Chapter 13
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Just as Naomi put dinner on the table, Trent’s phone went off. He sighed and muttered, “So very typical.”
She nodded. “As soon as you’re trying to do something—after you’ve been waiting all day—somebody will contact you,” she declared, shaking her head. “It’s inevitable.”
He glanced at his phone. “I don’t know the number, but it won’t stop ringing.” He answered it, and she thought she heard the lawyer’s voice. Trent got up and excused himself from the table.
Ricky was too busy plowing through his noodles to care.
When Trent returned, he had an odd look on his face, but he didn’t say anything.
She glanced over at him and asked, “Do you need to go?”
“No, not right now anyway,” he clarified. “We’ll see what needs to be done later, but I need to talk to Oakley after I eat.”
“He works like you, doesn’t he?” Ricky interrupted.
“Yeah, he sure does,” Trent confirmed, with a nod. “We work in the same department, and he’s a colleague, but more of a friend.”
Ricky smiled and nodded. “He kind of looks like you too.”
Trent laughed. “I don’t think Oakley would appreciate that.”
Ricky shrugged. “Don’t matter.”
“He does? In what way?” she asked Ricky curiously.
“He has that same look,” the boy replied, “around the eyes.”
She glanced at Trent, who just shrugged and didn’t say anything. But she could almost see what Ricky was talking about. There was that sense of danger but, at the same time, confidence. It was a very specific aura they seemed to exude. She just smiled and didn’t say anything more.
As soon as he was done eating, Trent announced, “I’ll go talk to Oakley. Keep the door locked. I’ll text you before I come back up.”
She nodded, then walked to the door, opened it for him, and checked to make sure that it was all good on the other side.
Trent walked out and went downstairs. She walked back inside, and, after locking the door, she watched Ricky and waited, but she hated this sense of heavy weightiness.
Ricky’s face was truly an index of how he felt at all times, and she couldn’t ignore that either.
Ricky went into his bedroom and came back dressed in PJs, carrying a book. He sat down on the couch, pretending to read, but she could tell he really wasn’t into it.
Close to an hour later, Ricky asked, “Is he coming back?”
“Yes, he’s coming back,” she stated, with a smile. “You heard him say so.”
Ricky just shrugged and didn’t say anything.
Naomi considered that and asked him, “Did your parents take off and not say goodbye?”
He looked up at her, a flash of pain crossing his face. Then he nodded, “Yeah, sometimes. They told me how they hated goodbyes.”
“I see. Well, that’s not very nice for the person who’s being left though. Goodbyes are never easy for anyone.”
He shook his head. “I hated it,” he shared, his voice almost breaking.
She winced and added, “Yeah, I think I would have hated it too.”
He looked up at her. “Did people say goodbye to you?”
“Most of the time, I think so,” she replied. “I haven’t had a whole lot of people in my life where that would have been an issue.”
“What about your family?”
It was one of the rare times when he’d asked her about her own family. She smiled at him. “I don’t have a family, remember?”
He frowned at that and added, “That’s right. That’s why you’re my family.”
“Is it?” she asked, with a chuckle.
He nodded. “I don’t have family, and you don’t have family, so we’re a family together.”
“I see,” she said. With that logic, it obviously made a whole lot of sense. The fact that he declared he didn’t have a family hurt, but she didn’t know quite how to get past that conversation killer. She nodded. “Let’s get you ready for bed.”
“But what if he comes while I’m asleep?”
“I’ll send him in to say good night,” she told him.
He looked at her as if trying to see the truth of her words, and then, understanding that’s exactly what she would do, he agreed. “I think he found something, and that’s why he’s been gone for so long.”
“I think he was talking to the lawyer again too, so maybe they found out all kinds of things. Who knows?”
Ricky asked her, “My parents don’t care, do they?” Her heart broke at that, and she didn’t know what to say. He added in that same monotone, “I guess that’s okay too.”
“I don’t think it’s okay at all,” she shared rather too quickly. “You’re a fabulous person, and anybody will love you.”
He looked up at her, with that age-old wisdom in his gaze, and he smiled. “Not anybody. I think you love me, but I don’t think anybody else does.” He headed off to brush his teeth, climbed into his bed, and she hugged him good night.
With that, he grabbed his teddy bear, rolled over, and closed his eyes.
She stepped away before she started to bawl because his despicable family had treated him as if he were unlovable.
