Chapter Eleven
Brody’s grip on his phone tightened, his stomach still knotted from the photo. He forced himself to push the panic aside, to stay focused. Losing control wasn’t going to get his son back.
His gaze went to Langley. “Get out.”
Langley blinked. “What?”
“Go straight to SAPD and report the blackmail,” Brody ordered, his tone all cop. “Tell them everything you just told us. If you don’t, I’ll have you arrested for obstruction, and I’ll make sure they rip apart every financial record you have.”
Langley’s face reddened. “You can’t just—”
“Try me,” Brody cut in, his patience completely gone. “I have enough to hold you overnight at the very least. You want to explain to the media why you’re involved in an embryo-theft scandal and why you’ve been paying off a fugitive? Be my guest.”
Langley hesitated, his jaw twitching, but he wasn’t stupid. He finally let out a breath, muttering a curse before he stood. “Fine. But I don’t know anything else.”
“Then, let’s hope you’re not lying,” Brody warned him.
Langley shot one last nervous glance at Eloise before hurrying out of the room.
Brody barely waited before turning back to Eloise. “Are you behind this?”
Her bodyguard tensed, his hand sliding over his holster in a slow, deliberate movement. “Back off,” Brody ordered.
The man hesitated, assessing.
Brody stood and took a single step forward, and he didn’t hold back when it came to the glare he shot this guy. “My son’s life is at stake here,” he said, his tone cold and dangerous. “And I will take you down if it means finding him.”
The standoff stretched between them before Eloise sighed and waved a dismissive hand. “Stand down,” she told her man.
The guard relaxed some, but his eyes stayed on Brody.
Eloise turned her attention back to Brody. “I already told you, I’m not behind this.”
Brody studied her, looking for cracks in her composure. He couldn’t see them, but that didn’t mean she was telling the truth. “You’d say that either way,” he spat out.
A dry smirk crossed her lips. “Of course I would. Whoever did this has broken multiple laws. Do you really think they’d admit it?”
Brody didn’t answer. Because she wasn’t wrong. And that was the damn problem. He had three suspects, and there could be countless others. Hell, anyone who’d crossed paths with Tarrant could be behind this, but Brody couldn’t let the despair and frustration get to him.
“Remi and I will be back if we have more questions,” Brody snapped out, and yeah, there was a threat to it. Not a veiled one either.
Brody didn’t say another word as he and Remi walked out of Eloise’s house and got back in the cruiser. His jaw ached from how hard he was clenching it, his thoughts a tangled mess of frustration and fury.
As soon as he dropped into the driver’s seat, it all came boiling over.
With a groan, he slammed his fist against the steering wheel. The force of it sent a dull shock of pain up his arm, but he welcomed it. It was better than the ache, better than the gnawing terror clawing at him for his missing son.
“Damn it!” he bit out, his breath gusting as he tried to hold it all together.
A moment later, he felt a light touch on his hand.
Remi’s.
He looked over, his pulse still hammering as she turned his palm over in hers, inspecting the underside of his knuckles. “You’re going to have a bruise,” she said gently.
Brody swallowed, his throat tight. “Good.”
Remi’s fingers curled lightly around his, and then, before he could react, she leaned in and brushed a kiss across the fingers he’d just slammed against the wheel. The warmth of it barely registered before she went rigid.
Her eyes widened slightly, and she muttered, “I’m sorry.”
She pulled back fast, but the damage was already done.
Brody felt the heat, sharp and immediate, cutting through the fear and frustration like a live wire. His gut tightened, his breath went uneven for half a second, and damn it, he shoved it aside just as fast.
Now wasn’t the time.
It couldn’t be.
He reached for the ignition. “Let’s go.” He didn’t look at her. Didn’t dare.
He drove out of the neighborhood and back through the security gate, the hum of the engine the only sound between them for a long beat. Brody kept his hands tight on the wheel, his mind still reeling. From the text. From the damn photo of his son. From the fact that he still had no solid answers.
He needed something. Anything.
He flicked a glance at Remi, who was staring out the window, her fingers drumming lightly on her knee. “You believe Eloise?” he asked.
Remi let out a slow breath. “I don’t know.” She shook her head, shifting in her seat. “What I do know is that she’s desperate to find Tarrant. You saw her, Brody. She wouldn’t have been holding Langley at gunpoint if she didn’t want answers just as badly as we do.”
Brody considered that for a moment. “Or she could have been putting on a show for us.”
Remi lifted an eyebrow. “You think she staged it?”
