Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 01 - Last Call (24 page)

She turned her head to the side, showing me her profile.

“I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

“Are you sure?”

“Just tell me what you’re getting at.”

“I don’t know. What am I missing?”

“Nothing. I’ve told you everything about Tom, about Dixie… everything!”

I thought about what Sheila had said, about going back to the beginning, and decided to trust her advice.

“Not everything.”

I stepped around Autumn so I could see her face. She looked up at me from the swing.

“Why did you come to me?”

“Because I knew you, because I trusted you.”

I shook my head. “There’s more to it than that.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Tell me the truth.”

She stood, moved up against me, her body warm despite the chill wind and the occasional cold droplets from the sky. She pressed her lips together. She tugged on my tie. “Don’t do this.”

“This has to do with us, doesn’t it? About why you left?”

“I never left,” she said. “
You
left. I shut down for a while. I needed time.”

“You could have told me that.”

As if someone had thrown a switch, rain poured down full force, drenching both of us. A last hint of twilight illuminated Autumn’s face and the water dripping off the tip of her nose, her chin, and running in rivulets down her bare shoulders.

“You would have wanted to know why.”

“You could have told me that, too.”

“No,” she said. “I couldn’t. I can’t. I never will.”

She walked off, leaving me by the dangling swings.

“Autumn!”

My jacket grew heavy, soaked through by the rain. I slipped it off my shoulders and let it drop to the ground. I yanked wide the loop of my tie, twisted free my shirt’s collar button, and went after her.

When I reached her, she spun toward me and pressed her mouth against mine. I grabbed her arms, knowing I should push her away, but pressed my tongue between her lips instead.

She pulled back and tugged me toward the ground, then straddled me while I lay on my back.

Rain pattered down on my face. The back of my head sank into the wet grass, its earthy scent all around me.

“No,” I whispered. Then, with the full weight of my voice, “Stop.”

Autumn ignored me, flipping open my belt and dragging my shirttails out from my pants.

I gripped her wrists and lifted them away.

“You have to tell me.”

Her wet hair had fallen loose and dangled around her face. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“Then I can’t help you,” I said. “I’m done.”

She smiled, if you could call it that. The expression looked so forced her face resembled a wax mask that could melt in the rain.

“It’s too late anyway.”

“No it isn’t.”

“You don’t even know what you’re talking about. Fifteen years, Ridley.”

“So what? Are you so different, so horrible? I already know about Dixie and all that. But I’m still here. You think one more thing is going to change how I feel about you?”

“It will.”

“Good,” I shouted and rolled sideways, throwing Autumn off of me. “Tell me something that will make me stop feeling this way. Fifteen years on the other side of the country didn’t do it. If you’re so fucking smart, if you’ve got the key, then hand it over. I want this to end. I’m sick of loving a girl I should have gotten over three days after she stopped talking to me.”

“Fifteen years,” Autumn repeated and titled her head back. She opened her mouth as if to taste the rain. “She’s fifteen years old.”

I rose to my knees. The soggy ground gave under my weight, and I sunk an inch.

“What?”

“Your daughter,” she said. “She’s changed the most. Once upon a time she was a little baby. Now she’s a teenager somewhere, going to school, talking about boys, listening to bad pop music.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, but the question was more of a denial. I knew.

“Your daughter.” She threw a hand out, gesturing beyond the park. “Out there somewhere. Our daughter. The big secret.”

I tried to stand. My legs had other plans, and I flopped to my side in the mud, splashing the side of my face. I could taste a bit of gritty earth at the corner of my mouth.

I have a daughter.

Autumn stared blankly out at the park’s shadows.

“You see what you’ve done? This had nothing to do with Doug.” Her gaze slowly moved to me. “But you had to know.”

Chapter 21

I blinked at her a few times. I couldn’t feel my face. My tie seemed to choke me, until I reached for it and realized I’d loosened it a while ago. Unbuttoning the second button on my shirt did nothing to release the phantom loop around my neck that kept squeezing and squeezing.

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?”

“I gave her up.”

My detective mind raced through possible options for tracking her. “We’ll go to the adoption agency.”

“We can’t.”

I forced myself to stand, though the rain felt so heavy. I helped Autumn up, held her by her arms.

“We can. Even if it’s a closed file. I’m a detective. This is what I do.”

“He won’t let us.”

A bitterness rolled over my tongue.

“Your father,” I said. “He’s the one that kept you from me. Forced you to keep it secret. It was him all along.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand just fine. Did he ship you off to Europe or something until you gave birth?”

“He took me up north, to a doctor. It was a long time ago. I was scared. I don’t remember much.”

“That fucking bastard.”

“He was trying to protect me.”

“How is that protecting you? And what gives him the right to keep this from me? She’s my daughter.”

I stalked back toward the parking lot. I wanted to race right over to the Rabson and get Lincoln’s throat in my hands as quickly as possible. I forgot about everything else, focused only on what it would feel like when the cartilage in Lincoln’s nose crunched against my knuckles.

Autumn tugged at my arm. “I never wanted to tell you. I knew… I knew you’d be like this.”

I shoved her off. “How else am I supposed to be? All this time …” My throat closed. I swallowed down the lump and kept walking.

“I wanted an abortion,” she shouted at my back.

I stopped, turned.

“He wouldn’t let me. He said it would haunt me for the rest of my life if I killed my baby. So he was protecting her, too.”

“Both of you are fucked in the head.”

“Oh, and you’re so normal—the guy who left his mother and father because they made him sing. Everything’s real nice and orderly in your head.”

“You don’t know a damn thing about me.”

Autumn pulled her shoulders back and raised her chin. “You think you know me?”

