“I’ve asked Tad to come in and tell us what he knows,” the detective said. “I need you to listen, to corroborate, or not, the things he says. He’s our only lead to your father’s thinking and we don’t have time to waste.”

“I can just go, get another identity, start over. It worked before, it can work again.”

“Did it?” Chantel asked, staring her down.

For six years, it had.

“Trust us, Miranda. I realize it’s a tall order, but you’ve been in Santa Raquel four years now. You know Lila and everyone at the Stand. You know me. You definitely know Max. And we know you. We don’t know Brian O’Connor. He has no power here.”

She wanted to believe that. So badly.

“Give us a chance to get him. To put him away. Give us a chance to give you your life back. A real life. One where you don’t have to keep wads of money and emergency bags in your car. One where your son can make friends he can keep for a lifetime if he wants.”

She wanted help. God, how she wanted help. She’d been alone for so long. Eleven years old was far too young to take the weight of the world on your shoulders.

But she was her mother’s daughter. Had to make her proud. She wouldn’t be a victim. Wouldn’t let him win.

“Sometimes it takes the most strength to stay and fight.” Chantel’s words hit her at her core. She’d been fighting for so many years.

But she’d never stood up to her father. She’d only run. To college. And Jeff. To Miranda Blake.

She’d made the right choices then.

Maybe, now, the right choice was different.

“Fine,” she said.

* * *

At Chantel’s urging Tad walked in, sat down. Miranda wouldn’t look at him.

The three of them were at a round table with four chairs. Two vending machines lined the wall directly across from him, behind Miranda and Chantel. One held packaged junk food. Chips. Pretzels. Candy. The other, microwave meal choices. Soup. Pasta. The microwave was on the counter behind him. He’d seen it when he came in.

The refrigerator, next to the vending machines, had smudges on the handle. And the Formica floor beneath the table was cracked.

Apologies were choking him in their need to escape. But this wasn’t his show. He waited for permission to speak.

“Miranda, tell me about the man you know your father to be.”

Surprised that Chantel had turned to Miranda, Tad looked at her, too. He’d been under the impression that he was only going to be allowed to speak about his part in what could turn out to be criminal charges against him.

If someone wanted to try to prove that he’d knowingly aided a man in his attempt to abduct his grandson. Or assault his daughter.

As far as Tad was aware, Brian O’Connor had never had charges filed against him. He’d never even been exposed as an abuser. But he knew that his daughter had fled his abuse. Tad knew none of the details, but he’d put that much together.

“He’s insidious.” The way Miranda said the word suggested she’d thought it many times before. Like it was just something she knew. “All the great stuff he did, the lives he saved, the volunteering, the caring for the community, it was all real. He didn’t fake a bit of it. He can see a burning building falling down at his feet and instinctively know how to save one more person before it collapses completely. And he’s got nerves of steel that let him act on what he knows.”

Tad nodded. And then stopped himself. He didn’t want to admire one damned thing about the man. Was still sick at his own culpability. Still trying to make sense of it all.

Miranda had been lying to protect herself. But the chief had been lying, too. Tad...well, he’d been nothing more than an effing pawn—all puffed up with his own ability to save and protect.

“Your greatest challenge is going to be not to underestimate him,” Miranda said, looking straight at Chantel. “Don’t think you’re his equal. Assume he’ll be outthinking you.” Her sentences were clear. Each one a lecture in itself.

“If you need proof, look at what he just pulled off. He takes a strong, powerful detective like Tad Newberry who, it seems, isn’t from Michigan, after all, and makes him into a patsy—apparently with very little effort.”

He felt the dig clear to his soul. Took it like the man he wanted to believe he was.

“But don’t stop there,” she continued, still with little inflection. A professor, teaching a class. “He knows me, knows enough about Tad, knows human nature. You can’t give him any information. He builds profiles of people from what he learns and intuits about them. He allowed Tad to get close to me in whatever way he could, even if that meant having sex with me.”

Tags: Tara Taylor Quinn Billionaire Romance
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