It would never be enough.
“No,” Cain said quickly. “But I need to go. Get dressed, I’m taking you to Vincent’s.”
I stilled at that. He was leaving me?
“What? Why?” I asked, hating that I sounded like a whiny child.
“It’s not safe for you to come with me,” he said as he pulled his shirt on.
I’d never seen him so agitated before. Yes, he was in a rush, but there was something else happening too. “Cain, talk to me,” I said. “Please,” I added when he didn’t slow his actions down.
He finally stopped and I was glad when he came to me and took my hand in his before leading me to the bed. I’d managed to get my pants on, but nothing else.
“Ronan’s tech girl, Daisy, just called me. She’s got some information for me that suggests my father might be back in the town I grew up in.”
“What kind of information?” I asked as I began pulling on the shirt I’d been holding in my hands.
“The attack on me and my brothers and sisters made national headlines. People all over the country started donating money to my mom to help pay my medical bills and to also pay for my brothers’ and sisters’ funerals. It ended up being a lot of money. Even after all my hospital bills were paid, there was over fifty thousand dollars left in the account.”
“Okay,” I said, not understanding where he was going with this.
“My grandmother sued for the money…not for herself, but for me. So I could use it to go to college or start a business or whatever I wanted when I turned twenty-one and got control of the trust the money was in.” Cain got up long enough to get my shoes and socks for me.
“After my grandmother died, I went to see my mother. I was so pissed that she hadn’t believed me…that she’d defended my father even after I’d told her the truth about what had happened. Knowing she helped him escape…”
I nodded in understanding. “I get it,” I said softly.
“She told me I’d never understand and tried to convince me I was confused about that day. That my father loved me, that he still loved me despite everything I’d said. She said that one day I’d see and we’d be a family again. I knew…” His voice dropped off for a moment. “I knew at that point that she was still in touch with him. Don’t ask me how, I just did. She was so…certain about how things would play out.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I started following her in the hope she would lead me to him. But she never left town, didn’t sell the house. I started to think maybe I was wrong, but then I met someone who told me I wasn’t.”
“Ronan,” I said softly.
“Guys like my dad are exactly why Ronan started his group. On the five-year anniversary of the murders, my mother did an interview with a national news organization. She spent the entire time defending my father despite all the evidence to prove he’d been the attacker. My father was tried in absentia,” Cain said.
I nodded in understanding. “That means they have a trial whether the defendant is there or not, right?”
“Right,” he said quietly. “He was convicted so if they ever find him, he goes right to jail. No second trial. My mother was charged with aiding and abetting, but the prosecutor ended up dropping the charges when he decided he didn’t have enough evidence.”
“So how did Ronan get involved?”
“He saw the interview my mother did and then started looking into the case. When he saw me trailing my mother looking for proof she knew where my father was, he reached out to me and made me an offer.”
“A job in exchange for helping find your father?” I guessed.
“Not quite. I asked for the job when he explained who he was and what his team could do. He resisted at first, but then he took me on and taught me what I needed to know. He told me that he’d found evidence of my mom emptying out her 401k account a few weeks before I’d confronted her after my grandmother died. But the money trail stopped as soon as she took the money out of the account. No wire transfers, no spending it on something for the house or herself. It was just…gone.”
“She gave it to your father,” I murmured.
“That’s what Ronan suspected. Either she went to him or he came to her. That’s why Ronan was trailing her. Ronan suggested I give her access to the account that had the fifty-thousand in it. That way we could monitor it and if she touched it, we’d know.”
“So she took money out?” I asked. “Is that why Daisy called you?”
“Yes. She took all of the money out. First time in almost four years she’s touched it.”
I understood and quickly climbed to my feet. “She’s giving it to your father or going to join him,” I said. I grabbed my bag and began jamming my few belongings into it. “Let’s go,” I said.
