Page 36 of Child In Jeopardy

“Why?” Lana was quick to demand.

“Because I heard your father mention her. Something about her being the reason this man was trying to blackmail him. I didn’t know what Taylor had done, but I figured she’d be able to give me answers.”

“And did she?” Lana prompted after her mother broke into a fresh sob. This one was even louder than the other one.

“Taylor gave me...something. Something I don’t want to believe,” Pamela wailed. “Lana, I think I need to leave. I think I should go to a safe house, a place like the one you set up for Stephanie.”

Now there was alarm on Lana’s face. “Did Taylor threaten you? Are you scared of her?”

“No.” And that was all Pamela said for several long moments. “I’m not scared of Taylor. I’m scared of your father.”

Lana groaned and scrubbed her hand over her face. “Why? What happened? What did Taylor tell you to make you afraid of him?”

“She said...” Another sob stopped Pamela. “Taylor said that it was your father who killed Stephanie and that it wasn’t the first time he’d killed someone.” Both her voice and her breath broke. “Taylor said he killed Slater’s father, too.”

Chapter Twelve

Part of Lana just wanted to stay shut inside the ranch house with Cameron and Slater. She wanted to hold on to this peace that settled over her whenever she was with the two of them. But the peace was merely a facade, and she didn’t stand a chance of it being real until she had all the answers about her sister’s murder.

And Slater’s father’s.

One look at Slater, and Lana could see there’d be no peace for him, either. For nearly a year he’d been driven to find the person who’d ended his father’s life, and now he might finally know.

Might.

“My mother could be wrong,” Lana spelled out. Not for the first time, either. She’d been saying variations of that for the past hour since her mother’s bombshell call.

Slater finished reading through the latest text he’d gotten from Duncan and nodded. Yes, he was well aware that anything to do with her mother could end up being a wild-goose chase, but now that the allegation had been made, it needed to be investigated. They had to know if Leonard was truly the person behind Sheriff McCullough’s, Stephanie’s and maybe even Alicia’s murders.

Of course, they couldn’t just go charging in and demanding answers from her father. Nor could they simply send in the cops, because Leonard would just stonewall with his lawyers. No, this had to be done with some finesse, and Lana had known from the moment she’d ended the call with her mother that as Leonard’s daughter, she was their best bet at learning the truth.

Slater hadn’t immediately agreed to that, of course. He wanted her safe, but safe wasn’t going to get them those answers.

“Your mother just arrived at the secure location,” Slater relayed after firing off a text response to Duncan. “It’s Ruston’s apartment in San Antonio, and he’s the one who escorted Pamela there. He doesn’t actually live there anymore now that he’s married and has a baby. He commutes from Saddle Ridge, but he kept the place in case he had to pull some all-nighters on an investigation.”

“Good,” Lana said. “Thank you for arranging that.”

The accommodations probably wouldn’t be up to her mother’s usual high standards, but Ruston was a cop at SAPD, and that meant his apartment would have decent security. Not that Lana expected her mother to be in actual danger and in need of such measures, but still, precautions needed to be taken in case everything Pamela had said was true. If her husband was indeed a killer, then he might also go after a wife who’d revealed what could be his deadly secrets.

“The next step is for us to decide, well, the next step,” Slater continued a moment later.

Yes, they’d discussed this, too, but Slater hadn’t yet approved the plan that Lana had suggested.

“There’s no proof of my father doing anything, nothing to arrest him on,” she reminded him. “And there’s the part about him stonewalling any and all cops who could question him about what my mother claims. But I believe he will talk to me, especially if I frame it as a visit to tell him about some concerns about my conversation with Mom. He’ll want to know what I have to say.”

She hoped. But her father could be unpredictable, and he might very well try to shut down any and all conversations.

“I could just call him and ask for a meeting,” Lana went on, knowing she hadn’t yet convinced Slater this was the way to approach this. “Of course, you’d go with me. Maybe Sonya, too, though it’d probably be best if she waited outside as backup.”

Backup that Lana prayed wouldn’t be needed. She didn’t believe she and Slater would be walking into an actual ambush. She couldn’t imagine her father arranging something like that at his home.

The muscles in Slater’s jaw seemed to be at war with each other. “You really think your father is a killer?” he came out and asked.

It was something she’d been rolling around in her mind, and Lana still didn’t know. “I’m not sure. I think he could be capable of murder,” she admitted.

Slater’s sound of agreement let her know that he felt the same way.

“As you know, he’s ruthless, and I could maybe see him killing to cover up a crime.” She had to try to ease the lump in her throat to get out the rest. “But for Stephanie, that feels different. It would have been premeditated. And for what? Because she’d defied him by getting pregnant with Buck’s baby? That just doesn’t make sense.”