“Weird,” I murmur as I scan the police reports, determining whether I actually care enough about this to look into it myself. It’s close to home, which is the only reason I’m even remotely interested.
A knock on my door makes me look up. Dad stands there, looking dapper as usual.
“Hey.”
“What’re you working on?”
I shake my head. “Nothing. Weird headline caught my attention, and I dove down a rabbit hole.”
Dad crosses the room to stand beside me. “Hospital deaths?”
“I was looking at the random disappearance of a guy from Flagstaff. There’s been an uptick in disappearances this past six weeks, but even that uptick is only three. Is that something to be concerned about? Then the deaths in the hospital, nine in the last four months, were unexpected. There was no reason for them to die.”
“How are the two connected?” Dad asks.
I snort. “They’re not. At least, not that I can tell. I was looking at the disappearance of this guy out of curiosity. Then I looked up others in the area, wondering if someone was using our backyard for nefarious purposes.ThenI looked up deaths, just out ofcuriosity, and the fact that there’s been so many at the hospital ruled as unexpected had me curious. That’s when you came in to check on me.”
He chuckles. “Are either of those worth looking into?”
I shrug. “Dunno. I’ve only been looking for ten minutes. I haven’t paid attention beyond that.”
“Okay. Keep me apprised.”
Does he actually want to be included, or is it just formality? I study my father in my periphery for a minute as I consider this, knowing that he’s been taking steps back from several of our positions and only going through the motions of supervising. He’s giving us the reins without calling attention to the fact that he’s doing so.
“Sure.”
“Your grandparents are here. They’d like to have dinner with everyone this evening.”
“Sure,” I repeat.
He chuckles. “You’re suspicious of their presence.”
“A little. They’ve never cared to be here over the past thirty-plus years, and now they suddenly want to come home?” I shake my head. “It’s strange being suspicious of family, but I don’t understand what they’re up to.”
“Neither do I,” Dad confesses.
I turn to look at him. “So you’re suspicious too?”
“A little,” he agrees. “I have this feeling that there’s something that one of us is doing—maybe VDT—that has caught their attention and they want a closer look.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
Dad raises his eyebrow. “Yes.”
“How much control of VDT do they have?”
“None. After they took off when Noaz was a toddler, I made sure they handed me power over the company and my brothers.”
“All of them?” I ask, surprised.
He inclines his head. “Yes.”
“I didn’t realize that.”
“You didn’t because I only brought Noaz home regularly. My other three brothers remained on the Estate with me.”
That means he spent more time with my uncles than he did with me and my brothers. Because he trusted we were loved and taken care of with Mom? That we had a loving home when his parents abandoned his brothers?
