He pulled it out and said, “What’s up?” After a pause, he said, “Okay, well, that’s good news.” He hit the Speaker button and put it on the table and said, “You’re on Speakerphone.”
“We have the boss man’s phone, and there is proof now that it was the boy’s father. He can say he had no connection to the kidnapping all he wants, but we have texts back and forth, including the amount set up to do the job.”
“Woo-hoo,” she said, “although that sucks big time.”
“I know,” Miles said, “but we’re about to pick up the father now.”
“Confirm when you’ve got him,” Nico said. “We really want to know that this is over with.”
“Will do.”
With that, everybody dug into their bacon and eggs. She ate slower, her mind thinking about the loss that Andy’s birth family had experienced and wondering how she’d feel if she had lost a child when a teenager to adoption and then to go through it all over again when the child died, finally at the age of majority to choose for himself who he wanted to be around. Because really the birth family had lost the war originally, when they were young. Even if you go on, and you have another family, surely you don’t ever really forget that firstborn son of yours. “I can see how somebody might want answers. I hope they didn’t want to kill me out of revenge though.”
“It’s hard to say. Until we get a hold of the birth parents, there’s no way to know.”
She nodded. “So can we go out of the house today, or are we stuck here?”
“I’m going out,” Joshua said. “I have to head to a couple debriefings. I don’t even know if I’ll be home today. I hope so though. I don’t have much in the way of gear. Everything got left behind.”
“And did they kill you to get rid of you in that undercover scenario?” she asked.
He gave her half a smile. “I don’t know,” he said, “but I can’t imagine that they left too many threads loose.”
She nodded. As she got up and finished the dishes, with both Nico and Keane helping, Joshua walked over and gave her a hug. “I don’t have a phone, but, if you give me your number, when I get hold of a phone and get things set up, I’ll call you. Otherwise expect me back later today.”
She kissed him on the cheek and gave him a big hug. “I’m so grateful to have you back in my life.”
He turned and headed out to the front door.
She faced Nico and Keane and said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have this over with today?”
Keane nodded, but his voice was serious as he said, “Things generally happen fast when we get to that point.”
“But, of course, it’s all getting to that point,” she joked.
He nodded. “Exactly.”
She smiled and sat down, and, when the front door opened again, she called out, “Did you forget something?”
“Yeah, I did.” But his voice was different this time.
Startled, she stared up as he came in and behind him was her assistant. Joshua had his hands up and a hard look on his face. He looked over at the two men and said, “Sorry, she was waiting for me outside the front door.”
Keane swore and said, “What the hell? She must have just arrived then.”
Maggie pushed Joshua to the empty chair at the table. “Sit down,” she barked.
He sat down gently.
Charlotte stared at Maggie. “I don’t understand,” she said. “What’s this all about? Maggie?”
Hate twisted Maggie’s face until it was almost unrecognizable. Maggie walked over to the kitchen sink and grabbed some paper towels, got them wet, added a little bit of the hand soap that was there, all the time keeping the gun pointed at everybody. And then she reached up, with one eye closed, and quickly swiped down that side of her face, then the other. As the paper towel came away, covered in makeup, Maggie’s face had turned into this nightmarish facade, half without makeup and the other half with the makeup a smeared mess.
Charlotte stared in horror. “Seriously?”
Maggie laughed. “You’re such a fool.”
Charlotte sat down hard. “Maybe because I wasn’t looking for an enemy in my own ranks,” she whispered. She stared as Maggie made several more passes with a paper towel and wiped off 90 percent of the makeup.
What emerged was a woman in her forties, showing some age. But the evil darkness in her eyes said much about who she was. “I don’t give a shit what you were expecting or not,” she said, “but somebody has to pay for what you did.” She leaned back against the sink, this time with a dry paper towel in her hand. She wiped the moisture off her face and still more makeup came with it. She kept raising the gun when any of the men shifted. “Don’t even think about it,” she said. “I don’t give a shit about who and what you are in any way when you’re associated with her.”
“How can you say that?” Charlotte asked. “I’ve never done anything to you.”
“No,” she said, “you probably didn’t. But what you did to my son was way worse.”
“I didn’t do anything,” she cried out. “What are you talking about?” But inside, she knew. Inside, she had a really ugly feeling that this was the dead kid’s mum. “Are you Andy’s mother?”
Maggie’s face twisted. “Yes. That kid was my son! My only son! And you killed him.” Her voice broke on the last word.
“I didn’t kill him,” Charlotte protested. “You know that.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Maggie said, suddenly calm.
Her moods were volatile and switching. It was something else Charlotte had never seen. Maggie had always been the most mild-mannered person. Maybe that’s why she’d worked so much from
