Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 3) (12 page)

Was it Amber I’d
bought the Prada dress for, or was that Jessica? Had I stuck around
long enough to see her wear it?

Brooke had a closet
filled with gifts from me, and that told her everything she needed to
know. I’d cared once, and that meant she could make me care again.
All she had to do was keep trying and eventually she’d break me
down.

But she wouldn’t. I’d
made that clear a thousand times, but Brooke wasn’t used to being
denied. She’d always gotten what she wanted, until it came to me.

I was the one person
who wouldn’t give in to her. I’d given her a job, but she wanted
a hell of a lot more. She wanted to be my wife.

Too bad the word
wife
wasn’t in my vocabulary.

One thing I could say
about Brooke – she couldn’t hide anything from me. She wasn’t
complicated or, frankly, smart enough to have secrets. Jane was a
different story.

She was full of
secrets, that much I could tell. She seemed to know it, too. I
couldn’t help but wonder if we’d ever find out what her story
was, and why she was here.

We
.
Be careful, Drex.
It
was easy to fall in lust with a woman with no past and no future, but
easy never lasted very long. If anybody knew that, it was me.

Sitting in the truck
across from Jane, combing the parched outskirts of Chimayo for my
father, it was hard to remember why I had to be so careful. She was
too beautiful and too bright, qualities that blinded me to her flaws.
Did she have any flaws that weren’t charming and sweet?

Well, maybe her temper,
except that just made me want to fuck her ferociously in about twenty
different positions until she begged for mercy.

“We’re looking for
a white Camry with Arizona plates?” she asked, peering out her
window.

She was wearing a new
sleeveless dress made of a slinky cotton that fell to her shapely
calves and grabbed every curve along the way. She clutched the white
cell phone I’d bought her like a three year-old holding a favorite
toy. If I didn’t stop staring at her I was going to rear-end
somebody.

“It won’t be easy
to find,” I said. “But I have to try. Thanks for your help.”

“Thank me when I see
the car,” she said. She propped a slim, tanned bare foot on the
dash and took a swig from a water bottle. “How did your father end
up in so much trouble, anyway? You still haven’t told me.”

And if I had my way, I
never would. I didn’t like discussing the background I’d barely
escaped, but she was out here looking for Elijah right along with me.
She deserved the truth.

“He’s dabbled in
just about every crime there is, but he specializes in the stuff
nobody wants to think about.” I kept my voice even and cool, but
inside I was erupting with anger. A man only got one father, and mine
was a criminal bastard. “He used to drive truckloads of
undocumenteds across the border from Mexico,” I told her. “He did
it for years, starting when I was about twelve.”

Her eyes were wide. It
was probably the first time she’d ever hung out with the son of a
human trafficker. “Then he was caught?”

Caught. As if a little
thing like maximum security could stop Elijah. “Yeah, but he made
even more contacts in prison. As soon as he got out he was back at
it. I talked to him about it once. He said he was providing services
people needed, and not everybody had to agree with how he made his
living.”

“That’s one way of
looking at it,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said.
“The wrong way.”

I turned into the
parking lot of a body shop where one of Elijah’s buddies used to
work. The place was locked up tight, door padlocked, windows blacked
out.

“He’s always been
drawn to excitement, especially if it’s illegal,” I said. “His
whole life has been one long, white-knuckle ride. Tax fraud, theft,
embezzlement, you name it.”

Embarrassed as I was to
admit the truth, Jane took it in stride. “Was he the same way when
you were growing up?”

“Yeah, though we
didn’t see him much. He’d make an appearance when he needed to
hide out or catch up on sleep. My mother knew he’d never change,
but she loved him anyway. For her, it was better to have some of him
than nothing at all.”

“Do you have
siblings?”

Christ, how I wished I
could say no. “Two brothers – one younger, one half-brother. The
half-brother doesn’t know about us. He was adopted by another
family. He lives in Europe.”

Just saying those words
–
lives in Europe
–
made my gut twist with envy. Yup, Marc was exactly the kind of
educated, worldly guy that Brooke and her father would fall all over.
Elijah certainly had, and he’d never even called him or sent him an
email.

