Page 35 of Child In Jeopardy
“I’m not sorry,” she said just as Slater said, “Don’t you dare apologize.”
The corner of her mouth quivered, and she smiled. It was an incredible thing to see, and it eased some of the ache in his body. Not the need, though. Nope. It was there to stay. But it felt so good to see her smile.
“You’ve been a fantasy of mine for a long time now,” she admitted.
He was flattered. And aroused all over again. Slater hoped, though, that she wasn’t about to qualify that with something he didn’t want to hear. Something along the lines that it would never work between them. Thankfully, she didn’t go that route. She just kept it at that, which kept the door open to them fulfilling a fantasy or two when things weren’t so uncertain.
“Work,” she said as if trying to convince herself to move.
But she didn’t move one inch. Lana stayed on his lap and continued to stare at him until that need took on a whole new urgency. Slater was a hundred percent certain he would have acted on that urgency had Lana’s phone not started ringing. Both of them muttered some profanity at the interruption and then checked the crib to make sure the sound hadn’t woken up the baby. It hadn’t. Cameron stayed asleep.
Lana took out her phone and muttered more profanity when she saw the name on the screen. So did Slater, because it was Pamela. While Lana’s mother wasn’t the last person he wanted to speak to, she was close to it. Apparently, Lana felt the same way because she groaned softly when she moved off his lap and onto the chair next to him.
“Lana,” her mother said the moment she answered, and Slater immediately heard the distress in the woman’s voice. It seemed as if she’d spoken her daughter’s name on a sob.
“What’s wrong?” Lana asked, clearly picking up on her mother’s tone.
“That man who tried to blackmail your father just called me,” Pamela blurted, her words running together.
“BoBo,” Slater muttered on a groan, but he kept his voice low enough so that Pamela wouldn’t hear him. He figured Pamela might hang up if she knew he was listening.
“What did he want?” Lana pressed.
“He wanted money.” Pamela made another of those sobbing sounds. “He claimed to have emails from your father and one of his private investigators. Emails that prove your father knew where Stephanie was the whole time she was pregnant.”
So, Austin PD hadn’t managed to arrest BoBo yet if he was calling Pamela. Or maybe the guy was already out on bail and looking for yet another way to cash in on the hacking job that Taylor had paid him to do. It was also possible that BoBo hadn’t managed to get a cent from Leonard so he’d then gone after Pamela.
“Is it true?” Pamela pleaded. “Did your father know where Stephanie was when she was pregnant?”
Lana groaned again. “What did Dad have to say about it?”
“He’s not here, and he’s not answering his phone. Marsh doesn’t know where he is, either. I’m sure your father’s avoiding me because he doesn’t want to answer my questions.”
“Is he aware you know about the emails?” Lana asked.
“I think so. When he didn’t answer his phone, I sent him a text to let him know the blackmailer had called me, and I asked him how I should handle it. Then the blackmailer told me about those emails so I tried to call your father again. I left him a scathing voicemail,” she added, and broke down into what sounded like a full-fledged crying jag.
Slater figured the woman had to be plenty upset, but considering she’d been married to Leonard for nearly fourdecades, she must have known he was capable of keeping a secret like this. Yet she seemed stunned and heartbroken. Either it was an act or Leonard had truly done a stellar job at hiding the truth.
And maybe not just this truth, either.
He thought of that photo, of the way Alicia had been looking at Leonard. Then he recalled Cassandra’s warning about Buck being dangerous. It was possible that Leonard had known about Buck’s dangerous streak, too, and that the streak had gone all the way back to Alicia. That left Slater with a huge question.
Had Leonard known that Buck murdered Alicia?
If so, Leonard might have been hell-bent on keeping Buck away from Stephanie. It could have been why he’d had both Buck and Stephanie under surveillance of his PIs.
“Your father knew where Stephanie was,” Pamela went on, “and he didn’t tell me. He let me worry all that time. And I was worried sick,” she ranted. “I needed to see my daughter. He knew that, and still he didn’t tell me.”
“I’m not trying to excuse what Dad did,” Lana tried to explain, “but Stephanie wouldn’t have wanted to see you or Dad. She didn’t want to see anyone, including me. Maybe because she was scared of Buck or maybe because she didn’t want to face you while she was pregnant.”
Her mother didn’t answer right away, but she continued to cry. “There’s more,” she said. “Lana, there’s more.”
Lana’s gaze fired to his, and Slater saw plenty of fresh concern there. Slater was sure he was showing some concern, too, because he didn’t like the sound of that.
“What?” Lana asked when her mother didn’t add anything to that.
“After that horrible blackmailer called me, I phoned Taylor.”