Madison's Quest (28 page)

Dear Madison,

I could cite my rapidly declining health and my need to
get my affairs in order as to why I didn’t contact you when there was still
time for us to meet. I could spin a tale, painting myself as noble for not
wanting to intrude when the family that has been your family for all of these
years, needed you the most. I could claim I didn’t want to burden you with a
sudden appearance followed immediately by a sudden loss.

The truth is less flattering. The truth is something that
even now is a series of jumbled images from a night of mixed alcohol and drug
use.

What I can say with certainty… I killed your mother with
the gun that’s now in your possession.

You’ll want to know why. I wish I could give you a better
reason than the one I have.

I didn’t know you existed until shortly before that
fateful night. I met her again at a party. She showed me the locket and I knew
I was your father.

We hooked up. I wanted her to hook me up with a friend of
hers, so I could move his product in exchange for a steady supply of drugs. She
refused and I set out to change her mind by getting her high.

From there the images become mashed and I don’t know what
is true memory, and what is simply my mind trying to make sense of what happened.

We were in a car somewhere outside the city. You were in
back.

We were fighting, physically. I pulled the gun from
beneath the front seat.

I want to believe that I meant to scare her into
stopping, into giving me what I was desperate to have, access to drugs, and
never meant to pull the trigger, but in the end I did pull that trigger.

Even as incapacitated as I was by drugs and alcohol, I
buried her. Behind this letter is a map that will lead to her body.

Arrangements were made for you to be taken out of the
area and adopted. I went into rehab, got and stayed clean. I made something of
my life, became successful. I put the past completely behind me—until faced
with my imminent death.

I wanted to set right what could be set right.

This is my attempt to do so.

It was signed with his full name, Walter Douglas Bramel.

She glanced at Shane then Tyler. They looked as blown away
as she felt.

“Guess we have the answer to your question as to why he
waited until after he was dead to make contact,” Shane said. “He didn’t want to
risk being prosecuted. Probably didn’t want to be around when his reputation
got shot to hell.”

“We need to call the police and get them heading this way so
they can take possession of the letter and the gun,” Tyler said, eyes flicking
to the weapon still in Shane’s T-shirt-covered hand.

“On it.”

Shane made a call to one of his contacts.

Madison took a deep breath. “Let’s see where she’s buried.”

She shifted the confession letter to the back, revealing the
map.

“Sonoma County,” Tyler said.

Shane nodded. “The badges. Camping and shooting. There’s a Boy
Scout camp in that area, or there used to be.”

The map went behind the confession letter.

There was another hand-written letter.

Madison,

What you do with what you’ve learned is your choice.

I hope, in the end, that you will measure my successes
and the good I have done with the wealth I accumulated against the wrongs I
committed during my teen years, and judge that I have atoned.

Frank Reed, of Reed, Marlowe, Mercer and Levin, has been
kind enough to oversee my efforts to make amends and correct the wrong done to
you. I’ve set up a trust fund. The principal balance as I leave this last item
for you is $10,000,000. It is available for you to use solely at your
discretion.

Follow your dreams. Had I followed mine…

This time it was signed, Walter.

Madison blinked. The number of zeroes didn’t diminish.

Her eyes returned to the letter’s beginning.
What you do
with what you’ve learned is your choice.

He was dead now, but when he’d planned this quest, when he’d
written these letters, he’d hoped to gain her forgiveness, her loyalty, perhaps
even her love.

Reading between the lines, he’d believed he deserved to have
the truth go no further than her, that he’d made up for bad choices and bad
deeds by becoming a success.

But his use of success as the measure she should apply in
passing judgment was like holding up a mirror. It made her realize she didn’t
want success to be what determined whether she felt entitled to forgiveness or happiness
or love.

Her gaze dropped to the final line.

Follow your dreams. Had I followed mine…

From behind them, her grandmother said, “Lift your hands and
turn around slowly. I assume at least two of you are armed. If you reach for
your guns, Madison will be shot.”

Shock whipped through Madison. And then jolted through her
again at seeing the man standing next to Eloise and pointing a gun in their
direction.

A chill swept over her at recognizing him from Tyler’s
drawings.

“Fuck,” Shane said. “The car chase and gun fight was staged.”

“I tried to nip this search in the bud,” Eloise said, cold,
hard eyes boring into Madison. “But you proved to be as stubborn and determined
as your father was at the end of his life.”

Madison’s heart jerked into a faster beat. “You arranged for
the hit-and-run.”

“Yes.” Gone was the facade of a woman just reunited with a
grandchild she hadn’t known existed.

Shane’s stance shifted subtly, as if he was readying himself
to protect her with his body. “You’ve had someone using Madison’s cell phone to
track her location.”

Madison’s heart beat even faster, even harder.