For that, she found it incredibly hard to forgive them. She didn’t care if they were jet-setting around the world and having a grand old time. They had absolutely no excuse for completely destroying this little boy’s sense of self-esteem when he was so perfect.
As she walked back into the living room, her phone buzzed, and it was Trent. She walked over and opened the door for him. As he walked in, the first thing she noticed was the look in his gaze. “It’s not good news, is it?”
He winced, not talking.
“I want to know what it is, but, first, say good night to Ricky.” She rather hesitantly pointed back to the bedroom door, not quite sure what to say. When Trent raised his eyebrows, she added, “I promised him that you would.”
He nodded and walked into Ricky’s bedroom. She heard them talking. When Trent returned, she nodded. “I know what you are about to tell me will be hard to take.”
He sat down, facing her. “It might be a little harder than expected because we’ve had to take a little harder line with the lawyer.
That’s why Bugatti called me. He wants to talk.
Oakley’s going over there to talk to him, and we’re not exactly sure what’s going on, but we should know something fairly soon. ”
She stared at him. “Just from the tone of your voice, I gather that you’re thinking it’s something bad.”
“I don’t know how bad, so there’s no point in trying to guess, when it turns out to be completely wrong.”
“So, Oakley—”
“Yeah, he’s over there right now at Bugatti’s office, and he took a couple of our team with him. So, hopefully we’ll get some answers.”
“Why the party?”
“To intimidate him.” Trent’s tone was straightforward and businesslike, and she understood the need for it because having a plethora of government operatives at a lawyer’s office could send up all kinds of red flags, and Bugatti would never want that kind of circus at his office.
As it was, Oakley phoned about forty-five minutes later and said, “I’m outside the apartment with the lawyer. He wants to come in and talk.”
Trent looked at her for approval, and she nodded. Trent let them in.
The lawyer sat down. His face looked gray and old, and a heaviness filled his demeanor that hadn’t been there before.
“First off,” he began, holding his hands, sitting up straight, “I don’t know the extent of all this, but I can tell you that I have not had communication from Ricky’s parents in over a year, well, nearly two years,” he corrected himself.
She stared at him in shock. “What? You mean, like nothing? No texts? No calls? Nothing?”
He nodded. “Nothing.”
She had no idea what to say to that.
Bugatti continued. “They won’t answer my phone calls. They won’t answer my texts. They won’t answer at all. I’ve been keeping everything going because there’s money to keep it going, and that’s my job. But—”
“But?” Trent asked, his tone hard.
Bugatti exhaled. “It was all fine and dandy until this blew up, and I’m not exactly sure now if they have something to do with this or if it was completely random.”
“Something to do with what?” she asked, turning to Trent and Oakley.
Trent hesitated before speaking. “There is a chance that Ricky’s family—”
“His family what?” she asked.
“It’s possible that the family made the mistake because they have several phones one digit apart.”
She frowned at him. “Pardon?”
Oakley whispered, “Just give it a minute.”
She sat back, suddenly realizing what Trent was trying to get at.
“You are suggesting one of the family was supposed to be at dock?” The implication was stunning.
She turned to Trent, and then her gaze went back to where Ricky slept.
She got up and closed the door. “He’s asleep and hopefully didn’t hear any of this.
” She asked the men, “Are we actually thinking that Ricky’s parents are running drugs?
I’m just putting it out there in words that nobody is using. Is that really what we’re thinking?”
“It’s certainly possible,” Oakley replied.
“I would hate it for that little boy if that were the case. Another consideration is that—” He hesitated, then looked over at the lawyer, who just shrugged.
“It’s also quite possible that, if they’re in this industry or have gotten caught up with anyone who’s part of that world, they may not be alive anymore. ”
She just stared at him in shock. “Good God, … and nobody knew?”
“Well, that’s one of the things we have to figure out. It’s also something that the Coast Guard may be working on. They picked up several people, and there’s still a big investigation, which is mostly segmented, with a lot of parties involved. We don’t have names or anything, but it’s possible.”
“But there were two sons and the parents, so are you suggesting all of them could be gone?” Naomi asked.
The lawyer shook his head and corrected her. “No, there’s just the parents.”
“What?” she asked. “You mean, he doesn’t have brothers? Ricky thinks he has brothers. How could that be?”
The lawyer looked at her grimly and shook his head. “There are no brothers, just the parents.”
She sat back down hard. “So, did you guys just make up a story for Ricky so he wouldn’t care or what? I don’t understand. Why would anybody do that to their child?”