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Sean would give anything to be able to help her erase that look from her eyes. He adored LaDonna. He had from the moment he’d been assigned to her case six years ago. Her younger children, four beautiful daughters, had been teenagers. He thought Dylan, the eldest, had been sixteen at the time. Dylan’s younger twin sisters had been just shy of fifteen. And sweet little Dorothy had just been thirteen or so.
They were adults now and just as beautiful as their mother, though only two had their mother’s blond hair. They all four had their father’s eyes. Bright green.
And then there wasFred.
Even at his age, Sean had men he admired.
Fred Brown was not one of them. Fred Brown was ruthless, intelligent, harsh, and incredibly dominant and controlling.
Fred loved his daughters, and flat out adored the woman he had married. He loved his family. It was the man’s one redeeming quality. Even if hecontrolledthat family completely.
Fred Arnold Brown, that was the name the tall man in his sixties went by now. It had taken Sean a while to find the original files that pertained to this family. They had been buried, deeply. Deeper even than they should have been.
Sean had always felt a bit paternal where the Browns’ daughters were concerned. They were good girls. Smart, a bit on the quiet side, though Dylan could be a real pistol. She’d gone through a bit of a rebellious phase that had given them all fits for a while there. Not wild, or problematic, or anything like that. Just passionate, full ofheart.
That girl could change the world some day.
If given the chance. Sean truly hoped she one day had the chance.
The girls were all in college now, but only online. Living on campus had not been an option Fred would even consider, for any of his daughters. The controlling part of Fred kept his daughters ridiculously close. They had one computer in the center of the home that the girls had to share, plus the little cheap laptop Dylan had bought five years ago that was close to on its last legs. Fred kept a close eye on what his daughters did online, too.
But considering what Fred and LaDonna had lost, how could Sean blame them?
Dylan should be graduating soon. The twins would be about a year or so after. Then they’d all get jobs. Try to build careers. Lives for themselves. If Fred allowed it anyway. Did Fred honestly think he could keep Dylan and her sisters at home with him and LaDonna forever?
They would want more than that. Far more.
He knew that once the youngest girl graduated, the Browns planned to move again.
Or they had. Untilthis.
This changed everything.
“Sean, can you stay for dinner?” LaDonna asked. “I’ve made pot roast. That’s Fred’s favorite.”
Fred. She didn’t even hesitate with the name he used now. So many Sean worked with struggled with the changing of their identities. With the loss of those identities.
“I was hoping you’d ask.” He leveled a look at her. “Where are the girls?”
“They went out. A movie. Why?”
“I have some things I need to talk to you about. I don’t know how much you want to share with your girls.”
“They want to move out,” LaDonna said, anxiety crossing her beautiful face. Anxiety ate at her, Sean knew that. And had for as long as he’d known her. Fear. How could it not? “To start living their lives. But I just…”
“Can’t keep them safe out there?” He understood. Of course, he did. This woman hadlostfour of her children before. Two girls, he believed, and two boys, though he had never fully asked. And it wasn’t listed in their files, other than they had lost four children. Genders and names had been redacted.
To have been given a second chance with the younger girls, of course, she was terrified of losing that. Of losing them. They were her world. Her heart. LaDonna didn’t work. She didn’t attend church. She wasn’t on social media. She had no other social network. She had Fred, and she had her daughters. She was isolated. Living behind a wall of fear.
“If we have to run again, I don’t know if we’d be able to take them with us. I can’t…leave my daughters behind. It would destroy me.”
Yes, he knew that it would. But he had information that could change things for them all. That was why he was there to begin with. “Morris Preston has been arrested. And his empire is crumbling as we speak.”
The dish in her hand slipped to the floor. “It’s over? It’s almost over?”
Sean shook his head. He truly didn’t want to get her hopes up. But Morris Preston was in jail, and the other two men who had been associated with what had happened to the Browns hadn’t been seen in at least a decade. Sean had searched for them himself. “I don’t know that I’d say that yet, but…something major happened in Masterson County. Preston was arrested recently.” Several weeks ago, but it had taken Sean’s people a while to get details to him. For him and his supervisor to consider what it meant for the Browns’ case.
There were still others out there, after all. Morris Preston had never acted alone. But Sean was cautiously optimistic for the Browns.
