Page 100 of Kylie

My first instinct was to argue, but Gage was right. At least about finding another place for this conversation. We couldn’t hash this out here because there were too many rugrats around. The last thing they needed was to overhear things that wouldn’t make sense to them.

“Not our house,” I said. “We’ll go to Brantley’s.”

“Works for me,” Brantley said.

Reese nodded in agreement.

I looked at Kylie again. “I’ll talk to Mom and Pop. Have them keep an eye on the kids for a bit.”

“I’ll do it,” Joe said.

Kylie peered up at her father. “You sure?”

He nodded. “We’ll take them back to your house, get them ready for bed, and wait for y’all to get back.”

Kylie peered back at me and nodded, her eyes bright with what I could only assume was vengeance. I knew how much she hated Martin Calloway, knew how much she wanted to pay him back for the hell he’d put her through. But at this point, we had to put that on the back burner because Calloway had gotten his hands on another of Meredith’s daughters, and it was clear as day what his intentions were now.

Brantley turned to Decker and Meredith. “Get over to HQ and sit tight.”

I didn’t know Decker Bromwell, but I’d heard he was a cocky SOB. At the moment, it appeared that cockiness was buried beneath an onslaught of pure terror. I understood all too well how that felt.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked Kylie as I pulled the SUV down the long dirt drive in front of Brantley and Reese’s house half an hour later.

“I’m sure,” she said without an ounce of hesitation.

I had expected her to say that.

I kept going past the structure to the area that served as a parking lot for the members of the Off the Books Task Force. I pulled in at an angle and shut off the engine. There was no preamble as the three of us got out and met up at the front of the vehicle.

“They still work out of the barn?” Kylie asked when we started walking.

“They do.”

“Who was the guy with Meredith?” she asked.

“Decker Bromwell.”

Kylie stopped suddenly, turning to look at me. The confusion and distaste on her face were impossible to miss. “He has a kid with my mother?”

“That’s my understanding.”

“I went to school with him. He’s … my age.”

Yeah, I knew the basics of what had happened. After Brantley’s revelation that my wife was alive, I’d gotten a glimpse of the details of the case. Needless to say, it wasn’t something I cared to share with her. The last thing she needed to hear was that her mother had been getting down and dirty with her student back in the day. Nor was it something I cared to repeat.

“I thought he was lying,” Kylie muttered as she turned toward the barn.

“Who?” Gage prompted.

“Martin. He liked to talk shit about my mother, but I thought—hoped, really—that he was tryin’ to get a rise out of me.”

Her tone suggested she was bewildered by the acknowledgment.

When we reached the door of the barn, I waited for someone to open it from the inside. A moment later, the lock clicked and the door was pushed open, Archer Halligan appearing.

“Hey, man,” he said, stepping back out of the way.

“Archer, this is my wife, Kylie. Kylie, meet Archer Halligan. He’s a member of the task force.”