I’m on to you, Wendy.
She wasn’t as crazy as the Steels thought.
No. She played her cards in a very calculating manner. When it benefited her to be crazy, she acted crazy. I had the sick feeling that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Wendy Madigan had never lost her grasp on reality. To the contrary, she used reality. She twisted it to suit her purposes. But she never did anything without having a damned good reason for her actions.
Even he isn’t the most dangerous.
My God. Ryan’s mother was the true mastermind behind everything.
Chapter Twenty
Ryan
“What is death anyway?” Larry asked. “Do any of us really know?”
“Don’t try to wax philosophical with me. Just tell me the goddamned truth. Is my father dead, or isn’t he?”
“Death is in the eye of the beholder.”
I was sick to hell of this. “I think you mean beauty.”
“Do I? As far as I’m concerned, I’m dead. I might as well be, stuck in this place.”
“You’re stuck in this place because of your own actions. You of all people know that. It has nothing to do with death.”
“Does it matter? Does it matter whether the person is truly dead, as long as they are dead to you?”
“For the love of God, I just want an answer. We have reason to believe my father is still alive. That he faked his own death, or had it faked for him. What we don’t know is why. He’s our father, for God’s sake. You have children, Larry.”
“Children I’ll never see again, because I’m here. See what I mean? I’m dead to them.”
“Your children are better off.”
He wiped sweat off his forehead. “I won’t disagree with you.”
Interesting. Larry actually thought his children were better off without him. “Do you miss your kids?”
“Of course I do.”
“They don’t come to visit you?”
“Would you come to visit me if I were your father?”
I truthfully had no answer. I had visited my newly found mother, and from what I could tell, she had participated in the abduction of my brother, although not in quite the same way Larry had.
“I’m waiting, Steel.”
Did he really want me to respond to that question? “I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
I honestly wasn’t bullshitting. “It would depend. I know you’ll never admit it, but Theodore Mathias is the last of Talon’s abductors. That beautiful cop who was sitting beside me earlier is his daughter. You know that. That’s why you wanted her to leave. I could tell you that you have nothing to fear from her, but you wouldn’t believe it. She wants to see her father pay for all he’s done as much as I do. As much as my brothers and sister do. But still…” I had been about to tell Larry that Ruby had opted to see her father when he had to come into town months ago with Brooke Bailey. I closed my mouth. That was Ruby’s story to tell. Not mine.
“What?”
“I visited my mother.”
“You only just found out that she was your mother.”