Insatiable (Steel Brothers Saga #12) - Helen Hardt Page 0,58
Maybe the one we found at Bryce’s cabin was the only one Tom had. Maybe Ted only gave him one.”
“Why would Ted Morse want to stalk a ten-year-old kid?”
“Money,” Ruby and Melanie said in unison.
“There had to be money involved,” Ruby continued. “That seems to be Morse’s motivation above all else, including his own son.”
I swallowed. “This is all conjecture. We really don’t know who the stalker is.”
“True,” Ruby agreed. “It also could simply be Dale’s imagination.”
“I don’t think so,” Melanie said. “I’ve talked to Dale at length about it. He’s sure the guy was looking at him. Stalking him. What’s in question is if he truly recognized the man. That part might be his imagination.”
“Is Dale okay?” I asked.
“Dale will be okay,” Melanie assured us. “He’s not done healing yet. Something this traumatic can sometimes be a lifetime journey of healing. But he’s making good progress, and he’ll lead a normal life. He wants to lead a normal life, and that’s a big thing.”
I smiled. “I love him and Donny so much.”
“We all do,” Ruby said.
“I suppose we should get back to the ranch,” I said. “Those little boys will be hungry, and Jade isn’t much of a cook.”
Ruby stood and gave Melanie a quick kiss on the cheek. “Call if you need anything.”
“I will. Keep me posted on what’s going on. Joe tries too hard to protect me from everything right now.”
I nodded.
Boy, did I understand where she was coming from.
Chapter Forty-Three
Bryce
“I’ve looked myself.”
I turned and jerked backward.
“Brad,” I said as calmly as I could.
“Now that you know I’m not dead, I didn’t think it would hurt to follow you out here.”
“This isn’t any of your business,” I said. “It’s my father’s place.”
“Actually”—he cleared his throat—“it isn’t.”
My brows nearly jumped off my forehead. “Say what?”
“It’s owned by a corporation,” he said.
“Oh, yeah. I know that. But he left it to me specifically in his will. I just assumed my fa—”
How could I not have seen it? Easy. I wasn’t looking. Brad Steel was supposed to be a damned corpse.
“Talon, Marjorie, Jonah, Ryan.” I shook my head. “When the hell did you buy my father’s cabin?”
“The corporation bought it shortly before your father killed himself. He was low on cash, Bryce. He’d just paid a fortune for—”
“Colin Morse,” I finished for him, my stomach turning over inside my abdomen. “Did my father know it was you?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Brad said.
“Why did he still leave it to me in his will?”
“He probably didn’t get around to changing his will before he died.”
“Why? Why would you want this stupid place?”
“Why do you think? Evidence, Bryce. This place is full of evidence.”
“But my father and the others are dead,” I said. “What good is any of the evidence now?”
“For putting your father and the others away? No good at all. But it has other uses. For example, you got your mother’s inheritance back, right?”
The gems now resided inside the safe at the guesthouse.
“You know about that?”
“I know pretty much everything your father has done over the decades. I’ve kept close tabs on him.”
I shook my head. “I’ll never understand you. Why didn’t you have him put away long ago? All of them?”
“It wasn’t that simple,” he said. “You know that. They had a lot of power, and Wendy had the most power of all. She’d threatened me with a fail-safe if anything happened to her and the other three—a fail-safe that turned out to be a hoax, but I didn’t know that at the time. She was a loaded gun, and I had to protect my family—especially my wife, who couldn’t protect herself.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’d heard it all before. I even understood it, for the most part.
“So you know about everything hidden here.”
“Not everything. Just what you’ve dug up so far.”
That rustling in the trees. I’d been sure we were being watched.
“I never thought it was you,” I said.
“It wasn’t actually me. I had Dominic and several others watching this place.”
That eerie feeling that I was being watched. Turned out it wasn’t just an eerie feeling. Never in a million years would I have thought it was my best friend’s supposedly dead father.
“Are you the ones who bugged our phones, as well?”
He shook his head. “As far as I know—and I keep apprised on all of my children and you—your homes and phones are not bugged.”
I sighed. “Ruby said she didn’t see any evidence of surveillance. I