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I wouldn’t bring it up, but if she did, I’d support her in getting a test. To do a test, though, we’d need Mathias’s DNA. Getting that could be a problem.
I looked at my phone for the time. Nearly lunch. I was meeting Talon and Joe at the main house to discuss the future lawmakers ring. I had a lot to tell them.
* * *
“Yeah, that’s what he said.” I took a bite of my juicy hamburger. “‘The devil is in the details.’”
“It could mean nothing,” Talon said.
“Or it could mean everything,” Joe contradicted. “It could be one of his obscure clues, like Melanie said.”
“But how likely is it that Bryce’s uncle figured the whole thing out just by using a computer program to twist and realign the symbol? It could have come up as anything.” Talon sipped his iced tea.
“True,” Joe said. “But there’s no denying that it’s a form of the female symbol. The other meanings may or may not be accurate.”
“Mathias has the phoenix tattoo,” I interjected. “Another symbol of evil or the devil.”
“Look,” Talon said, “I’ll be the last person to take Mathias’s side, but lots of people like the symbolism of the phoenix. Most people probably don’t even know that occultists associate it with the devil. Hell, Jade was going to get one herself. Thank God she didn’t.”
“My mother was no help,” I said. “But that’s no surprise.”
“And she won’t budge on Dad?”
I shook my head. “Just says he’ll come to us when he’s ready to. Oh”—I swallowed—“she seemed to indicate that he was being held captive somewhere.”
“What?”
“Don’t take anything she says too seriously,” I said. “But that’s what she seemed to be getting at.”
“We have to find him,” Joe said.
“How? Larry won’t say anything,” Talon said. “And Wendy doesn’t even know what the truth is.”
“She might know,” I said. “Ruby has this theory that there are reasons behind all of Wendy’s lies. That she’s very calculating.”
“Larry did say she was a genius,” Joe said.
“Larry’s a psycho,” Talon said. “Don’t forget that he took part in everything they did to me. He didn’t just stand idly by and watch.”
“Tal, they’re all psychos. That’s a given.” Joe cleared his throat. “In fact, there’s something we really need to consider.”
“What?” I asked.
“We need to consider that Dad might be just as psychotic as the rest of these people.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ruby
After I’d gone through what happened with Mark and my father the previous evening for about the nineteenth time, I was finally let go.
I was supposed to go back to the hotel, and I would, but Ryan had texted me that he’d be late getting into town because he was talking to his brothers. I could only imagine what about. So I decided to take advantage of some extra time and go visit my aunt and uncle, Erica and Rodney Cates. Erica was my father’s sister and had been in and out of mental hospitals her whole life. Their daughter, Gina, who had been a patient of Melanie’s, had supposedly committed suicide because she had never been able to deal with the sexual abuse by my father when she was younger.
My father—a fucking model citizen.
Melanie and I thought she had probably been murdered, most likely also by my father, who’d made it look like a suicide.
I was surprised when Melanie told me my uncle had dropped the lawsuit against her. Did he have new information? That’s what I aimed to find out. I drove to the townhome they’d rented in the city, left my car, and knocked.
