“There!” Eli said ecstatically. “Right there. That’s what I’ve been telling you all along. He knows who, what, and why when it comes to you. You’re the threat here, not the cartel. He’s just trying to speak your language.”
“Noted,” Dace said.
“The way I see it is, we have two common interests and can help each other. I have access to areas you may not, and you have the ability to offer protection and a safe haven while we figure this out.”
“What are our two common interests?” Luke asked.
“Cartel and my daughter.”
“What does Ivy have to do with this besides the fact she’s missing?”
“I looked for her. She wasn’t there when I went back to Moss Bridge. No one was. It was cleaned out as though nothing happened. The cartel said they would find her. Not we have her but that they could find her. They have no idea. Where did she go? Where did Eli go? They haven’t been seen since Moss Bridge. She left for the farmers’ market alone but never came back, and then Eli turns up gone too? Awfully convenient. My grandson was taken when I was, but I never see him after that? He was put in the vehicle behind me.”
“You think Ivy and this…Eli asshole are in bed with the cartel? Is that what I’m hearing?”
“I don’t want to say the words out loud, but I have no alternate theory. The three of them disappeared. For all I know, Ivy and Eli were in the vehicle behind me that my grandson got into. It’s the only thing I can make sense of.”
“Why?”
“The same reason everyone does. She’s always blamed me for her mother’s death. Money. Power. Spite. Revenge. The biggest mistake I made was trusting Eli to watch over her. He brainwashed her, changed her, groomed her if you will.”
“Hmm. This all sounds familiar, Eli. Isn’t that what you said about her father?” Dace asked.
“If you believe this bullshit…”
Dace put up a hand to silence him so he could listen to David.
“I took her away from her life here to protect her. She’d just lost her mother not long before and then her fiancée. I did that. I took Dace from her the day I made her leave town. I don’t think she ever forgave me for that either.”
“I think he’s bragging,” Dace said. “He’s telling me he did this, took her from me, took my son from me. He’s trying to break me, and I’m not even in the fucking room. He wants a reaction.”
“Dace is on his way,” Luke said. “Maybe you should discuss that part with him.”
“I do owe him an apology. I’ve always felt guilty for what I did, and it killed me that I couldn’t tell him. He was like a son to me…hell, he almost was my son.”
“And that’s my cue to enter. Hang tight here with Carter and watch the show,” Dace said as he headed for the door.
“Kick the old man in the balls for me, eh?”
Dace stood outside the door where David Kimble was being held and took a deep breath. It would take everything he had to maintain composure and play his hand right.
When he walked in, he took a seat next to Luke and looked Kimble in the eye. “Long time, no see.”
“In all fairness, that was the plan, Dace. It is good to see you, though. I mean that.”
“Uh-huh. So what’s the story? What did I miss?”
“He was ambushed, CIA behind it, other branches behind it, cartel behind it, Ivy is missing, has a kid, and she has a boy toy. Oh, and she’s in bed with the cartel,” Luke said, standing up and sliding his chair away.
Dace let out a slow and low whistle. “That’s a lot of bullshit. Is there truth in there anywhere, David?”
“It’s all true.”
“Uh-huh. Did you kill your wife?” Dace fired a shot right to the gut.
“Of course not. She was the love of my life. She died in a car accident – a staged car accident. She was murdered because of me.”
“Because you covered it up?”
“I did that to protect Ivy. If word got out, we would have appeared more vulnerable than we already were. Every enemy, past and present, would have come to pick a fight. That’s why I put her under protective custody.”
Luke chimed in to cover Dace. “I thought you said you hid her because you were receiving threats.”
“I did. That’s a pretty big threat, wouldn’t you say?”
Dace leaned in and spoke in a low voice. “Maybe your wife was someone making good on her own threat.”
David paused. “Perhaps. Perhaps I let her know too much. Perhaps her knowledge is what put her in danger, and that’s a mistake – oversight really – on my part, and I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life. I may as well have killed her by letting her in. But not this, not this time, there’s so much more at stake.”
“Why? You got a deal about to go bad?”
“Deal? What kind of deal?” David was anxious. “Do you know something? Please. If you know something…”
“The kind of deal that puts you and the agency smack dab in the middle of a conspiracy…”
“I came here for help.”
“Right. Can’t trust anyone. Bad guys out to get you and all that. Then there’s the daughter who’s somehow involved with the cartel.”
“I need help finding my grandson, Cashel O’Reilly.”
This was the part they’d been waiting for. They all played along with looks of surprise when he said the child was one of their own.
“Ivy…her son…he’s your son, Dace. I didn’t buy that he was Eli’s. The kid…he looks just like you – even acts like you. I-I didn’t want to risk that information. You deserved to know first.”
“With a room full of people. Makes sense. How do we know all this to be true? How do I know I have a son? How can we trust you? When you lied about Cash only minutes ago and are already changing your story?”
Kimble tilted his head and glared while holding up his bound hands. “What do I have to gain by coming here for help? I have everything to lose. Whether Ivy is a victim or a player in this, that boy is purely innocent. I can’t and won’t fail him.”
Dace stood and made his way to the doorway. “And how are we going to do that, David?”
“By finding Ivy.”
Dace guffawed. “Pfft. Get him into holding and let the doc in to to see him.”
Before he let David Kimble leave, he grabbed him by the collar, his face mere inches from David’s. His anger so pronounced he spat between clenched teeth as he spoke. “If I find out you are behind any of this – any of it at all – I will fucking hunt you down and kill you.”
David blinked quickly as he jutted his jaw out and put on a weak grin, lips quivering, “That’s precisely why I came to you for help. Remember that seething rage when you look for my grandson, and you use it to bring down the people who took him from you.”
CHAPTER 30
“I can’t believe he said that,” Ivy said after watching the playback of when her father was accusing her of being the enemy.
Dace shrugged. “I can. He’s desperate. Something went wrong somewhere, and he’s looking for a way out, even if it means sacrificing you.”