Lonestar Angel (21 page)

Brendan hadn’t changed much in five years. Broad shoulders filled out a casual blue shirt. His khaki pants were a little wrinkled and stained. His dark hair needed a trim, but those brown eyes that missed nothing were sharp and inquisitive.

“I’ve heard so much about you,” Eden said, taking his hand.

“Same here.” He squeezed her fingers, then glanced at the pendant on the table. Frowning, he pointed to it. “May I?”

“Sure.” Clay handed it to him.

The other man examined it with care. When he turned it over, he inhaled sharply. “What are you doing with a Santiago heirloom? They’d kill to get this back.”

Clay wrapped his fingers around the bauble. The trinket was worth so much more money than he’d dreamed, but even more than that, it was prized by a drug family connected to Eden. The cool weight of the jade in his hand convinced him it was real.

He held it up to the light. The veins and color of the jade were exceptional. “Are they looking for this?”

Brendan nodded, swiping a lock of hair out of his eyes. “I heard it was stolen by a rival about seven years ago.”

“Stolen?”

Brendan leaned back in his chair. “The Santiago family is a rival of Juarez, that guy you had a run-in with in Colombia.”

“Juarez stole it?”

“That’s what Hector Santiago claims.”

He heard Eden gasp beside him. “Hector Santiago?”

Brendan nodded. “Dangerous guy. He’s blamed all the bad luck that’s hit his family on its disappearance. Does he know you have it? It’s worth more to him than the monetary value. Much more.”

“I didn’t even know I had it until Eden dropped it. It was covered with this.” Clay stooped and pinched a sample of the material that had covered the jewelry.

“So why is it important?” Eden asked.

“It’s been in his family for generations. Legend has it that the man who owns it will hold his wealth and power until death. Since it came up missing, his star has been waning.” Brendan turned the stonelike substance over in his hands. “Someone took pains to disguise this. Tell me how you got it.” He dug a plastic bag out of his pocket and dropped in the remains.

Clay told him how he’d come to have it in his possession. “It was in my pocket the night you busted me out of jail.”

“I can tell you now that I’d been in the neighboring town investigating the shooting of someone Santiago thought had this thing. And you had it all along.”

Rick came from the coffee shop with two cups in his hand. “Hazelnut latte, extra hot,” he said, handing it to Brendan before sitting in the last chair. “What have you found out about the girls?”

“We haven’t gotten that far yet.” Clay brought him up to speed on the piece of jewelry.

“Is there any way this Santiago could know you have this? Maybe he took Brianna to get it back,” Rick asked.

Eden plucked the pendant from Clay’s hand. “The ransom demand was for money, not this. I think they’re unrelated.” Her voice was defiant, and she shot Clay a glance that warned him to say nothing about her father.

Clay held her gaze. “But I never thought money was the real issue. There are a lot of possibilities. I’d always thought they were luring us out into the open for some other reason.”

“What about the camera?” she asked, wrinkling her forehead. “What pictures did you take?”

“Like I said, kids, the village.” It had been so long ago. Though the trauma of the night in jail was burned into his memory, the village itself had faded into the mists of time.

“No pictures of this?” Rick asked.

“Nope.” Clay tried to remember if there were any pictures of the pendant in existence. A dim memory tried to surface, but he couldn’t quite grasp it.

“What?” Eden asked.

“Nothing. Let’s talk about the girls.”

She bit her lip. “Just a minute. We have to tell Brendan and Rick.”

“Tell us what?” Rick asked, his face troubled.

“I just met my birth mother after twenty years. She’s married to Hector’s brother.”

Brendan sat upright. “His brother?”

She nodded and exhaled harshly. “Omar. And my mother says Hector is my father.”

“Holy cow,” Brendan said softly. “This is a strange wrinkle. Where is your dad now?”

“I have no idea. The last time I saw him I was a little girl.”

“And you have something he’s been searching for a good six years,” Brendan said. “That’s ominous to me in light of your daughter’s kidnapping.”

