I pushed the barrel of my gun to his temple. “I’ll ask that again. You got any rope around here?”
“D-Duct tape. Kitchen cabinet over the dishwasher.”
I nodded to Joe. He returned in a few seconds with the tape. I continued to hold the gun on Morse as Joe taped his ankles to the chair.
“False imprisonment is a crime, you know.”
“Is it?” I said. “Gee. Didn’t know that. By the way, so is selling a human being to my psycho father. And maybe it’s just me, but I think that’s a whole lot worse than tying the perpetrator up while I’m questioning him.”
“I agree,” Joe said. “Now. How the hell did you find out about Justin Valente?”
“What makes you think I know anything?”
“You knew we weren’t alone during that one camping trip with my father,” I said. “Even Joe and I have trouble remembering that trip. But you knew about it.”
“As I understand it, you two were around nine years old at the time,” Morse said. “How exactly do you expect me to believe you didn’t remember?”
“You’ve dealt with my father. It shouldn’t be any surprise to you that he would drug his own child.”
“You seriously didn’t remember? You didn’t remember taking the kid camping and then he didn’t come home?”
“No,” Joe said. “We didn’t fucking remember. We were nine fucking years old, Morse. We didn’t commit a crime by inviting a friend to go camping.”
Ted Morse met my gaze. “Do you really expect me to believe that not once in over thirty years did you ever have a clue what your father was capable of?”
“I’m not sure your son ever knew what you were capable of either. You sold him to a psycho.”
“I find it hard to believe—”
Joe cocked his gun. “I find it hard to believe you’re still talking without answering a question. Now where the hell did you learn about Justin Valente?”
Ted’s lips trembled. “To be honest, he came to me.”
“Bull,” Joe said.
“Wait a minute, Joe. He might actually be telling the truth.”
“Of course I’m telling the truth.”
“You can stop talking now. I have a million more questions for you, but right now, I’m talking to Joe. This actually makes sense. Marjorie and I were talking about it. I think, in some warped way, Booker was jealous of Colin.”
Joe raised his eyebrows. “Say what?”
“Yeah. Think about it.”
Then I stopped speaking abruptly. I had learned that my father had taken Justin as a protégé from Brad Steel. I still hadn’t told Joe that his father was alive. Now wasn’t really the right time to have that conversation, but I didn’t have a choice. I put my gun down and grabbed the roll of duct tape. Quickly, I taped Ted Morse’s chest around the back of the chair and then also stuck a strip of tape over his mouth.
“We need to talk,” I said to Joe. “Alone.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
Marjorie
“I told you everything was fine,” Jade said, once we got home.
“How was I supposed to know that pain was normal?”
“Because I told you it was.”