A few seconds later, “You think you’re worth that badge you wear?” he snarled. “Prove it.”
My body went numb. He had always kept one step ahead of the authorities. Never left a trail. My father wasn’t just evil. He was brilliant. A noxious combination. Only recently had he begun contacting me—once when he came to town with his girlfriend, and now…after his partners had been taken out. Something was definitely up.
“We’ve got Larry Wade. And Tom Simpson is dead.”
“They were amateurs.”
“Oh? And you’re a professional criminal?”
He laughed—that sleazy, corrupt laugh. “Of the three of us, I’m the only one who’s eluded you and that boyfriend of yours.”
Boyfriend. Of course he knew about Ryan Steel. The Steels had been trying to find him for months now. I wasn’t in the least surprised he knew about my relationship—if I could call it that—with Ryan. My father watched me, just as I watched him. It was a sick little game he liked to play. I’d only seen him once since I ran away from his home seventeen years ago—just recently, in the company of Jade’s mother, Brooke Bailey—but he left little clues letting me know he was observing. I’d been compiling a profile on him for years. Now that I had a witness who would testify against him—Talon Steel—I was more determined than ever.
For a while, I’d lived in fear that he’d come for me, but he hadn’t. Once I’d become a cop, it hadn’t taken me long to figure out why he scrutinized me but didn’t come after me.
He might be a psychopath, but he was also a father. In some bizarre way, he wanted to see me succeed.
Yet for me to truly succeed, I had to take him down. He and I both knew this. It was part of the fucked-up little game we played. I had to remain calm. Keep my cool.
“I suppose you’ll be tracing this call…and recording it,” he said.
“I will. It’s procedure. But you and I both know it will come to nothing.”
My father was way too smart to put himself in any danger of being caught.
“Indeed it will,” he agreed. “Come to nothing, that is.”
“So why are you calling me? You obviously know I was trying to get in touch with Shayna Thomas.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play that game with me. You know damned well who I’m talking about.”
“Think what you want, Ruby, but that’s not why I called.”
“Why, then?”
“I want you to call off the Steels.” The line went dead.
That wouldn’t happen. As much as I’d have loved to protect Ryan and his family from the horror that was my father, they would never stop until they’d brought him to justice. And neither would I. But the Steels had something I, as a cop, didn’t. Unlimited funds. If I couldn’t find him with my resources, they could with theirs.
Besides, my father knew I’d never ask Ryan and his brothers to stop their manhunt. This was just another little ploy in his game.
We were getting closer. Two of his cohorts were gone, and my uncle Rodney Cates had started talking. Wendy Madigan was also talking, and though the bitch was batshit crazy, she told the truth every once in a while. Now that Ryan knew he was her son and not the son of Daphne Steel, Wendy had fewer reasons to keep quiet.
My father, of course, knew all of this. I worked on the assumption that he knew everything that happened before I did. He had eyes and ears everywhere. He wouldn’t have survived this long without them. Such watchers cost money, and my father had that in abundance. Human trafficking paid exceedingly well.
Acid crept up my throat.
Human trafficking.
I’d had a working theory for several years that my father was involved in the sex slave trade, but I’d only recently found out I was correct.
In the back of my mind, I’d been wishing I were wrong. As despicable as my father was, I’d hoped he’d stop short of selling people. But what could anyone expect of a man who kidnapped and raped a ten-year-old boy, murdered another, raped his own niece, and attempted to rape his own daughter? And those were just the crimes I could prove.
Human trafficking would be nothing to him.
I’d recently returned from Jamaica, where the older two Steel brothers, Talon and Jonah, had been married. I was the guest of and honor attendant for Melanie Carmichael Steel, Jonah’s wife. She and I had only recently met but had become close quite quickly because of our ties to the Steel mystery. Having left home at fifteen, I’d gotten used to flying