Dom was damned sure of that.
Now, they just had to put it together.
Jake had his own copies now. “This is some dark shit. Why wasn’t it noticed like thirty fucking years ago? Why did it wait for a twenty-four-year-old gremlin nerd to find it first?”
“Good question.” The chief was across from them all now, in the bullpen. His good old buddy—and cousin—the governor was right beside him. Poor guy looked ragged. Dom had heard new babies would do that to a man. “Probably because the ones behind it are TSP themselves.”
Well, no shit. Kimball had said as much that night. But Kimball had also said there were other people involved—not cops. Dom wanted them—bad. He was practically vibrating from it.
Jake’s phone rang. And then the chief’s. Dom waited, already prepared for it to be something bad. It was just the nature of the beast.
“Let’s roll,” Jake said, grabbing his gear.
“What’s going on?” the governor asked.
“Attack. OnHeather.And one of her nieces. At the damned hospital.”
The word that came out of the governor’s mouth wasn’t one that a politician should be caught saying.
Dom got it though. Half of Heather’s nieces were the governor’s wife’s sisters. The other half—were her cousins. Of course the governor would be worried. And pissed. “Who?”
“Not sure. Heather’s okay, though. I’m not sure about the niece. That was Alex Barratt. His brother is in there with Heather now. Not sure why Barratt is, but…he is. Apparently, good old Mac Barratt is calling the shots for the moment.”
“Since what happened, Powell’s family are…taking care…of Heather’s, I believe,” the chief said. “Gunnar filled me in before.”
“I don’t care who is with them—as long as that damned woman issafe,” Dom said, grabbing his own gear. “Let’s go.”
He wanted to see Heather and check on her for himself. If she knew something that someone wanted to keep hidden—well, an attack on her would make a hell of a lot of sense, wouldn’t it?
Take her out before she could share her secrets. Dom strongly suspected they had done it many times before. Like, at least one hundred times over the last forty-five years.
Forty-five years—there would be a real trail. Dom was going to keep looking.
82
She’d been there before.Hope stood inside the Barratts’ home and just looked around.
Talk aboutexpensive.
Technically, her niece Cara was right. Under the Texas penal code, Alex and the trio of limo drivers he’d shown up with tocollect themhad abducted Cara. At least, Alex had—when he’d scooped Cara over his shoulder and carried her to the limo he’d ridden in on.
They’d been babysitting—Miguel’s kids and Sam’s bestie Mora’s. Alex had had her mom on the phone—and they’d been told to go with Alex to a safe place, and her mom would explain when she got there. But…they’d already beeninthe limo at the time they’d heard from her mom.
Some of them hadn’t wanted to get in those limos. Hope had been one of them. So…kidnapping? Coercion? Maybe.
Only Cara had protested after that. It was that whole problem with Alex thing Cara had going on. But Alex hadn’t really given Cara much choice, either. Family loyalty meant they all had to be on Cara’s side. At least until they knew why they were here and everything.
The entire place was opulent. No denying that. Of course, the guy was a billionaire. It seemed weird that their neighbor was related to a billionaire. Billionaires had an entirely different kind of life.
Hope didn’t remember the time when her own family wasrich.She knew they had been—she had very vague memories of the house they had lived in. Coleson Manor. Now, all she had seen were pictures her Bonnie-mom had in a handful of albums. There weren’t many. Hope used to pore over them—looking at pictures of her parents, before they had died. She really wished she remembered them better than she did. Her arms tightened around the little girl in her arms. Emilia Rose could get heavy, but Hope didn’t mind. And she wouldn’t tell anyone that.
She was still weak. The bullet hadn’t causedthatmuch damage, but the heart attack after sure had. She was getting better. That counted for something. Emilia Rose had fallen asleep in the limo ride over.
Now they all stood in the entrance to this place.
“Is it a castle?” Raine asked. She reached up and tucked her hand into Hope’s hip pocket. She did that sometimes, when she felt nervous. She was the most anxious of Miguel’s children. Jago was the most adventurous. Hope looked at that little monster, just to make sure he wasn’t already causing havoc. He just gave her an angelic smile—looking like a miniature version of his father, in that moment—and stood there, holding her nephew Nicholas’s hand.
No, those two little monsters weren’t fooling Hope. There wasn’t anything diabolical that she hadn’t tried herself at some point before.