“She’s smart enough to,” Brody muttered. “And she sure as hell didn’t seem too shaken up about it. If she’s the one who orchestrated all this, Langley could have been her inside man.”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “It could add up. Langley had access to the embryos. Maybe he took them for himself, but I doubt it. He doesn’t strike me as the mastermind type. Eloise, though? She’s got the resources to pull off something like this.”
Brody had to agree. “Or they could’ve been working together from the start.”
The silence came again, heavier this time. Because if they were right, if both Eloise and Langley had a hand in this, then finding his son just got a whole lot more complicated.
Brody was just about to merge onto the highway, leaving the city behind, when his phone rang. He glanced at the screen. It was Jolene.
He took the call and put it on Speaker. “Talk to me.”
“We found the car,” Jolene said right away. “The one we think belongs to the guy you and Remi chased in the graveyard.”
“Where?” Brody couldn’t ask fast enough.
“On an old ranch trail about a quarter of a mile from the cemetery,” she said. “No houses around there for anyone to have seen who ditched it.”
Brody swore under his breath. “Any prints?”
“Nothing,” Jolene said, frustration coating her voice. “The whole thing’s been wiped clean. Whoever was driving it knew what they were doing.”
Remi crossed her arms, thinking. “Could belong to Eloise’s guard,” she said. “But I can’t be sure.”
Brody nodded, filing that away. “Jolene, what about the GPS in the car? Was there one?”
His deputy hesitated for a beat. “There was a built-in one, but it was wiped.”
Brody cursed under his breath. Of course.
“The techs are working on it now,” Jolene continued. “Might take some time, but they’re hoping to retrieve something useful.”
Brody didn’t have time. But he had no choice. “Keep me updated. The second they get anything, call me.”
“Will do,” Jolene said. “And Brody—be careful. Whoever we’re dealing with, they’re covering their tracks real well.”
“Yeah,” Brody agreed. He just hoped the SOB had made a mistake. All he needed was some sliver of evidence to latch on to.
Brody ended the call with Jolene, his frustration mounting. Every damn lead seemed to slip through their fingers just when they got close.
Remi tapped on her phone, already pulling up files. “I’ll look into Eloise’s guard,” she said.
Brody glanced over at her. “We didn’t get a name.”
“No, but thanks to everything we put together in the wee hours of the morning, we have enough on Eloise now to dig.” Her eyes flicked over the screen as she scrolled through the extensive background info they’d gathered. “Got him.” She turned the screen slightly toward Brody. “Zeke Regan.”
Brody frowned. The name didn’t ring any bells. “What do you have on him?”
“Former military special ops,” she said, scanning further. “He was working as a bodyguard for a private security company until he quit two years ago and started working full-time for Eloise.” She paused, lips pressing into a thin line. “No criminal record.”
Brody let out a slow breath. “That we know of.”
His mind began to work through the possibilities. If Zeke was the man they had chased in the cemetery, then that meant he had also been the one to leave Joe on Miranda’s grave.
And he might know a whole lot more than that.
Before Brody could even begin to figure out how they could use Zeke to get to the truth, his phone rang again. He saw Dispatch on the dash screen and gave the verbal command to accept the call.
“Walker,” he snapped out.
“This is Dispatch,” the man on the other end said. “A woman just called the station asking to speak with you directly. She wouldn’t say why, but she gave her name and number.”
Brody frowned. “Who is she?”
“Allie Harper,” the dispatcher said. “You want the number?”
Brody hesitated. He didn’t recognize the name, and after the media leak, plenty of people might be calling in with useless information—or, worse, playing games. But he wasn’t in a position to ignore anything right now. “Yeah, give it to me.”
Remi used her own phone to type in the number as the dispatcher read it out, and Brody ended the call and repeated the woman’s number as a voice command so he could try to contact her.
The line rang twice before a woman picked up. “Hello?”
“This is Sheriff Brody Walker,” he said. “I was told you wanted to talk.”
There was a pause, then a quick inhale. “Yes. I—I saw the news reports.”
Brody’s jaw clenched. And he groaned. He didn’t have time for a hoax. “If this is about some theory or—”
“I think I was the surrogate,” she interrupted, her voice breaking slightly. “For your twins.”
Brody’s pulse stalled, then hammered hard. Remi sat up straighter beside him, her eyes going wide.
He forced himself to speak. “What did you just say?”
Allie cleared her throat and followed it with a soft moan. “I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know who the parents were. But after seeing the news, the timeline—everything—I think I carried your sons.” Another pause, before she added, “And I think I might be able to help you find your missing baby.”