Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
WINNIE
The Ears That Never Hear
Both hollow and not, I sit between West and Cord as the police mill around my townhouse, taking prints and doing random police things.
My hands tremble, caught between trying to occupy themselves and restraining myself from interrupting the professionals around me, keeping them from doing their job.
The job that I can’t do. My voice is raw from the amount of times I’ve told my story, and guilt assaults me every time I think about the nights I’ve spent in West’s arms instead of here, with Sally.
Then none of this would have happened. True or not, that’s what my head thinks and no one has been able to change my mind so far.
What doesn’t help is that my brother had to throw his enormous financial and powerful influence about in the form of several hasty phone calls in order to get the local police to listen to us.
For the first time, I am grateful for his interference even while my independent streak chafes that he had to step in at all.
Mind, he has a vested interest. It’s his girlfriend and baby-to-be who are missing, along with my own offspring.
Still, the police will help, but there are conditions.
We’re not allowed to interfere, and, according to Cordell, we’re to stay put.
Right. Here. Which seems extreme, considering my daughter is missing, but also I was quite noisy earlier and there might be a good reason why the three of us are jammed onto my sofa and why I’m clutching a stuffed capybara dressed in a pink velour axolotl suit.
Its feathery gills tremble along with my hands as I stroke the wilted pastel creature.
My phone buzzes, and I barely glance at it, reading the message as it comes through on preview.
“Oh. My leave is approved, but because I’ve taken so much and have had lots of family drama recently, I might be given a warning.
That’s nice.” I don’t care. My loyalty is fast fading under the pressure. Find Sally. Locate Brad. Do something.
Anything is better than sitting here.
“What?” West takes my phone out of my hands as it blows up and places it on the coffee table. “Why?”
I laugh hollowly. “Maybe I’m the drama llama, West. Who knows at this point. Maybe I don’t fit at all. I don’t care.”
“Yeah?” West says warily as Cord looks on with a strained sort of interest like any distraction is both good and irritating right now.
No tears come. I don’t give a fuck. I’ll wait tables to make ends meet. I. Don’t. Care. So long as we get my daughter and Lanie and the baby back unharmed, the asshole singing nurse who ruined my week and the rest of the nursing staff can go to hell.
My family is right here. This is what matters right now.
“Jesus,” Cord murmurs. “I’ll put in a call, work it out for you. Screw that, Winnie. You did nothing wrong.”
I wave a hand. “I’m fine.”
Silence reigns over my head. I sense action even if I can’t see it.
Finally, West speaks up. “What?”
I straighten and hold out a hand to each man. “I’m done. Done with the politics. This is where I need to be. Present with my baby. Present with you both. Let’s get through this. I’ll fuck around with work later.”
Cord makes a dissatisfied sound as West squeezes my hand. I settle against him, grateful for his eternal support. My brother, to his credit, opens his mouth, seems to think the better of it, and shuts it again.
“Okay. We’re done.” A uniform stands before us, stripping off gloves that he tucks into a pocket. I try not to grimace. Old habits.
“Done,” I repeat. “So, what now?”
“Now we go back, analyze what evidence we’ve collected, and give you a call when we get results.”
I grip the boys’ hands and try not to scream. There’s a thin, high-pitched noise, possibly coming from me. West rises, picking me up and taking me away from the sofa area as the cop looks on, more than faintly alarmed.
“Come on, Rand. Let’s get you doing something useful. Tell me where he’d go.” West leads me to the kitchen and turns me around.
The sheer emptiness of the townhouse engulfs me in echoes of silence. It’s deafening inside without them. The walls are too close, the rooms too tidy. I can’t look at my kitchen without seeing the evidence—or lack thereof—that Brad might have stolen someone that I love more than anything.
“Brad? He has a home up the hill. In Cloakton’s inner suburbs. It’s a clean house. Very dainty. He bought it for the other woman he—” I bite my lip and shake my head. Nope. I’m not getting into that story today. “But would he take Sally there? And Lanie?”
West’s jaw works. “Winnie. You gotta think. This man is not in his right mind. He’s potentially taken a woman and a child.”
“His child.” Guilt slams me. “Oh, God. I’ve done this. I’ve taken her away from him. This is my—”
“Don’t you fucking dare.” West’s arms wrap around me, pulling me in tight.
“This isn’t your fault, Winnie. People make choices of their own.
You didn’t tell him to take her. You didn’t tell him to come in here the other day when he knew better.
A person understands boundaries, even when they don’t like them.
