“What?” I stand abruptly.
“Sit down,” Ryan says. “Like Talon said, it’s a long story. Did Dale ever tell you that Ruby used to be a cop?”
Had he? “I don’t know. Maybe. Or Dee did. She told me something about every member of the family that first night, but I’m not sure I recall everything. It sounds vaguely familiar.”
“Ruby was a detective when we met,” Ryan says. “She quit the force before we got married.”
“Why?”
“Because they wouldn’t give her a leave of absence to investigate her father.”
Again, “What?” I’m not sure my eyes have ever been open quite so wide. I’m so not following. What does any of this have to do with Dale?
“Ruby’s father had her kidnapped, and Ryan and I went off to find her. But before we found her, we found Dale and Donny.”
Chills skitter along my spine and up my neck. “Where? Where did you find them?”
“On a private island in the Caribbean. They’d been…” Talon clears his throat.
“I’ll do it, Tal.”
Talon nods. “Thank you.”
Ryan continues, “Dale and Donny were also kidnapped.”
I pick up my jaw long enough to say, “By whom?”
“By a child trafficking ring that Ruby’s father worked for. They’d been locked up for over two months when we found them.”
Child trafficking ring. The Steel Foundation. Mental illness and child trafficking. I’m seriously going to be sick. My bowels clench.
“Locked up?” My stomach rises to my throat.
“Yes,” Ryan says. “They were kidnapped, trained with torture—all kinds of torture—and meant to be sold overseas to a master.”
I retch.
Literally retch on the carpet in Talon’s office. I don’t even try to hold it back. It wouldn’t work anyway.
Luckily nothing comes up.
Ryan’s arm goes around me. “Easy, Ashley. Let it out.”
I retch again. This time a little comes up. I want to ask questions.
I want to bury my head in the sand.
I want to puke my entire body up until I’m inside out.
I want to hide inside myself until everything’s okay again.
Except everything will never be okay again.
Not ever again.
“Dale and Donny…” I finally say between heaves.
“Dale and Donny,” Talon says, “were held. Were hurt. Were…”
“Easy, Tal.” Ryan’s voice.
This must be hard for Talon. For both of them. To know what two little boys went through at strangers’ hands.
A throat clears. “I’m okay.” Talon’s voice.
“We don’t know exactly what the boys went through,” Ryan says.
“Only their therapists know,” Talon continues. “Jade and I know some, but Dale, especially, wasn’t overly talkative during therapy.”
I swallow down a heave and look up. A toxic color of brownish yellow permeates their voices.
Talon’s face is stark white. Not an easy feat for a naturally tan man with ruddiness in his cheeks most of the time.
Ryan doesn’t look a lot better.
How do I deal with this? Any of this? Suddenly being conceived by a rapist and living in tent city in San Francisco seems like just another day in the park.
And Dale…
Dale will be angry at me. At Talon and Ryan for telling me.
Dale will be angry.
But I can’t keep this from him. He has to know that I know.
He’ll be able to see right through me anyway.
“This is important,” Talon is saying.
“What? Yes, of course it is.”
“I mean,” he says, “it’s important that you understand. That you be there for him. He should have told you before he married you. He should have…”
Talon continues speaking, but the words mesh together in a dark-gray hue, like a thunderhead ready to explode in the sky.
All gray.
All gray…and gray is the worst color of all.
Sounds are only gray when…
When…there’s no hope.
Chapter Forty-Five
Dale
I unlock the door to Floyd Jolly’s home.
It’s a rental, and the landlord gave me a key to go in and haul his shit out. I’ve hired a company to meet me here in a couple of hours, but first…
First, as much as it pains me, I need to look around. Need to try to understand why a man would do such a heinous thing to two innocent children.
Two innocent children he’d fathered, no less.
Too much.
Too much all at once.
Ashley catapulted into my life, awakening the dormant emotion within me, threatening to unbury something I never let myself think about. Slowly it’s creeping to the surface. Floyd’s confession brought it closer, and the fire marshal’s call…
So much I’ve fucked up.
I’ll never be free.
I don’t deserve to be free.
The house is a mess.
“Meow!” a cat squalls.
Floyd’s cat. What was its name? Puzzles? Poozles?
It must be starving. Though there’s probably a surplus of rats in this mess of a home.
“Here, kitty,” I say. “Come here. You hungry?”
I head into the kitchen. The cat bowl is empty, of course. God knows when she was last fed. I’m not a cat person, but I sure don’t want to see an animal starve. I quickly find the cat food and fill up the bowl. What about water? Do cats drink water? On TV, they always seem to be drinking milk. I grab a bowl out of a cupboard and fill it with water, setting it next to the food. Then I open the refrigerator. Sure enough, a carton of milk sits on the top shelf. I pull it out, open it, and—