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‘If anything happens to me or anyone I love, specific things happen automatically. All the evidence I’ve collected – including my own and Rhett King’s video accounts of abuse – go straight to your boss.’
Shock flashed in Holden’s eyes. But he managed to cover it with a sneer. ‘Nobody would believe you. My character, my reputation, is unimpeachable. While you …’ He sighed sadly. ‘You spent over a year in a mental health facility. You live most of the year in a mobile home. And you race horses for pennies. Rhett King is a boy in the care of the State. One who has a criminal record. One who not many people would take as a reliable witness. Optics, child, are everything.’
‘Maybe,’ Skye ceded. ‘Which I why I’ve never gone to the police. After all, the last time I did, you had me institutionalized.’ She tipped her head, said, ‘But Holden? If optics are everything, how do you think Camden, Horowitz and Snow will react to the whiff of scandal?’ She let that hang for a moment before adding, ‘Were everything I have against you to be given to your bosses, what do you think they’d do to save their firm’s reputation?’
His face went from pale to red with rage.
‘Firing you would be the least of it. My guess is that a bar complaint might follow. Either way, you’d be done.’ Skye grinned when she saw the realization dawn in his eyes.
She stood, smoothed out her skirt. ‘Goodbye, Holden. I would say have a nice life, but I wouldn’t mean it. I hope that money runs through your fingers like water. And that the next woman you try to seduce puts your balls in a vice.’
She didn’t look back. Only forward. But she heard her father’s enraged roar.
And she smiled.
She walked to where TJ waited, his eyes focused on her, watching over her even as he trusted her to handle it herself. When she got to him, she asked, ‘Home?’
And he said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’
Chapter 43
Scottsdale, Arizona – March 20, 2027
Although Caroline agreed to leave with Ryan and Janey, her reunion with her daughter wasn’t the big, tearful one Skye had always imagined. Her mom, numb with shock and betrayal, didn’t even hug her, only stood and stared straight through Skye, as if she were a stranger blocking her view of something awe-inspiring.
Skye tried not to let it bother her. She of all people knew how long recovery took. And she knew that a person never quite recovered fully either. So, she didn’t smother Caroline, simply whisked her away from Dallas before the news of her parents’ divorce filtered through Dallas society.
But once her mom was safely in Scottsdale, it didn’t get better as Skye had hoped. Instead, Caroline would lock herself away for hours at a time. Often, her sobs could be heard echoing down the hall.
After a week, Skye’s pity grew tired as her anger at her mother increased.
TJ must have seen it, because one night at dinner, when Caroline didn’t eat, just sat at the table while Janey crooned at her like a mother hen, Skye lost her temper. She slowly put her fork down. But before she could get a single word out, TJ scooped her out of her chair and carried her out of the room.
Despite her protests and violent threats of what she would do to him if he flared up his back, which had only just stabilized again after her fall, TJ just carried her to the truck and deposited her in the passenger seat.
He walked around the hood while she seethed.
But when he climbed into the driver’s side and wordlessly started the vehicle, Skye simply broke.
She cried as he drove, all her anger and resentment and bitterness oozing out of her with every tear.
TJ didn’t say anything, only held her thigh with one big hand.
When he came to a dirt driveway, with a rusted swinging gate sealing off the entrance, he got out and opened it.
When TJ got back into the driver’s seat and pulled onto the property, Skye asked, ‘Where are we?’
He got out and closed the gate. It was only when he’d gotten back into the truck that he said, ‘It’s a surprise.’
Confused, Skye looked out over the land. They were ten minutes or so from the dairy farm, so the landscape was the same. Dry red dirt with desert scrub. That big blue bowl of a sky so perfectly contrasting it. Up ahead, the driveway ended at a big white adobe house with a flat roof and a mud-stained foundation.
‘It’s like being in a desert globe, Arizona.’
‘Do you like it?’ TJ asked, his tone cautious.
‘I do. It’s really grown on me.’
He smiled, but Skye noticed that it was shaky. She looked closer, observed his pale face and sweat-coated brow for the first time. She put one hand on his arm, asked, ‘How bad?’
