Madison's Quest (27 page)

Her grandmother stood. “Excuse me for a moment.”

She returned with an attractive auburn-haired woman whose
cold, assessing eyes raked Madison.

“This is Geneva, Walter’s wife,” her grandmother said,
completing the introductions as Geneva sat, then quickly relaying the details
of how the three of them had come to be there.

“You’ve been in town for how long?” Geneva asked.

“Three days.”

“And how much has Walter given you in total?”

Madison’s right hand balled into a fist. “One hundred and
seventy thousand dollars.”

Geneva pulled a checkbook and pen from her purse. She
speared Madison with a hard green gaze. “How much will it take to make you go
away? I won’t have Walter’s reputation destroyed by the sudden appearance of a
bastard child who claims he had a birth certificate forged and paid someone to
put her up for adoption.”

“Geneva,” her grandmother said. “Madison—”

“I’ve seen her type before, so have you.” Her expression
softened. “The likeness to Kathleen is shocking. If you hadn’t prepared me for
it, it might have impacted my behavior.”

“Regardless, I’m sure—”

“I found the names Lara and Pete York among Walter’s papers.
Did she mention the fact that her adoptive parents are heavily in debt, so much
so that their credit cards all carry maximum balances, their credit scores have
plummeted and they’re about to lose their home?”

“No, but—”

“Let me handle this Eloise, please. I didn’t have time to investigate
Madison and her parents further before I left the office, though you can be
sure I will. Ultimately this will be less painful for all of us, and less messy
legally, if we deal with it now.”

Madison was once again speared by hard green eyes.

“How much to go away?”

“Enough,” Tyler growled, standing and practically jerking
Madison to her feet.

Shane stood as well. “We’re out of here.”

Madison’s stomach churned. It felt more like raging rapids than
pounding drumbeat.

Her grandmother’s expression flickered between suspicion and
a longing to believe, leaving Madison torn between the desire to escape and the
impulse to stay and defend herself against being thought of as a gold-digger.

“Come on,” Tyler said, the rough edge in his voice deciding
her.

Madison was still holding the picture of her
great-grandmother. She placed it on the coffee table.

“Goodbye,” she told Eloise.

I won’t come back here without an invite.

Outside the house, Tyler and Shane took her hands.

“You don’t need her in your life,” Tyler said.

She heard,
You’ve got us
. She also heard pain in his
voice, stirred by memories of his own biological family.

He’d never mentioned aunts, uncles, grandparents, but he
probably had them—and they were all people who hadn’t stepped forward to
protect him, to care for him, to love him.

She squeezed Tyler’s hand. “You’re right. For a minute
there— But you’re right. I have…”

All the family I need
. Only that no longer felt true.

“You’ve got us,” Shane said.

But what am I going to do about it?

Now that she’d reached the end of Bio-dad’s—Walter’s—quest
to get to know
him
, she needed to go home. She needed to tell her
parents what she’d done, what she’d learned.

And the money… She’d thought she’d tell them about that
after using it to help them, but now… Now she couldn’t stand any more
dishonesty.

She squeezed Shane and Tyler’s hands rather than deflect,
rather than say something that would only end up hurting them more.

They got into Tyler’s car.

Shane Googled Geneva and said, “Shit. Take a guess where she
works, Tyler.”

“How about a clue?”

“She’s a defense attorney.”

“Morrisey, Mackall & Dekker.”

“Probably was gunning for Madison the minute she heard the
name Crime Tells.”

“Why?” Madison asked.

Shane lowered his phone. “Long story, short. Their name came
up when Lyric’s sister-in-law, Calista, worked a case for Crime Tells. One of
the partners, Morrisey, tried to force Calista into backing off. Didn’t work.
Instead, shit blew up in their faces and they ended up doing a lot of damage
control.”

They lapsed into silence for the rest of the drive home, and
she knew Shane and Tyler were wondering what would come next, now that this was
done.

Tyler pulled into the driveway and parked. He took her hand
as she opened the door, preventing her from getting out. “Maddie…”

Ache spasmed through her chest with the contraction of her heart.