He’s not making real choices, beautiful.
Not good ones. But I need to know what he’ll do, where he’ll go. ”
I stare at him. “Lanie said there were calls.”
“When.”
“I—when we were away. She thought they were prank calls.” Didn’t she? Had she said that? Did I ask? “I didn’t ask her. Oh, my God.” I lean forward and his arms slide around me.
“Breathe, Winnie. Tell me where he’ll be.”
My mind clicks on. “No.”
West’s arms tighten. “We need them back.”
“Yes. And I’ve told the police all this. You do not need to go and get them. You do not need to go and—and—” I stare at him, knowing full well what West is capable of doing.
I’ve seen him around Coyote, taking care of threats to my brother’s herd over the years. He’s turned me around before the gunshot has echoed across the field.
Younger Winnie never shed a single tear. I do now for the man I love, who stands before me, who doesn’t recognize limits.
“I told them,” I whisper brokenly.
“And I’m sure they’ll check.”
I glare at him. “Don’t you gaslight me.”
His mouth forms a hard line. “Winnie—”
“Don’t you Winnie me, Wilder West. I want my daughter back. But going there and breaking down a door—”
“I wasn’t going to break a door down.” West looks affronted I’d suggest something so uncivilized.
“No, just him.”
West says nothing at all.
“Right, so where’s your ‘Winnie’ now?” I keep glaring.
“Winnie!”
I frown at him. “I said—”
“Winnie!” My name comes from the living room, but not in West’s voice.
It’s my brother’s.
“What? Are they here?” I dart out of West’s embrace and past him to find Cord consumed in a mass of red hair.
“Is she okay? Where’s Sally? Where did you go?
” I coo at the back of Lanie’s head, desperately reining back the need to screech those words at the top of my lungs.
I’m kind of glad that the cops aren’t here right now to see the domestic disturbance in progress that’s about to unfold in my living space.
“Winnie,” Cord murmurs. His voice is strained.
“Oh, yeah. Right. Baby. Stress. Not good for it.” I’m reduced to single syllables.
“Call me an ambulance, please.”
“Oh.” My phone is in my hand as I dial, automatically putting the call through as I pull hair back from Lanie’s face.
Her swollen face that’s full of scratches and cuts.
My phone drops from my hand mid-call. “Lanie? Where’s Sally?” I’m vaguely aware of West calling the ambulance and then the police again behind me. His deep voice is calm and steady, our constant constant. The Rand family protector.
I choke as her eyes widen and she shakes in Cord’s arms.
“I’m sorry, Winnie. He told me to go and get you.”
I don’t need to know which he she means. “Where’s Sally?” I plead.
“His house.” Her voice trembled. “He wants—” Lanie’s gaze darts to Cord. “He wants the ‘two-million-dollar baby.’”
Cord scowls. “Fuck him for holding our child for ransom. Unborn or otherwise,” he seethes.
I want to slap him for the oversight. Slap him for giving Sally so much. For making her a target and not understanding the enormity of his gift.
West speaks up when I can’t. “She means Sally.”
He gets it. Of course he does.
Cord looks across at me, indescribable pain in his expression. In his life, the only hurts that have touched him have been his alone. Never someone else’s. Not someone he loves.
Never someone so close to home.
I nod, the best I can give to him. “It’s okay.” It’s not. “Look after Lanie and your own.” I need my girl back.
The lies I tell my brother to keep him functioning while my own loss consumes me and I stand here, doing nothing while inside my head, I’m screaming.
“Where, Lanie?”
She looks at me blankly, the eyes of a woman who has experienced trauma but hasn’t processed it yet.
I smile gently at her. “Is it the house on the hill? The one with the garden?” I know, because the asshole sent me pictures. Bragging will cost him.
“The hill.” She shudders. “I walked so far. So long. But…”
“Get her water,” I murmur, stroking her arm. “West. There’s Hydralyte popsicles in the freezer. Get Lanie one of those.”
I get a grunt in way of reply.
Cord grips his woman fiercely, his hand on her belly and his arms wrapped around her. He’ll make a good father. I know he will. I’m proud of my brother, and I’m proud of her.
I’m sorry, she mouths, but I understand. I do. I kiss the top of her head and pray that Cord is occupied as I slip the keys to his truck from his pocket.
Then I walk out of my door, which rarely locks and only sticks when I don’t want it to, and onto the street front. No one hears me when I pull away in Cord’s red six-wheeler that will take me where I want to go.
No one sees me leave to get my daughter.