It was fucking
ridiculous to be jealous, but I was.

It irked me the way
Elijah tracked the brilliant career of his bastard son, the result of
a two-week affair in London when he was still a player who could
charm the skirt off any woman he met. By the time he found out the
girl was pregnant, he was back in the States and on to his next shady
venture. He’d heard she was dead from an acquaintance who had no
clue Elijah was the father of the baby.

But Elijah knew, all
right. The girl had sent him pictures and begged him to be part of
her son’s life. And when she’d died and the baby went to her
brother, Elijah had been off the hook. He’d only started giving a
shit when the kid went to Stanford and made a fortune before he was
twenty-two.

I’d have been happy
if Elijah had shown up for the occasional birthday, or my high school
graduation. He kept a scrapbook of articles about Marc, snippets from
business journals and paparazzi photos from high-dollar restaurants
with his new girlfriend, a strikingly pretty American with short
hair.

They didn’t even know
Elijah existed. They were living the good life on the other side of
the planet, while I was searching for the father who only gave me the
time of day when he needed bail money or a place to crash.

“Your dad must be
very proud of you,” Jane said.

I felt the old,
familiar burning in my chest. She couldn’t know how wrong she was.
“He’s proud of my brother, the European one.”

“I thought you said
they’ve never met.”

“They haven’t. That
doesn’t stop my father from thinking that one of his sons did
everything right, while the others were screw-ups from birth.”

I could feel her eyes
on me. “That’s got to hurt,” she said.

“Not any more,” I
lied. “I stopped caring a long time ago.”

Perceptive as she was,
I expected her to push harder. But she did me the huge favor of
accepting what I said and leaving it at that. I considered walking
around the body shop to see if there was any sign of life, but I knew
what I’d find.

Nothing but another
dead end. Elijah’s trail gone stone cold.

“I shouldn’t have
let you come with me,” I said, turning back onto Main Street. “If
I see my father or somebody he knows, this could get complicated in a
hurry.”

“I insisted, if
you’ll remember.”

“I remember, and I
appreciate it.”

She turned her head to
look at a parked car. Wrong make, Texas plates. “Why do you need to
find him?” she asked. “Is he really your responsibility?”

It was a question I’d
asked myself a hundred times. “Well, technically, whatever laws he
breaks or money he steals is on him. But he’s a public relations
nightmare for me. If I don’t know what he’s doing, I have to
worry he’ll show up on the local news. Used to be only the police
cared what he did. Now reporters do because I’m his son, and I have
a high profile in Houston.”

I pulled into a trailer
park, a sprawling dustbowl of a place filled with weather-beaten
trailers and grizzled old trees. “You think your father could be
here?” Jane asked.

“I doubt it. But
there’s somebody who might know where he is.”

I’d been here before,
almost two years ago to the day. I’d found my father in the last
trailer on the cul de sac, sitting defiantly in front of a blaring
television. There’d been a small duffel bag filled with cash at his
feet, and he looked like he’d been awake for three days.

He’d sworn he hadn’t
made any trips across the border, but he couldn’t explain the cash.
Or wouldn’t. Only after I’d threatened to call his parole officer
had he gotten in my truck and come home.

After I’d given the
cash to a homeless shelter, my father hadn’t talked to me for four
months.

I parked in front of
the same trailer, told Jane to stay in the truck, and went to the
door. Three knocks later, Maggie answered. She was the closest thing
to a girlfriend Elijah had had in a long time. She visited him in
Houston whenever she had a little extra money, which wasn’t often.
Maybe three times a year.

She was raven-haired,
late fifties, still pretty though she chain-smoked and had gone
through four husbands.

“How you doing,
Maggie?”

“Not too bad,” she
said. She wore tight, dark jeans and a long t-shirt with the word
Princess
emblazoned
on the front in gold letters.

“Have you seen
Elijah?”

“He ain’t here,”
she said, sounding apologetic. “Want to come in anyway?”

“Just for a minute.
I’ve got somebody in the truck.”