Shane leaned forward, his expression tense.

“When will you leave?” Tyler asked.

Her throat tightened. “I… Soon. It should be soon.”

“If your Dad is really okay, will you come back?”

“I want to.”       

Her voice sounded as raw as she felt.

“That’s not a yes,” Shane said, his voice sounding equally
raw.

“How can I give you one when it’ll mean walking away from
the dream of being in a band that makes it?”
When it’ll mean breaking the
promise to Eli?

Tyler’s hand tightened on hers. “We’re not asking you to do that.”

“But it’ll happen. Success means touring. Touring will mean
being gone all the time. If I’m with you, I won’t want to do that. I won’t
leave. I already don’t want to leave.”

“Then maybe you don’t really want to be in a band that makes
it,” Shane growled. “Maybe you’re chasing the wrong dream.”

She jerked her hand from Tyler’s, the accusation too close
to the truth. Fleeing the car, she headed to the front door, angry, hurt,
hating herself for living a lie when it came to her music.

Behind her she heard Tyler say, “Shane. Stop. Let it go.
Okay? Just let it go. Fuck. This is my fault for starting it.”

She knocked away the tears that escaped. Held her breath to
prevent more of them from coming.

They caught up to her.

Her heart and soul ached. Her throat burned and tightened on
the words
I’m sorry
. For not being able to shed the past and give
herself completely to a future with them.

“We’ll figure it out,” Tyler said, soft-voiced, and that
only made her eyes sting more.

He unlocked the door. They entered the house and the hurt,
the anguish was instantly buried.

The coffee table was bare. The clues, the Boy Scout badges,
the pictures and birth certificate, the drum sticks and bullet were gone.

“Fuck!” Shane said. “Fuck!”

“Guess we know who was behind this,” Tyler said. “When
Madison refused to be bought off, Geneva probably sent someone she’d helped
escape a breaking and entering charge.”

Madison touched her mouth with fingers that trembled. “But
why? Why go to this extreme?”

Tyler took her hand, pulling it away from her lips and
carrying it to his as he moved into her, and Shane’s arms went around her from
the back.

They held her as they had last night, on the freeway,
offering her comfort, offering themselves despite everything.

Tyler touched his forehead to hers. “She probably did it for
the same reason she tried to buy you off, because she doesn’t want her
husband’s legacy tarnished.”

“But how did she know I was staying here? How does she know
I haven’t taken pictures of everything? And even if I haven’t made copies, the
important stuff can be duplicated. I can get another copy of the birth
certificate. I can get another picture of Suzanne Turner and my birthmother’s
picture would be on her driver’s license. Those would prove they’re not one and
the same. A DNA sample from Desiree’s mother would prove that Suzanne Turner
wasn’t my mother.”

“She has a point,” Tyler said. “Having someone break-in is
more likely to make Madison take this public. It’d be smarter to make a
different play. Offer money again, or go directly to Maddie’s parents and offer
to make all their debt go away. Or, find out more about her and reach out to a
music producer to hook her up with a band and a record deal.”

Madison’s stomach hollowed out, not only at the prospect of
achieving success that way, but at the reminder of what that kind of success
would cost her.

Shane unlocked his arms from her waist, exacerbating the
sense of impending loss, though it lessened when his hands settled on her
sides, moving up and down.

“Okay,” he said. “Geneva’s a partner at Morrisey, Mackall
& Dekker. It fucking kills me to say it, but we’ve got to assume she’s
smart, smart enough to figure out what you’ve just figured out. So why have
someone break in here and take the stuff? You have to figure doing that wasn’t
cheap or easy because it had to be fast and probably meant hitting my place too
and hoping like hell this stuff wasn’t in the Crime Tells office or with us.”

Madison’s heart tripped into a race. “What if I was wrong?
What if he meant something entirely different by
there is one last
destination
? What if that was a clue, not just a message?”

Shane’s hands stopped moving. “If it was a clue, there were
only three things in that envelope that’d point to the destination. The locket.
The badges. The obituary. Everything else was used in the message.”