“There’s more. We found a picture of the dead kidnapper in an old yearbook at the ranch. His name was Jose Santiago.”

“Hector’s son.”

Clay felt as though he’d been sucker punched. “Brianna’s own uncle took her?”

“I . . . I killed my own brother?” Eden’s voice trembled. She buried her face in her hands. “Oh, I can’t bear it.”

Clay scooted his chair closer and put his arm around her. “It was an accident, honey.”

She raised a white face. “How could he do something like that? And why not just ask for the pendant back?”

Brendan shook his head. “Makes no sense, does it? I’ll see what I can find out.” He pulled the file toward him. “These the bios?”

“Yep,” Rick said. Then to Clay: “And Brendan brought a copy of everything in the files about the kidnapping. We thought we could compare the two, see if there are any connections.” Rick flipped open the file. “Let’s look at Madeline.”

“We know her mother was in a mental hospital. She showed up here,” Clay said. “They look enough alike that I think we can rule her out. She has blond hair just like Madeline. Though she looked too old, it might just be that she’s had a rough life.”

Brendan pulled the file over to scan it. “In my line of work, you assume nothing.” He began to read and his brow furrowed.

“What is it?” Eden asked.

“This makes no sense. The woman who claims to be Madeline’s mother had a hysterectomy when she was fifteen, following a car accident. That seems to be what sent her over the edge. She’s fifty now. So there’s no way she could be Madeline’s mother.”

“But she came to the ranch,” Clay protested.

“Maybe she’s another relative, but she’s not a mother. Has anyone talked to Madeline about her mother? Or the foster parents who have her? Maybe the mom contacted them and they know something.” Brendan made a note.

“I’ll do that,” Eden said. “She likes to chat with me while I brush her hair. Or rather, she did. She’s a little miffed with me since I had to give her a time-out.”

“What about the kidnapping?” Brendan asked. “How did this all go down?”

It was going to be painful for Eden to relive it. Clay took her hand. “Brianna was six weeks old. Eden was making cupcakes for my birthday. The baby was sleeping in her room.”

“I had the baby monitor in the kitchen,” Eden put in, her voice soft. “The dog needed to go out. I stepped outside to put him on his chain. When I came back in, I heard something bang. It almost sounded like the door, but I wanted to check on Brianna first so I ran up the stairs. Sh-She was gone. All that was in her crib was her blanket.”

Brendan winced. So did Rick.

“Man, that had to have been hard,” Rick said.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Clay said. “She called me hysterically. I started to dial the police, but before I could, my phone rang. It was the kidnapper demanding ten thousand dollars.”

Brendan lifted a brow. “That was all?”

“My thoughts too. He said not to involve the police or we’d never see Brianna again. We had that much money in our account. We were saving to buy a house.” He glanced at Eden, hating the pain he saw in her eyes.

“We were supposed to make the exchange at the river,” Eden said. “It was all set. But I got in too big of a hurry on the wet roads and rammed into the vehicle. It fell into the water. That was the last time we ever heard from them.”

“One body was found but never identified. Until we saw his picture—Jose.”

“And then you got that picture of the girls at Bluebird Ranch,” Brendan said.

Eden cleared her throat. “I tend to think Lacie might be Brianna,” she said, shooting a glance at Clay. “She was left outside a church when she was six months old.”

“Dressed in an expensive sleeper,” Clay added. “So she came from a wealthy family. Or at least a family that could spend fifty dollars for a clothing item she would only wear a couple of weeks.”

“Sounds possible,” Brendan agreed. He studied the paperwork on the little girl. “What about this Sister Marjo? Has anyone talked to her?”

“There hasn’t been time yet,” Clay said. “She’ll be at the ranch in a few days.”

“You talk to her when she comes and I’ll handle Madeline’s so-called mother.”

His friend knew his stuff. Clay felt empowered just having help. “Katie seems unlikely. Her father was killed in a burglary. The murderer never apprehended. So she had a family.”

