Superfan (Brooklyn #3)(68)

“That’s the least of my problems,” I tell him. “He threatened me, and I’m so angry I can’t see straight.”

“Yeah, I know,” the older man says. “Take a breath and let me think this through.”

There aren’t enough deep breaths in the world to calm me down right now. Now that I’ve had a while to get over my shock, the solution seems no clearer. Meanwhile, I’m missing my flight. I haven’t said a word to Delilah, but I’m itching to apologize. It would kill me to stand her up.

“Okay, we have to tackle this stepwise,” Carl says. “First, I’m going to verify whether your father was actually released from prison. If he was, then we’re going to think about his access to your mother.”

“She legally changed both our names,” I point out. Kelly is a name she chose out of the clear blue sky when I was three years old, and we moved from Florida to California. “Does that help?”

“It helps some, depending on how smart your father is, and whether your mother took advantage of special provisions that help the victims of crimes.”

“We weren’t officially the victims of any of his crimes. So that probably wasn’t an option.” Although my mother was so afraid of my father that we left in the night, driving cross country to avoid him. She never reported his abuse. He went to prison for different crimes.

“The fact that she moved is more useful than the name change,” Carl says. “Parolees don’t have resources to travel. They’re required to stay in town and find a job, or risk going back to jail. A dumb man will ignore his parole officer. And a desperate man can hitchhike to California. But he’d have to be highly motivated to settle that old score.”

That’s what I can’t predict. “I don’t know my father at all. I don’t know if he terrorized my mother out of a deep-seated obsession, or merely because she was convenient.”

Carl nods, patting his mouth with the linen napkin. “So we’ll get a Florida PI to check in on your father’s situation.”

“Subtly,” I add. “He can’t know who’s interested.”

“What do you take me for?” The older man snorts. “I’ve been gathering intel since before you were born.”

“Sorry,” I say quickly.

He only laughs. “Don’t be. It’s okay to be worried about your mom. You and Brett Ferris aren’t cut from the same cloth. That’s why he’s got you so riled up. It says a lot about you that you don’t understand his methods.”

“Which are?”

“When shit gets real, fear and intimidation are his go-to weapons. I need you to walk me back even further, here. When does the history between you two start? High school?”

“Exactly. Tennis team rivalry.”

Carl Bayer nearly loses control over a sip of his beer and has to clamp a hand over his mouth while he laughs. “Tennis team?” he sputters eventually. “Rough sport.”

“I know.” I crack a smile, because it does sound ridiculous. “But we hated each other. He was slick and obnoxious, and he drove me crazy. I was scrappy and desperate and gave him hell. It was ugly.”

“How ugly?”

“We both cheated. I’m not proud of it. He was really slimy with the line calls. In tennis you police yourself. So I sunk to his level. And I think it surprised him that I would do that.”

“Hmm.” Carl strokes his chin. “I think this guy has an entitlement complex. He probably assumed he earned those wins, even when he cheated. A guy who thinks the world owes him a victory always excuses his own behavior.”

“That does sound like him.” But I thought I deserved to win, too. Nobody worked harder than I did. I wanted the town’s tennis scholarship so fucking bad. “It didn’t matter, anyway. He outsmarted me. He asked me to meet him in a deserted location after a big tournament I’d just won. He said he had something to tell me.”

“And you went?”

“Of course I did.” I sigh. The teenaged Silas was too cocky to anticipate disaster. “I get there, and it takes him about two minutes to unhinge me. He tells me, ‘I really think the scholarship committee should know that you’re the son of a murderer. I’m gonna make sure they hear about it.’”

I put my fork down and sigh. I remember with perfect clarity how hot my anger ran at that moment. “I punched him.”

“And that’s what did you in, right?” Carl asks. Because the cues I missed in high school are already brutally obvious to him.

“Yes. There was a security camera. For the price of a broken nose, he eliminated me as a rival.”

Carl shakes his head. “You weren’t the first teenager to let your emotions get the better of you.”

“I don’t want to do it again. Help me see what the hell he’s doing right now. I can pay whatever it costs…”

Carl holds up a hand. “Let’s worry about that later. I’ll find a smart guy in Florida to check on your father. I’ll bill you for his hours. But I’m gonna take a look at Brett, too. We need to know why he’s desperate enough to threaten you. There’s a story there, and we don’t know what it is.”

“He’s obsessed with Delilah.”

“Possibly. But it might be a business issue, too. He needs her more than she needs him, and we want to know why. Threatening you is risky, right? Not to mention illegal. Your phone logged the call. No chance you recorded it?”