“The cemetery,” she said at the same time as Tyler.

“Hold on,” Tyler said.

He disappeared into his bedroom.

He returned with a gun. “Better safe than sorry.”

Shane nodded. “Let me drive.”

Tyler handed off the car keys.

Shane removed his weapon from a gun safe installed in the
Jeep before getting into Tyler’s car.

Madison’s heart drummed in her ears. “We might already be
too late.”

“Not necessarily,” Tyler said. “She probably doesn’t have
the stuff yet.”

“As soon as she does she’ll know, unless the badges mean
something to her. None of the articles said he was involved with the Boy
Scouts, even by just donating money.”

Shane shook his head. “Too obscure a clue. The last couple
have been gives.”

“Do you know where the cemetery is?” she asked.

Shane’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. Released.
“Colma. Not that far. I went to a funeral awhile back, not the same place, but
close. Guy who’s fucking family wouldn’t even show up because he was gay.”

“Is that why you—”

“No.” He huffed out a breath and looked at Tyler. “Mostly my
head’s been in a state of fucked because of him. How was I to know he’d
mastered a poker face when he can’t play Texas Hold’em worth shit? How was I to
know he had a thing for me?”

Shane’s trademark smile made an appearance, though it wasn’t
completely matched by the look in his eyes when they met hers in the rearview
mirror. “Then again, who doesn’t have a thing for me? I mean, when you’ve got
it, you’ve got it.”

A fist squeezed a heart full of longing. The burn returned
to her throat and spread into her jaw. At least her falling for both of them
had led to Shane and Tyler being together.

She forced herself to repeat what she’d said when they lay
naked on the hotel bed. “I worry about your lack of self-confidence.”

But it only deepened the ache, drove the conversation into
silence.

Shane braked at the cemetery office. “Fastest way to find
out where he’s buried is to ask.”

“I’ll get it,” Tyler said.

He put his gun on the car floor, disappeared into the
office.

Minutes later he was back and giving Shane directions to a
private mausoleum.

They wound their way through the cemetery. This early in the
day, it was deserted. Or maybe like the cemetery where Elijah’s grave was, it
rarely had visitors.

Their destination was a circular building that looked old.

Shane parked. “I hope finding the next treasure doesn’t
involve liberating his remains.”

“There’s a thought,” Tyler said.

Shane turned toward her. “Stay in the car. Okay? We’ll make
sure it’s clear first.”

She went hot and cold. Her stomach cramped. If something
happened to them… “We don’t have to do this.”

“It’s just a precaution,” Tyler said. “It’ll be safer for us
if we don’t have to worry about you.”

She nodded. But her heart banged more furiously as she
watched them approach the mausoleum entrance with guns drawn rather than
holstered in the waistband of their jeans.

Minutes later Shane waved for her to join them.

Stepping into the mausoleum, Madison’s gaze was instantly
drawn to a huge floral arrangement resting on the ground to her right.

There must have been two dozen roses, all of them white
except for two red roses in the center.

She crossed to them, eyes catching on her biological
father’s name as she knelt. Walter Douglas Bramel.

“If we’re right,” she said, “this is going to be it.”

Tyler tucked his gun into his waistband and lifted the deep,
rectangle-shaped ceramic vase for her to check the bottom.

“Nothing,” she said.

He set it down.

She frowned at the thorns.

Shane tugged off his T-shirt. “Use this.”

She wrapped the shirt around the rose stems, protecting her
hands as she pulled them from the vase.

No water dripped from the stems.

Where water should have been there was a metal box like the
others.

“And we have a winner,” Shane said, jamming his gun into his
waistband and lifting the box from the vase.

She thrust the roses back in. Exchanged Shane’s shirt for
the box in his hands, and opened it to see a gun.

“A forty-five,” Shane said, using his shirt to lift it out
of the box.

The cramping in her stomach returned, accompanied by chills.

Unlike the other boxes, there was no envelope in this one.

She removed the documents and placed the box on the ground.

They had the look and feel of something official, but when
she unfolded them, what she found on top was a handwritten letter.