Robby closed his eyes for a long moment. Trying to make sense of what just happened. “I think so. It’s just that…”
“Just what, sweetness?”
Robby dug the piece of paper from his pocket, staring down at it with equal parts bewilderment and anxiety. “My sister.”
Calder’s brows knitted together. “What?”
“My sister…Rebecca. She was there. In the crowd. She handed me this note.”
He waved the folded up paper as proof he wasn’t making this up, that his sister was somehow there outside of Calder’s apartment even though he hadn’t seen her in years.
“What’s the note say?”
Robby unfolded it with shaky hands. There, in neat script, were just two words.
Help me.
Below the words was a phone number with an LA county area code. Robby couldn’t speak. He let Calder pluck the note from his fingers.
“Do you think this is for real?” Calder asked.
Robby shrugged, leaning his forehead against the cool glass of the passenger side window. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen my sister since we left her with Brother Samuel all those years ago.”
“Brother Samuel?”
Robby shivered like somebody had walked over his grave. “Yeah. The original church founder. He and my father had a falling out years ago, and they agreed to separate the flock. The one condition was that my father give Rebecca to Samuel as a third wife.”
“Third wife?”
“Samuel was already married to Regina and Malinese, but he’d wanted Rebecca for way longer than was legal. My father sold my sister in exchange for the church’s name and the members who wished to follow him to Los Angeles. To be fair, she really wanted to go. She was obsessed with him.”
“Your dad and this Brother Samuel sat down and divided up the members of the church, and then he took your sister and the group and left?”
Robby shook his head. “We left. We all left the farm and came here so my father could live out his dream of making Magnus Dei the next Church of Scientology. As far as I knew, my sister was back in Kentucky with Samuel and the others.”
“So, what the hell is she doing here in California?”
“I really don’t know.”
For as horrible as his father was, nobody was worse than Samuel. He’d asked the children to treat him like their true father, but Robby had always found him…vacant. Empty. There was something about Brother Samuel that had unsettled Robby from as early as he could remember. The thought of him there…in LA…this close…chilled him down to the marrow of his bones.
“Could he have something to do with the man coming to your apartment?”
Robby shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. He never liked me. He hated me and my sister, Ruthie. I don’t know why he’d care about me or my life here. Maybe Rebecca finally saw him for the monster he was and escaped? Maybe he’s still in Kentucky and she came here to find me?” He hated the hopefulness in his voice. He knew better than to hope for things. Not everybody got to have a family. Not everybody got to have a husband and kids and a picket fence and a house full of strays and siblings who griped about babysitting. That only existed for other people. Not him.
“I don’t know either, angel. But we’ll figure it out.”
Calder left Robby and Cas in the office kitchen with Wyatt under strict orders not to give Robby any caffeine. Being ambushed by the press had left the kid so wired he was practically generating a frequency. Calder assumed Linc wanted Robby there so he could talk to them both together, but Calder wasn’t sending Robby in there blind. He was too vulnerable and Linc’s beef was with Calder, not the boy.
Calder rapped his knuckles against the slightly ajar door before pushing it open. Linc sat behind his huge mahogany desk . He heaved a sigh when he saw Calder and tossed his pen down. “Get in here and sit down, asshole.”
Calder dropped into the seat on the other side of the desk. “I’d respectfully like to remind you that you’re not the boss of me anymore.”
Linc scoffed. “What the fuck, hoss? You were willing to quit a six-figure job to stick your dick in this kid?”
Calder shook his head, irritated with Linc’s cavalier assessment. “It’s not about that.”
“Then explain it to me? What is this compulsion that leads you to fuck up every good thing you have? You up and quit the Rangers, you constantly fuck up this job. You like to act like you just roll along with nothing touching you, but somewhere deep down, there is something driving this.”