Maggie bustled around
the sparsely-furnished trailer, straightening pillows and sliding
open short curtains. “Want some coffee?”

“No, thanks.” I sat
on the edge of a flowered couch. It sank under my weight. “Listen,
Maggie…”

She stood in the tiny
kitchen and faced me. “I saw him a week ago, okay?” she blurted
out. “One night and he was gone.”

“Did he say why he
was here or where he was going?”

“We don’t talk
about business stuff. You know he brought a dozen red roses this
time? I pressed one in my Bible.”

“That’s nice,” I
said, trying not to let my impatience show. “So, you don’t know
what he’s doing? No idea at all?”

She crossed her arms.
“I can tell you what he’s not doing. Something criminal. He’s
changed, Drex. He really has.”

“If you don’t talk
about that stuff, how do you know?”

“Because he said so.
He said he’s got a lot to make up for.”

Nice of him to figure
that out at this late date. “And how does he plan to do that?”

She lifted her thin,
narrow shoulders. “Like I said…”

“You don’t talk
about that stuff,” I said, forcing myself to smile.

“Right.” She sighed
and stared directly into my eyes. “Let him be, please? He’s got
no parole officer watching him for the first time he can remember.
He’s just an old man who wants to feel the wind in his hair.”

And lots of cash in his
pocket, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud.

I was heading down her
rickety front steps when she reached out and touched my arm. “One
thing I’ll say, your dad’s not in Chimayo anymore. He’s long
gone. I’d be seeing him otherwise. We’re close, you know.”

“Thanks, Maggie. I
appreciate anything you can tell me.”

“Good, because it’s
the God’s honest truth,” she said.

I stepped onto the
patch of sparse crabgrass she called a front yard. “I don’t
suppose you’d call me if you hear from him?”

I saw regret in her face, along with
grim determination. “Sorry, Hon,” she said. “Not on your life.”

By the time we got back
to the house, Drex had decided.

He was done here. Done
looking for his father, done leaving his company in the hands of
employees, done trying to find out more about me.

On the drive back he
made a final call to his detective friend, who had no new information
about Elijah or me. I was still a nobody without a missing persons
report.

As soon as Drex hung
up, I felt a deep pit of loneliness in my stomach. How could I have
gone to sleep in my old life and awakened in this one? How had no one
seen anything?

We walked into the
house in silence. I’d had two blissful days with Drex, but now it
was back to harsh reality. Again, I was on my own. No home, no money,
no idea of what to do next.

Drex took Diesel out
for a long walk. It was early evening and a cool breeze gusted in
from the terrace. It had gone from summer back to spring in an hour.
Which meant cold nights. Unpredictable weather. Rain. I’d have to
find a job and a place to stay, easier said than done with no name,
no identification, and no history.

I had three bags of new
clothes, but I couldn’t take them with me. I’d have to choose a
few practical things. I knew I should get ready to leave, but I
couldn’t bring myself to move off the sofa. As soon as I did, I’d
be that much closer to the hostile, frightening world Drex had
rescued me from.

But I wouldn’t
complain. There was no way in hell I’d let him see how scared I
was. He’d done a lot for me. I wouldn’t even think about asking
for more.

Just after dark, Drex
and Diesel came back. He unclipped her leash. She sat at his feet,
looking up at him with nervous, expectant eyes.

“She saw a coyote,”
he said. “I assume that’s why she snapped at my hand. This is
what I signed up for, though. She’ll work with a pro when I get
home and that will help. How much remains to be seen.”

“I’m sorry she did
that.”

“Don’t be,” he
said, shrugging. “One thing dogs have taught me, what you see with
people and animals is what you get. Don’t be surprised when they
live up to your first impression.”

Taking her by the
collar, he brought her to the kitchen. I heard the sound of a can
opener and a spoon scraping against a metal dog dish. Drex was right.
I was living up to his first impression of me as a woman with
nothing, no identity, nothing to offer but her body. I was living up
to it every minute I was here. I wasn’t even a whole person. What
we’d shared couldn’t possibly last.