Beautiful Broken Promises(20)
“There wasn’t any audio, but I know what I saw.”
“You saw NOTHING!” she yelled.
“I saw enough to lead me to Flores.”
“Lead you to him?!” Her voice had almost reached a frightening level, and I was impressed that both kids were still sound asleep. “If you knew where he was, where the hell were you? WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU? Where were you when I had to beg for Kate’s life because they wanted to toss her?” I flinched at her words. “Yeah, toss her like she was trash, because they didn’t want a girl. Where were you when I had to rock two crying babies all by myself, night after night? Where were you when I had to get slashes because I wouldn’t let the men take Kate wherever the hell they wanted to take her?”
“Stop!” I shouted and then sank back, berating myself for raising my voice, especially with Kate in my arms. “I’m not ready to hear all of this right now,” I said, forcing a calm I didn’t feel into my voice.
“I wasn’t ready to live it either,” responded quietly. “You,” she pointed at me, then over to Charlie and out the door, presumably at the other officers. She rose out of her chair and continued, “Did nothing. I took care of them. I took the punishments for them. I got us out of there. Don’t talk to me about this being my fault.”
Charlie and I stared open-mouthed at the five-foot-five, painfully beautiful woman who stood across the table from us. I wasn’t sure what to say, and I had a feeling Charlie was just as dumbfounded. Whatever I was expecting to fly out of that saucy little mouth, that had not been it—none of it.
“I’d like to go to that hotel now, Officer Charlie,” she stated while slowly sitting back down again with her hands splayed across the wood table.
Charlie looked at her, but he couldn’t quite seem to snap out of his stupor. Finally, he cleared his throat and tried to resemble a professional. “Uh, yeah. I’m just waiting on Chief to get here first.”
“NO,” she began just as Chief marched in the door, looking as if he’d been woken from a deep sleep.
“Chief, I’m glad you could make it,” Charlie stated professionally.
“Chief.” I nodded my head toward the gruff older man that stood in the doorway.
“Knock it off, Lane, and call me Dad. You don’t work for me anymore, son,” my dad barked at me.
I hadn’t seen my parents since Ash’s funeral. I knew how bad it was of me to cut them out, but they just reminded me too much of Kate. Of pain and loneliness and all that I had lost. I mainly left New York so I could look for Kate on the West Coast, but I also left to escape the memories and the pitying looks from everyone I knew.
When my dad finally got a good look at me, I saw the instant he realized what—or rather, who—I had in my hands. His face visibly softened and he quietly walked toward us. I swiveled in my chair away from the table and faced him as he knelt down in front of his granddaughter.
“Your mother needs to be here,” he whispered, hovering over her. He looked as if he didn’t know where or how to touch her.
“Ma can see her tomorrow. They’ve been here all night, Dad. I think it’s time they slept in a bed.”
“She’s so beautiful...” he said, sighing reverently.
“She is, isn’t she?”
He pulled out the chair next to me and sat down without moving any further away from her. His hair had become much grayer than the last time I’d seen him, and his face seemed to wrinkle more as he got older. But he was still my dad, the same one who threw baseballs to me for hours every evening after school and used to constantly drill me so I could be successful in the police academy. As much as I knew he loved me, I think that he loved Kate on a whole other level. It killed my parents when she went missing.
“Look, son. I don’t know what I just walked in on, but Doyle has caught me up to speed on everything Raegan told him on the trip out here.”
I quickly looked over to Charlie, who had a smug look on his face. “You knew everything she was going to say?” I asked, and he nodded his head. I grumbled, “And you just let me lay into her like that?”
“You deserved what you got back,” he stated casually.
I looked over at Raegan, who had moved back to the chairs where Braden was sleeping. She wouldn’t look at me while she ran her fingers through his hair, and I began to let my mind consider the fact that maybe I had been wrong all these years. I mean, could she truly be guilty of such a crime when she seemed genuinely crushed that Ash had passed away?