Reggie carried his father’s belongings to his car. He hoped there was a journal or something in that box, something to explain what madness had driven him. His father had been journaling since college.
Chances were, though, that if there had been something in there to explain what his father had done, the TSP had seized it.
Just how much they’d searched his father’s home wasn’t clear. His mother had moved out and basically tossed the keys to the house she’d shared with his father for fifteen years on the kitchen table.
And hadn’t looked back.
He didn’t think his father was getting out on bail anytime soon. Not after the judge had looked at his father and claimed he was a danger to the community and denied bail.
Reggie pulled in a breath. He was going to have to drive to the prison soon. See if he could talk to his father face-to-face. He’d talk to his father and search his parents’ home. And find some way to talk to Dr. Netorre and Izadora MacNamara.
He’d get the answers he needed himself.
Unlike his mother, who was ready to write his father off completely because of her pain, Reggie wanted the answer.
He just wanted to know why. Then, he’d process it and move on.
His girlfriend had left him the day after everything had happened, citing his father as her reason for ending a three-year relationship that Reggie had prized beyond measure. She couldn’t tie herself to someone who shared the exact same name as a man responsible for a workplace shooting. Never mind that it hadn’t even been a workplace.
Worse. It had been at a charity for women. Something Amanda had always taken very seriously.
The things she’d said had cut deeper than any knife ever could. Because of his father and his cousin—who’d both creeped her out. Reggie hadn’t had a clue what to say to that.
He’d loved her. Or so he’d thought. He’d thought she loved him, too. Apparently, she’d just liked how successful he was becoming. What he could give her.
Reggie didn’t understand why women could be so mercenary sometimes.
He dropped the boxes into the trunk of his car, then slammed it shut.
W4HAV was right there. Taunting him. Apple-green lettering on a white background beckoned him. Like a neon sign to the answers he needed. Just right there.
He wondered if Dr. Netorre was in there now.
If he walked in and asked to speak with her, would she give him an honest answer about what his father had done? He meant her no harm, and he didn’t want to upset her.
That was the last thing Reggie would want to do.
He kept seeing a five-year-old kid in his head, the way she had been the last time he’d seen her. She’d fallen that day and had been silently crying. There’d been blood on her knees. No one had stopped talking to help her. Not one of the adults nearby had even seemed to care about her being injured. And they’d looked at her. At least her mother had. And his.
He’d always remembered that. That little girl had just sat there, quietly crying.
He’d gotten the Band-Aids and antiseptic out of the cabinet himself. Taken care of her himself. That was his strongest memory of Dannica Carrington. Her big eyes as she’d thanked him for taking care of her.
She was now Nikkie Jean Netorre. He wondered why.
He had so many questions.
But if he had his answers, maybe he could help his mom deal with what had happened in a more positive way than just shutting it all out and pretending it had never happened.
His mother was also far more fragile and emotionally sensitive than anyone other than Reggie had ever realized.
His mother was all he had left now.
He’d been carrying a ring around in his pockets for four months before his girlfriend had left him, just waiting for the right time. He’d been thinking wedding and children, like a big, stupid sap.
All that had changed because of some nurse and little Dannica Carrington, who now went by Nikkie Jean Netorre.
Probably her husband’s name, or something.
She’d bitten him once, when he’d been seven and she’d been four or so. He’d taken her toy dog, and she’d defended it. Fiercely. He’d gotten in trouble—from his father—for picking on a girl so much smaller than he was. Henedys never hit girls.
The irony of that wasn’t lost on him right now.
Back then, his father had been his hero. How the world could change once someone’s eyes were truly opened.
The news reporters had been playing a clip they’d taken from security footage outside the building, showing his father just walking inside the building. His father had been jerky and agitated and obviously off in his entire posture.
He’d been fifty feet behind two young women, who had been laughing and having a conversation.
That was all anyone knew about what had happened inside. Except for the people who had been there.
And none of them were talking to Reggie.
Reggie had to know. He just had to know.
To understand what would drive his father to do what he had. To destroy everything.
He almost crossed the parking lot there, but decided not to.
It...he needed to learn more about the women involved. Find out what kind of people they were first.
They couldn’t be as innocent as the news reporters were saying.
No women were. Not really. His eyes had been opened to that the instant Amanda had walked out the door, her disgust ringing in his ears louder than the slamming of the door.
Reggie’s eyes were trained on the women’s charity as he drove across the parking lot, past the security hut where his cousin had spent his days before he’d died. Raymond had been a hospital security guard where his father had worked. His father had gotten Ray the job after he’d been paroled. Reggie and Ray hadn’t been that close growing up. They’d had very obviously different values. And Ray had liked to antagonize him. Reggie had spent most of his childhood defending himself against the older, bigger, meaner Ray. When Reggie’s parents weren’t watching.
Until Reggie had hit six-three, and puberty had put muscles on his once far-too-skinny frame. Ray, a classic bully, had backed off then.
Building his construction company from the ground up had filled him out the rest of the way. Had also made him feel like he was a success in his own right—outside of what his parents had both accomplished.
But what he’d done hadn’t been enough for Amanda, apparently.
Reggie was lost in thought for a moment, wondering what he could have done differently—could have done to make her understand how much she’d meant to him.
He wasn’t his father. And he never would be.
The truck slammed into his door in a screeching rip of metal against metal. Reggie jerked against his seatbelt, then his head slammed into the glass next to him.