll have to pretend you’ve never heard them.”
“Of course. I’d never want to disappoint Livie.”
There were a few minutes of silence, then, “You want to keep them. Am I right?”
“You are. I’m going to be in my daughter’s life, but just how is the big question. It depends on Kendall. I’m hoping she’ll be willing to move to Myrtle Beach.”
“And if she’s not?”
“I don’t know. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
“She has feelings for you. That’s obvious from the way she looks at you.”
“I want to believe she does.” But enough to upend the life she’d built and move to Myrtle Beach?
And if she wasn’t willing to move, would he give up everything he’d worked for since he and his brothers had created The Phoenix Three?
Because he couldn’t imagine not having Kendall and Livie in his life on a daily basis.