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I blinked, processing her words for a moment before it clicked.
“I’m not asking for Melony.”
“Ah.” Her face fell. She motioned for me to follow her back to her car. “My mistake. Regardless, I’m not sure it’s possible. If I knew how, I would’ve tried it already.” She slipped behind the wheel and shrugged. “I suspect there’s a reason my husband, my son, and my granddaughter have all gone mad.”
She reached for her seatbelt. I closed the door for her, then went back to stand next to Dylan as we watched her drive away.
“Learn anything useful?” he asked.
“Could be.” I cocked my head toward the vehicles backed up behind us. “Let them back into town if they want to go. They’ve waited here for long enough.”
“And the blockade?”
“It stays.” I headed for the driver’s side of my truck. “Until we know for sure what Doris’s saying is true, no one else comes in. No one goes out.”
* * *
I left Dylan to man the blockade. Before I headed out, Luke and Mandy Spencer arrived to relieve me. Between the three of them, they’d maintain the blockade, bottlenecking the main road into Carter’s Creek; others would take the side roads. No one in, no one out. Not until we knew that what Doris had told me held true.
After Dylan’s plea to be relieved of leadership duties, I was surprised he’d been willing to stay.
“I don’t mind being your hand out in the field, Xan,” he informed me when I asked if he’d be okay. “Don’t even mind being your mouthpiece if that’s what you need. It’s calling the shots that bothers me. I’m always second-guessing whether I’m making the right choice.”
“So am I, dumbass,” I pointed out. “Being an alpha doesn’t grant you magical decision-making powers.”
“Maybe not,” he agreed with a quirk of his lips. “But better you than me.”
The sun dipped below the horizon on my ride home. I didn’t even remember to turn the radio on as I drove. My thoughts were already flurrying loud enough in my mind.
Melony’s part in this clusterfuck made more sense now that Doris had filled in a few blanks. She wanted a child. Couldn’t have one. So, she’d gone to great lengths to take mine. She was hardly innocent. Far from it. Plenty of women learned that they couldn’t have children every day, and they didn’t go kidnapping people’s newborns. But at least it explained what we couldn’t excuse.
Where Samuel and Quincy slotted into it was hard to say. The only reason they had to ally with each other was a mutual hatred of me.
Maybe that was all it took. Luckily, I was normally better at making friends than enemies.
Unfortunately, these weren’t normal times.
Back at the lodge, the door to the den was closed. When I knocked on it, Kingston’s voice responded with a firm, “Fuck you, go away.”
He was still sulking, then. No better, no worse.
“We’re not accusing you of anything.”
In the upstairs hallway, my ears perked up to the sound of Felicity’s voice. I followed it back to our room.
Cracking the door open, I found her in a nightgown, her hair wet and wrapped in a towel. Her cellphone was wedged between her shoulder and the shell of her ear. In her hands, she held a legal pad and an ink pen, taking notes.
“No, no. Please, it’s nothing like that. We’re just trying to find answers. That’s all.” She glanced at me and held up a finger when I walked in and sat down on the bed. “Please. If it was your kids, wouldn’t you do the same?”
A pause as she waited for the response. I unlaced my boots to the sound of her pen scratching against paper.
“Thank you,” she said after a few moments, still writing. “Yes, that would be wonderful. I’m sure it will be a great help.” Another pause. “Yes, that’s the right address. Thank you again—okay—thank you. Have a good day.”
Her shoulders slumped with relief as she ended the call.
“Who was that?” I asked. Sounded important, whoever it had been.
“Beau Monde. That nanny agency that Clinton hired.” She walked to the desk, sighing as she placed her phone and writing materials on top of it. “We never figured out how Melony got onto the estate. The cops swear they already talked to them, but I figured…”
