Melt (Steel Brothers Saga #4)(67)

“What can I get you, Jonah?” she said. “You want a drink too?”

I shook my head. “Coffee for me. For now, anyway.” I wanted to keep my head. I was a little worried about Melanie. She hadn’t answered my call last night or this morning.

Maybe that was her way of telling me to fuck off. Maybe that’s why she had left yesterday so abruptly. Maybe she just couldn’t deal with—well, whatever this was between us.

Fine. I would learn to get along without her. Hell, we’d only known each other a few weeks.

Wendy went to the kitchen and came back a few minutes later with a bourbon for Talon and a cup of coffee for me.

“Aren’t you having anything?” I asked.

“Yeah. A stiff scotch. I’ll be back.”

Stiff scotch? She must have some interesting news to tell us.

I had met Wendy Madigan years ago, when I was a kid. She came around every once in a while, when she was in town. Evidently she had grown up somewhere near Snow Creek and had gone to high school with my father. In fact, rumor had it that they had been an item before he met my mother—a rumor that Jade had substantiated after her talks with Wendy. I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around that one.

I hadn’t seen Wendy in years, though. Even when she arranged the cover-up of Talon’s homecoming and heroism when he’d returned from Iraq several years ago, she hadn’t been in town. She had handled it from her base in Denver.

I imagined it had come as kind of a shock to her to see me now, my gray hair starting to sprout at the temples and in my beard. I did look a lot like my father.

She returned with her drink and sat down. “I don’t know where to begin.”

I took a sip of my coffee. This was Talon’s call. I would let him take the lead.

He took a drink of his bourbon and set the glass back down on the coffee table on the coaster she’d provided. “Let me tell you what we know so far.” Talon related what we had learned from Larry Wade—that he had helped Talon escape, that Larry was beaten to a pulp by the other two—or so he said—for allowing Talon to escape, and that he was also being held for the murder of Colin Morse, for which he was still proclaiming his innocence.

“He’s also claiming he never got paid off by my father to leave the state. But we have a five-million-dollar transfer on my father’s accounts that coincides with the abduction. We figure that went to Larry. Can you tell us if that’s true?”

“I’m sorry.” She stroked her cheek with her index finger. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told Jade. I don’t know anything about a five-million-dollar transfer twenty-five years ago.”

Jade had believed her. But I wasn’t sure whether I believed her.

“All right,” Talon said. “I’ll accept that for now. But Jade also told me that you have information for me. Information you promised my father and mother you would only reveal to me when the time was right. The time is right, Wendy.”

She took another long sip of her scotch and sighed. “It was all such a long time ago, Talon. You really want to go back there?”

“Look,” Talon said. “We’ve already caught one of these guys, and I have an idea who another one of them might be. He’s still at large, and we have no idea where he is. I need to know everything that you know.”

“I wasn’t lying to Jade. I don’t know who the other two are.”

“The only reason we know one was Larry was because he supposedly helped me escape,” Talon said. “How did Mom and Dad find out it was him?”

“It’s a long story,” she said. “How much time do you two have?”

“As much fucking time as it takes,” I said, looking into her tired blue eyes. “We have as much time as it takes, Wendy.”

She sighed. “It started with Larry’s father. Your grandfather. Supposedly Larry was consumed with guilt. I’m not sure if that was the case. I’m not sure psychopaths ever feel guilt. But that was his story. He went to your grandfather and confessed what had happened. He said he couldn’t live with himself, that he had to tell someone, and that his father was the only one he trusted. Well, your grandfather had a few faults. If he hadn’t, Larry might have turned out differently. But for the most part, he was a decent human being. So he did what any decent human being would do. He told Brad and Daphne.”

“So his father sold him out,” Talon said.

“I suppose so. But what would you have done? You were his grandson, Talon, and Daphne was his daughter. Yes, he had to forsake one child for another. I never had children myself, but I can’t imagine how hard the decision was for your grandfather. He loved Larry, but he also loved your mother and you.”

“Jade said Larry was raised by his mother.”

Wendy nodded. “That’s true.”

“Do you know anything about her?” I asked.

“I’m afraid I don’t, other than her name. Lisa Baines Wade. That’s all I know.”

I remembered the name from Larry’s birth certificate that Jade had uncovered. “Did she have any mental ailments?” I asked.

“Like I said,” Wendy said. “I really don’t know much about her.”

I wasn’t buying this. Wendy Madigan was a newswoman. Surely she had looked into this back in the day. I wasn’t ready to call her on that, though. I had to talk to Talon in private first.