Eloise gave an elegant shrug.

Nausea swelled with the realization that Shane and Tyler
could have been killed because of her. That they might still be killed.

The man next to her grandmother looked capable of murder.
With his darting eyes, he looked anxious to get it done and escape the
mausoleum.

Eloise glanced at the gun visible in Shane’s hand, her
expression tightening. “I assume he also left a confession. I was afraid he
would when he came to me, riddled with conscience all these years later and
demanding to know where you were.”

“You,” Madison said. “You were the one behind the phony
birth certificate.”

“Of course. Walter came to his father and me to help clean
up his mess. We did, to the extent we could. But he was too resentful and
rebellious to trust us with everything. Now take the gun from Shane’s hand and
bring it to me along with the other things.”

Next to her both Shane and Tyler tensed.

“No,” Shane said.

“This doesn’t need to escalate into violence,” Eloise said.
“But be assured it will if the three of you don’t cooperate.”

She motioned Madison forward with an impatient gesture. “I
assume he set up a trust fund for you?”

“Yes.”

“Consider that your payment for handing over the gun and confession.
You can help your parents. You can make something of yourself. Now bring them
here.”

Madison wondered how far out the police were. She wondered
if her grandmother meant to take her hostage then discarded the idea. Without
the confession and gun, it would be their word against hers, and Eloise
probably thought she could label her a gold digger, even confess to the
confrontation but spin it as Madison trying to plant evidence.

“Does his wife know?” she asked.

“I don’t know what he told Geneva. Take the gun from Shane
and come here, Madison.”

For the first time there was a hint of sharp desperation in
Eloise’s voice, as if she sensed impending danger, or had realized that maybe
they now knew too much.

Madison reached for the gun. Shane resisted.

Their eyes met, battled for possession of the weapon that
had killed her mother, fear sweeping into Madison when he released it.

“Don’t do anything foolish,” she whispered.

She took a step forward.

Tyler grabbed for her.

The man at her grandmother’s side reacted.

Pulling the trigger, once, twice.

She was thrown to the floor, covered by Shane’s body as
bullets ricocheted and Tyler fired.

The man went down and didn’t move.

Madison began shaking. The overwhelming smell of blood
whipped her back to the wreck, to Eli’s dying.

The guilt she’d suppressed, the belief that his death was
her fault, for pushing to go to the concert, slammed into her. But the feel of
blood on her face, the taste of it and the feelings she had for the men in her
present, cast her from the past.

“Shane!”

She fought to get out from under him.

He laughed—of all things he laughed—though it ended on a
hitch of pain.

“Flesh wound,” he grunted, rising to his knees. “Ricochet
hit me.”

Tyler returned from kicking the fallen man’s gun away and checking
his pulse.

“He’s dead,” Tyler said, using Shane’s T-shirt to apply
pressure to the wound along Shane’s side.

Her grandmother was gone.

It didn’t matter. Even if she managed to flee the country,
it didn’t matter.

What mattered were the two men who’d been brought into her
life because of Walter Bramel’s desire for absolution, or forgiveness, or a
hundred other reasons that weren’t important to her except to make her look at
her own choices, her own beliefs, to force her to look at her own past and
recognize the guilt that was driving her toward an unwanted destination—and let
go of that guilt, let go of the belief that she couldn’t have the
happy-ever-after, didn’t deserve it until she’d kept a promise she’d made as
she grieved.

She reached for them, their hands meeting hers, one of
Tyler’s still pressed to Shane’s side.

“Shane was right. I’ve been chasing a dream I didn’t really
want. What I really want is to write songs and to be with both of you.”

Their smiles were a burst of sunshine across her heart and
soul.

Shane pressed his mouth to her hair.

“Maddie,” Tyler said, eyes the blue of a forever sky.

“I need to go back to Richmond, to tell my parents, to make
sure they’re okay. But I’ll come back.”

“Or we could go with,” Tyler said.

“I’d like that.”

She felt Shane’s smile against her hair before he leaned
back. “Can’t let you get away now,” he said. “You’ve officially become a
whale.”

Somehow a laugh escaped her tight throat. “You’re lucky I
know what being called a whale means to a poker player. But if you’ll remember,
the run of luck has been all mine.”

Tyler shook his head. “The luck has been mine, and Shane’s,
for having you come along.”

Love swelled her heart and shone in their eyes. “Or we could
agree, the luck belongs to all of us.”

Tyler exchanged a glance with Shane and grinned. “Possibly
with a little assist from Grandma M.”

Shane laughed. “True.”

Thanks for reading
Madison’s Quest
. I hope you
enjoyed it!

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modern-day San Francisco where a changeling tattoo artist has come to the
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And there are more, stand-alone stories. Information on
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