“Maybe. Let me check into it.” Brendan made another note. “Hard to say how he got her. I’ll check hospital records and nose around the neighborhood.”

“Then there’s Paige,” Eden put in. “She’s also rather likely. Two men left her in the toy department at Walmart.” She looked down at her lap. “To be honest, I hope she’s not our Brianna. I dearly love her, but her foster parents want to adopt her. She seems to adore them and they’re crazy about her. It would hurt them all.”

Brendan’s gaze softened. “You’re a good woman, Mrs. Larson.” He read through the report. “I’ll see if I can take a look at the Walmart security tape. We’ll figure this out, friends. We’ll find your girl.”

20

T
HE STREETLIGHTS HUMMED AS
C
LAY AND
E
DEN STOOD BELOW THEIR GOLDEN GLOW
. R
ICK
would have Brendan in the air by now. Eden turned her face to the night sky, brilliant with stars. Alpine was quiet except for the occasional revving of a car engine on the main street that intersected with this one.

“Ready to go home?” Clay asked, his hand on the small of her back.

Home. How quickly they’d come to think of this starkly beautiful place as home. “Let’s sit for a while in the park.” She settled on a park bench and watched birds nesting on the trees, their heads tucked under wings. That’s how she’d been going through life lately. With her eyes hidden to what was around her. She glanced at Clay. He sat leaning forward with his forearms on his knees. “Thanks for waiting until I was ready to tell them that my father is Hector Santiago. I know he’s a bad man, but it somehow felt terrible to be ratting out my own father.”

He straightened. “I’m proud of you for telling them. They needed to know. Brendan especially. Otherwise he’d be totally in the dark about what might be going on.”

“I had a brother,” she said, her voice trembling. “I always wanted a brother or sister.”

“I’m sorry, honey. I don’t understand why he didn’t just ask for the pendant back. I would have given it to him when I found out it was stolen.”

She held his gaze. “Would you, really? Knowing he was a drug dealer?”

He sighed. “Okay, maybe not. So if he ordered his son to take Brianna, why didn’t he keep her? She was his granddaughter. And why not trade her for the pendant? If he’s the kidnapper, he asked only for a paltry ten thousand. That’s pennies to him.”

“I don’t know, but I think I need to talk to him.”

“You?” He shook his head. “Way too dangerous. What if this has nothing to do with him but your call attracts his attention? And besides, why would he hate you? The kidnapper seems to have a personal vendetta against you.”

She didn’t have an answer for him, but the truth he’d pointed out hurt. What could her father possibly have against her? She’d done nothing to him. “I don’t even care about why he did it. I’ll tell him he can have his pendant if he will go away and leave us in peace.”

He chewed on his lip, and she could tell he wanted to believe it would work. And why not? Such a simple solution. He rose and walked the length of several sections of sidewalk before he came back and sat beside her.

“Okay,” he said. “But I want to do some investigation first. See what he’s up to. I’ll have Brendan get Santiago’s phone number for us.”

“He might oppose our involvement.”

“I don’t think so. What’s it to him if we manage to finally get this madman off our backs?” He pulled out his phone.

“He’ll still be in the air.”

“He’ll have his phone on.” Clay dialed the number.

She listened to him explain the situation. It was clear Brendan wasn’t happy about it. Clay finally hung up.

“He was ticked,” she said.

Clay nodded. “More than I thought he would be. He thinks it’s dangerous to contact him.”

“It’s more dangerous if we don’t,” she pointed out. “Our daughter is still in danger. And maybe we can find out what he has against me.”

“None of us likes it.” He paused. “But Brendan is going to get the number. He’ll have it for us within twenty-four hours.”

And this nightmare might be over. They would identify their daughter and be able to move on with their lives. Clay’s arm pressed against hers, and she suppressed a shiver. What would he say if she told him she’d never stopped loving him? He might chalk it all up to God’s will. He didn’t believe in divorce, he’d said.