Chapter 25 #3
I slapped him against the shoulder and twisted around in my seat to give him some privacy.
The view blurred past, just a dark, wet spread of fields and trees between towns, with the occasional lone home, spotlighted under the flash of lightning and the curtain of rain slapping against the window.
“Cranwell called Brody earlier, by the way,” he finally said after a couple of tense minutes.
“And?”
“He looked a little more into Fiona’s death. Turns out she had no history of cardiomyopathy despite the cause of death. Not only that, but she was hospitalized four days before her death, and not for heart issues. She gave birth.”
I sat up straight, and my head jerked his way, spinning like a top.
“My same reaction,” he said. “We have a half brother or sister somewhere out there.”
“Where?”
“No idea. There aren’t any records of a baby. Nothing in Fiona’s file, and no mention of an abducted newborn raised at the hospital either. Kid’s a ghost.”
I smacked the back of my head against the headrest. “If they can alter hospital records and cause of death, I’ll bet they can disappear a newborn.”
“Aye, sure, but you don’t think…”
“The Love Knot Killer, yes. Makes sense.” I sat up in my chair, connections forging between all the little details we’d had up until now.
The three of us had been doing a deep dive into Fiona’s life, tracing her steps back from before the divorce to her youth in Ireland.
“Think about it. What do we know about Fiona?”
“Well, her parents were separated.”
I ticked up one finger. “And she lived with her mother and a string of different stepfathers until she accused one of them of sexual assault when she was seventeen. Only then did she go live with her father.”
“Who was well-off.”
I nodded and lifted a second finger. “But he still sold her off to Da for a partnership on one of his schemes when she was only eighteen. A man who was a decade older than her.”
“And was forced to move to the States with us, away from everything and everyone she knew.”
Another finger went up.
“Add in the fact that her dad was arrested and his assets frozen and then confiscated a month before Da had his affair with Jessica.”
A full hand of fingers up.
“Then, to dig the knife in, he divorced her and kicked her out onto the street.” Six fingers. “No money to her name. No family to support her. And pregnant, apparently.”
That made nine plausible reasons for Fiona to hate the world. Six specific to our father.
“We sure she’s dead?” Liam questioned. “I mean, think about it. It’s bleeding convenient. If the records can be modified, why not fake her death? The three-month delay before Jessica’s death could be her recovery period from whatever happened during her labor. She could be LK.”
I grunted and watched a rivulet run down the windshield. It skittered down the glass and curved around a new raindrop, shifted direction slightly before absorbing more water, then scuttled down into the cowl.
His deduction made sense, yet it didn’t.
Liam and Brody were too young when Da married Fiona to remember her, but at age six, I did.
Better than my own mam. We played puzzles and board games together.
She gave me my first baking lesson that ended up in a flour fight with Brody.
She planted a handmade wooden cross in the yard so we could grieve our mother, whose grave was an ocean away.
The day she left, the three of us ran in tears into her arms and begged her to stay.
She held us so tight and cried with us before Da’s guards separated us.
People changed, but she had no reason to hold a grudge against us. Da, sure, but us? I couldn’t see it.
“He sent over an old photo of her he got from a contact in Ireland. Brody’s running it through aging software. You get what this means? We could have finally found her. No more Love Knot Killer.”
The window rolled down. He stuck his head out and hollered into the night, causing the car to swerve. I muffled my amusement under my misgivings. When he came back inside, he shook out his wet hair. Droplets rained everywhere, and I growled a promise to strangle him.
“Your growl hasn’t scared me since the first time you lost a wrestling match to Brody.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t whip you.”
He took his hands off the wheel for a quick second, all innocent and playful. No sign of the baby brother who’d hit me in the heart earlier.
“We’ll see what Cranwell can come up with,” I said. “See if maybe we can have her remains exhumed to confirm our theory.”
A text chirped from Paulie. Alice had left the club and returned to her hotel.
“Take me to the airport.”
Liam arched a brow. “So you can what? Rage at this woman? Lose any real shot you might have, looking like you went for a bath in your clothes? Or is it the narcotic-detection dogs at the airport you want to risk after the heist we just pulled off?”
I gave him my most unamused glare.
“Nah, you’re staying with me tonight. Don’t worry, Romeo, you can always head over and court your lady tomorrow.”