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Okay, this was where she was probably going to get pissed. No help for it. She’d asked for honesty from him, so he’d give it to her. “Because I don’t trust your father.”
Her jaw dropped.
His phone vibrated. His nostrils flared as he pulled the phone from his pocket. Then he read the text from Terrance.
Henry says he will reveal the location of the first victim. His very first. He is giving you forty-eight hours to appear and meet with him, then the offer vanishes.
The first victim. Midas’s heartbeat raced too fast and hard.
My mother?
What a sonofabitch.
“I don’t trust yours,” he rasped. “And I fucking hate mine.” The thundering of his heartbeat seemed extra loud in his ears. Midas tossed the phone onto the nearby seat.
“But—but why—”
His head turned, and he watched the other cars glide past through the window. “Told you before, but I’ll revisit and tell you again. My father is a murdering psychopath who likes torturing his prey. He’s dangerous, conniving, and most of the words that come out of his mouth are lies.” He won’t tell me where my mother is buried. It’s just another lie.
“Um, I actually completely get why you hate your father.” Her hand touched his cheek.
Midas flinched. His stare whipped back to her.
She sent him a weak smile. Not the high wattage one that he adored. The smile trembled on her lips. Then faded. “What I don’t get is why you don’t trust mine.”
His hands fisted. The better to not reach out and touch her. Her scent had already wrapped around him. Tempted him. “With my past, trust never comes easy.”
“Again, I can get that.”
“When he originally hired me, your father acted like some obsessed fan or stalker had you in his sights.”
Her tongue swiped over her lower lip.
His gaze became fixated on her mouth. Still, he made himself continue talking. “Then you were abducted. He didn’t want me going to the cops. He barely let you talk to them at all last night. My instincts tell me that your father knows one hell of a lot more than he’s saying. Now he’s pulled in some top dog lawyer because he wants to make sure that neither one of us says anything we shouldn’t to the detectives.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “Ransom.”
Midas nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I suspect. You were going to be held for ransom. Maybe they even reached out to your father after you were taken, but he won’t tell me jack. I need to know everything so I can find the bastard in charge and make him pay.” A bastard who Midas suspected—with every fiber of his being—was a killer. “But your father is stonewalling me.”
“No, no, when I was taken, one of the men—it was the redhead you took out inside of the cabin—he said…” Another nervous lick of her tongue. “He said the last one who was taken didn’t get home. I didn’t tell the cops that part.”
She’d barely had time to tell the cops anything, thanks to her father.
“I-I actually haven’t told anyone but you. He said the last one didn’t follow the rules. That she wasn’t good.” Her body had tensed. “He kept telling me that I needed to be good.”
“You are good, sweetheart.”
“The last one didn’t get home.” Husky. “He said that. Told me she hadn’t followed the rules, so she didn’t get home.”
Midas began to see dots in his mind. Leading down a trail he did not like. “Anything else you remember?” The night had to be a swirl of fear for her.
But she nodded. “He told me that there had been others. That it didn’t always have to end the way it had…for the last one.” A lone tear streaked down her cheek. “If you hadn’t been there, I might never have survived.”
He hated her tears. They made him want to rip the world apart. Or to find the bastards who’d taken her—and make them pay. Too late. Someone else killed them for me. “I will always protect you.”
“Because it’s your job. I’m your charge.”
“Yeah. That’s what you are.” He brushed away the tear. His hand was too damn big. He was too big. Big and rough and he’d known from the first time that he saw her that he shouldn’t be touching Alina.