That was it, wasn’t it? I didn’t know anybody anymore. Maybe I never had. I hadn’t known Autumn was a criminal, that Sheila was an alcoholic, that my parents were political activists alongside the likes of Lincoln Rice. Even innocent little Devon, with his secret desire to learn how to sing, had a side to him I never suspected.

“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t know you. I probably never really did. And I don’t want to anymore.”

By the time I reached the car, the rain had let up some. Only after I started the engine did I realize I’d left my only suit jacket on the playground. So what? I was a millionaire now. I could buy another.

Autumn stepped into the path of my headlights and stared through the windshield at me. I backed out and drove off, leaving Autumn in the rain.

I heard her shout something.

I drove all the way to the park entrance and stopped. She deserved to stand in the rain. Her father might have sworn her to secrecy about her pregnancy, but she could have told me anyway. I never would have left if I’d known. She was as guilty as he was. But I wanted her with me when I confronted her father. To do this right, she had to be there.

I U-turned and drove back. She stood right where I had left her.

I reached across the passenger seat and pushed open the door. “Get in,” I yelled.

She drew her wet hair back with both hands, then stalked to the car, got in, and slammed the door.

Shadows rolled over us as I drove past streetlights and lit storefronts on the way to the Rabson. From the corner of my eye I watched swatches of darkness slide over Autumn’s face.

I couldn’t shake this tangled sensation in my stomach. I felt like I had missed something, or had left something more than my coat at the park. I tried to ignore the feeling and focus on the coming showdown with Lincoln.

“We’ll both talk to your father when we get to the hotel,” I said.

Autumn flinched at the sound of my voice.

“I don’t care what sort of guilt complex he foisted on you to keep you from talking. He’s going to tell me everything, and you are going to help.”

“Ridley, he’ll—”

“Let him try. Whatever you think he’ll do, let him fucking try it with me.”

Autumn sagged in her seat.

I didn’t wait for her to get out of the car when we reached the hotel. I stormed right in, got snagged waiting for the elevator, glanced toward the stairs, but didn’t want to waste my energy climbing twelve flights.

Autumn caught up with me. She gave me a beseeching look, but I turned away and watched the numbers above the elevator slowly tick down.

The ride up took forever. I bounced my weight from foot to foot, willing the elevator to travel faster. I could sense Autumn’s tension beside me. When the elevator dinged and the doors finally opened, Autumn hung back.

I jammed my arm between the elevator doors before they closed. They jerked open, and I stood between them.

“Don’t you want to know where she is? I’ve only known about her for thirty minutes, and it’s all I can think about.”

The elevator doors tried to close again, snapped back open when they reached my shoulders.

“Are you coming?” I asked.

Autumn squeezed past me.

We walked shoulder-to-shoulder down the hall. I rapped on the door. “Lincoln. Open up.”

I listened for sounds of his approaching. I didn’t hear anything except the TV.

I knocked again. “Damn it. Open the door.”

Autumn rested a hand on my chest. “It’s okay. I have a key.” She dug into her purse and withdrew the plastic keycard.

I backed away, but once I heard the lock click, I couldn’t help myself and shoved past her and into the room.

Some cheesy action film from the 80s played on the TV, the volume cranked up loud enough to fill the entire suite. The couch across from the television sat empty, as did the matching chair against the opposite wall.

I snapped the television off. “Lincoln?”

“Daddy?” Autumn strode through the arch leading to the bedroom and came out a second later. “He’s not here.”

I glanced toward the bathroom. The door was open, but I checked anyway, worried that, with the way my days had been going, I might find him sprawled dead on the bathroom tiles. The tiles were clean and corpse free. I even checked the shower stall, large enough for three people, but that too was empty.

I came out of the bathroom to find Autumn sitting on the couch, staring at the dead TV screen.

“Where would he go?” I asked.

“Maybe he went home.”

“That doesn’t sound like the Lincoln Rice I know. I expected to find him waiting up.”

Autumn shrugged. She didn’t have the energy to dispute me.

“What’s with the blaring TV? I didn’t picture your father as a Steven Segal fan.”

“I don’t know, Ridley.” Her voice sounded reedy, as if only one lung was working.

There I was, all pronged for a confrontation, and I had nothing. I contemplated interrogating Autumn some more, but I could tell even if she weren’t tired, she probably didn’t know any more than she’d told me.

I couldn’t stand around and do nothing with all this pent up energy. I tried to spend some of it by getting towels out of the bathroom so we could dry off. I handed one to Autumn and she absently dabbed her hair and face with it, not accomplishing much.

That feeling I had missed or forgotten something returned. Lincoln’s absence seemed to make it worse. As I toweled off, I let my mind wander back over everything Autumn had told me about my daughter. A hidden pregnancy, a doctor up north, a vow of secrecy. It seemed an extreme reaction on Lincoln’s part. I took Sheila’s advice and returned to the beginning. I had taken Autumn to the park to see if she could tell me anymore about the woman in the photographs. I ended up learning something totally unrelated.

Or was it unrelated?

Comprehension spun my head like vertigo. I had to sit, easing down next to Autumn on the couch.

“What’s wrong?”

“Doug,” I said.

“What about Doug?”

“I have to go.”

I stood too fast and blood rushed to my head.

“I’m sure he’ll be right back. He probably …”

She kept talking, but I didn’t hear her.

I stumbled out of the suite. In the hall, I reached into my pocket and withdrew my keys. I had clipped Doug’s flash drive to my key ring for safe keeping when I had left Devon’s. I stared at the small device on the way down the elevator, not sure I could trust my instincts after the emotional bomb Autumn had dropped on me. Maybe it was a weird coincidence. But a coincidence was a loose end, and if I was any kind of detective, I had to check it out.

Two minutes later, I was doing eighty in a forty mile an hour zone, headed to the Devil Man’s house.