A brick hit my gut.
“And he’s obsessed with the Steels?” I said.
“The Steels, yeah, mostly Jonah. And your father. Tom Simpson.”
“My dad’s dead.”
“I know.”
“If he has a beef with a dead man, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“If he has a beef with a dead man, you know why,” Dominic said. “We all know who your father was.”
Chills crawled up my spine. Oh, yeah, I knew all right. But damn it, I was not my father.
“I’m not responsible for what my father did to anyone, and neither are the Steels.”
“I know that,” Dominic said, “but my brother isn’t quite as logical as I am. He tends to think with his emotions, which are out of whack.”
“You called him psycho,” I said.
“Yeah, and I stand by that assessment.”
“I do too. Only a psycho would arm himself with three guns and booby-trap his office with pepper spray.”
“Agreed,” Dominic said.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t know what my father did to your brother, but I know it can’t be pretty. Your brother was far from the only one.”
Dominic nodded. “I know that, man, but that thought never helped my brother and probably not any of the others.”
Talon visibly tensed. His story had gone public when all hell broke loose months ago. Dominic probably knew Talon had been among my father’s victims. That wasn’t for me to say, though.
“You’re saying your brother is a danger to the Steels? And to Colin? That’s why you acted on orders to protect them?”
“That’s right. But thanks to you all, they’re no longer protected.”
“You need to look no further than to us to protect our mother and sister,” Talon said through clenched teeth. “You’d better keep your hands off them and every other Steel from now on.”
I turned to Talon and Ryan. “Did you guys ever find the file of news clippings from the kids who disappeared around the same time as Luke?”
“Not yet. Joe was going to look for them,” Ryan said.
“Any chance a little kid named Cade disappeared?” I asked.
“I was too young to remember,” Ryan said.
“And I just remember Luke,” Talon said. “And…”
And…himself. He didn’t finish the sentence.
“What was Cade’s father’s name?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Dominic said. “My mom never talked about him. Like I said, she told us Cade was dead.”
“And she never mentioned his father?”
“Not once. It was like he never existed. She wouldn’t talk about it. We always figured he’d been really abusive.”
“What happened to him?”
“She never said.”
“And you never asked?”
“We were young,” he said. “We didn’t think about it. Then she died.”
“Of what?” Ryan asked.
“Drive-by shooting in our little Iowa town. The first and only. No one was ever caught.”
“Right before Cade showed up,” Talon said. “Seems a little incriminating.”
I nodded. “And more than a little convenient.”
“You think Cade shot his own mother?” Dominic asked.
“You said yourself he was psycho. Do you mean this never occurred to you?”
“Cade acted all broken up about it,” Dominic said. “So no, I didn’t think about it.”
“Your father took Cade in, let him take his name.”
“Yeah. My dad was a good man.”
“Was?” Talon asked.
Dominic nodded. “He died last year. Cancer.”
“Okay.” At least we knew Cade hadn’t offed his stepdad. Even the biggest psycho in the world couldn’t force cancer on someone.
“Fast-forward,” I said. “How did you start working for Brad Steel?”
“Cade kind of took Alex and me under his wing. He taught us how to handle guns, and he was good, man. Really good. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but right around the time Alex and I finished high school, he got a little weirder than usual. Like I said, he was obsessed with your father and the Steels. He asked Alex and me to go in with him, help us avenge him. We didn’t know what he was talking about, and he wouldn’t elaborate, but I could tell he was thinking about doing something terrible. Alex and I declined, and a few days later, we got a phone call from someone claiming to represent Brad Steel, asking if we wanted to work for him. He offered us some outrageous money, so we took it.”
“Was Cade already with the FBI when he showed up?” I asked.
“He’d left the bureau and was setting up a law practice. Like I said, Alex and I were teens. He offered to teach us how to shoot like the FBI had taught him. Our dad was okay with it. We thought it was great at the time.”
“So somehow, between the time your mother thought he allegedly died and the time he came back, he worked for the FBI and managed to go to law school and pass the bar?”
“Apparently,” Dominic said.
“I smell a rat a mile away,” Ryan said. “I wish Ruby were here to listen to this. She’d have called bullshit a half hour ago.”
“You can easily check records to see where he went to law school and whether he was with the FBI,” Dominic said.
“Records can be forged,” Talon said.
“Federal records?” Dominic shook his head.
“Kid,” Talon began.
“Kid?”
“Yeah, kid. What are you? Twenty-five?”
“I’m no kid.”
“Whatever. The right amount of money can buy anything. Trust us. We’ve seen it.”
“You’re saying my brother never went to law school?”
“It’s possible.”
“But he’s been practicing law.”
“So?”
“He’s good at it.”
“Doesn’t mean he didn’t go about it illicitly. I’m not saying he didn’t go to law school, but I’m not saying he did either. We’ve seen people wearing aliases like different color shirts this past year.”
“True,” I said. “What was Cade’s original last name? Do you know?”
“I’m not sure he ever told us.”
“And you didn’t think to ask?” I said.
“I was sixteen. I didn’t think past tomorrow.”
“What about your sister?”
“Same.”
“Marjorie says she wasn’t as nice as you were.”
“I told you. Alex comes on strong sometimes. She’s got one big chip on her shoulder.”
“Why is that? You said your dad was kind.”
“He was. You think a person has to be abused to have a chip on her shoulder? It doesn’t work that way.”
I couldn’t fault Dominic’s observation. Joe Steel had one massive chip on his shoulder, and as far as I knew, he hadn’t been abused.
Who the hell was Cade Booker?
“Can you find out his original last name?” I asked.