“Mom wouldn’t do anything like that,” I say automatically.
Already, anger is rising in me. I hate it when Dale says anything negative about Mom. He loves her. I don’t doubt it. But their relationship is different.
Still…something in what he says rings true.
Which makes me even angrier.
“I don’t want to believe anything negative about Mom,” Dale says. “And I’m not even sure this is negative. If Mom did hide something, she did it with the best of intentions. But let’s take a look at the facts. They’ve hidden a lot of shit from us. Maybe not us so much as from the rest of the kids. No one knows why we were adopted. What we went through before.”
“They wanted to spare our sisters and cousins that horror,” I say.
“Of course they did. I get it. My point is that Mom—and the rest of them—aren’t above hiding stuff when they think it’s for the greater good. The good being the lives of their children.”
“Not such a bad thing,” I say.
“Did I say it was a bad thing? Did I?” Dale rakes his fingers through his mass of hair, making it so unruly he looks like a wild man. His green eyes light on fire.
“Easy, Dale. I wasn’t criticizing. Just observing.”
“Right. I can tell by your tone that you’re pissed off.”
I breathe in. Out. He’s not wrong. “Okay, I’m pissed off. But not at you.”
He gives me the patented Dale Steel side-eye.
“Okay, a little at you. But more so I’m pissed at this situation. At our grandfather for putting us in this situation. That quitclaim deed has me bothered. It’s got to be about Grandpa’s affair with Wendy Madigan, like we talked about at the Bluebird. The kid that came out of it has to be Uncle Ryan.”
He sighs. “Yeah.”
“We can find out for sure. Or we can at least access the files necessary to get more information.”
He lifts his eyebrows. “What are you suggesting?”
I pull out a key card Mom gave me earlier. “We go into town.”
“What’s that?”
“The key to get into the courthouse,” I say. “And into the databases.”
I slide the card through the reader at the courthouse. I’m not breaking in. I’m the assistant city attorney. So what if it’s the wee hours of a Saturday morning? I worked through the night many times at my firm in Denver.
“Wait,” Dale says. “Let’s not go in yet.”
“Why?”
“What if it’s not safe? What if there’s surveillance or something?”
“There probably is. It’s a courthouse. But I’m the assistant city attorney. I have the right to be here, to access the files.”
“What if the files are hidden? Deleted?”
“Since when are you a conspiracy theorist?”
“I’m not. Except here’s the thing. If Mom and Dad are hiding this much, what else might they be hiding? A secret quitclaim deed—that they may not even know about. A secret lien. A secret uncle. It’s all too much.”
He’s not wrong. “Tell me,” I say. “How did you find out about Dad’s childhood? About…” I don’t even want to say the words.
“He was sharing some stuff with me. I was going through a rough time, with the fire, and Floyd, and Ashley… I think he thought it would help me to know some family secrets or something. To explain that I wasn’t the only person in the family with struggles.”
I sigh. “Sounds like Dad. Always trying to make things easier on us. He never seemed to understand that we just have to get through it on our own.”
“That’s what I thought too, but now, I think he understands better than we ever knew.”
I nod. “You may very well be right.”
“Anyway, back to the original point. The quitclaim deed was probably something that Uncle Ry’s birth mother demanded. Got Grandpa to sign or something. I don’t know.”
“Maybe. At least now we have a theory as to why such a deed even exists. The birth mother wanted everything to go to Ryan, her offspring.”
“Right,” Dale says. “But it was never dated or recorded. So we have no idea when Grandpa signed it.”
“First thing we need to do is find all the deeds pertaining to the Steel property. If Dad and the others inherited via joint tenancy on a deed, then they all legally own the property. If the property went through probate, we may have a problem.”
“There’s no problem if we get the quitclaim deed from Murphy and destroy it.”
“True. But until we get the lien released, we don’t have the deed. And even if we can get the deed, there are still so many questions it raises. We’re going to have to approach Dad at some point.”
Dale nods. “I know,” he says, his voice soft and resigned.
I get it. Dale is close to Dad like I’m close to Mom. He doesn’t even want to think that Dad may have done anything even slightly unethical.
“Maybe it’s time,” I say, “that you stop thinking Dad is perfect and I stop thinking Mom is perfect.”
“I never thought—” He stops.
“Yeah, you did.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“And so did I. About Mom.”
“You still want to go in?” Dale asks.
I look up at the two-story building. The window to my corner office on the second floor is visible.
What secrets does this building hold?
More than I ever imagined, it seems.
“Yeah,” I say. “I still want to go in.” I slide the card back through the reader.
I pull the door open and follow Dale through. This is a small town, so we don’t have twenty-four-seven security. I look around. No cameras watching me, at least not that I can see, though I’m sure they exist.
“Here goes nothing,” I say.
Dale eyes the stairwell to the second floor. “Mom’s office is up here.”
“Yeah, I know.” I walk toward the stairway, rethinking what I’m about to do.
“Having second thoughts?” Dale asks.
“How did you know?”
“How can I not know? I’ve known you longer than anyone else in your life, Don. I can read you like a book.”
True enough. I can read Dale as well.
“We can turn around,” Dale says. “No one even has to know we were here. You can begin your search on Monday.”
I nod. “You know what? You’re right. I’d like two more days of innocence. I have a big date with Callie tomorrow. I don’t want to taint it with anything I might find out if we go up there.”
“I understand.” My brother nods. “Let’s go.”
We walk back to the entryway and leave the building. My car is parked a block over, near Murphy’s Bar. Dale and I begin to walk—
I widen my eyes.
Callie. Callie is walking on the other side of the street, her arm linked through Brendan Murphy’s.
What the fuck?
“Please tell me you didn’t see that,” Dale says.
“I’d sure like to.”
“He’s probably just walking her to her car. Feel like a nightcap?”
“You know? I do.”
Dale and I head to the bar and walk in. It’s still pretty packed for nearing two a.m.
“My brothers!” Brianna squeals and comes barreling toward us.
“What are you doing out so late, sis?” I ask.
Dale just glares at her.
“Playing pool. Hanging with my cousins and Maddie. You know.”
“Because you don’t get enough of that at college, huh?” I say.
“We have certain things here that we don’t have in college.”
Right. Jesse Pike, Cage Ramsey, and Dragon Locke. “Don’t even think about it,” I tell her.
Dale continues to seethe.
“I’m actually glad you guys are here,” Bree says. “Don’t ruin it.”
Dale and I walk toward the back, where the band is playing pool with our youngster cousins.
“Steel,” Jesse says, meeting my gaze.
“Pike.”
Our standard greeting. Jesse’s a good guy. I like him, actually, but some wounds never heal.
The bell on the door jingles when Brendan returns. Good. He’s not off somewhere heating up the sheets with Callie. Dale’s probably right. He was walking her to her car. I should thank him for that.
Except what was Callie doing here in the first place?
I leave Dale to deal with Bree and the gang and head toward the bar, where Brendan has grabbed a rag and is wiping it down.
“Hey, Don.” He meets my gaze.
I nod. “Isn’t it closing time?”
“Nah. As long as the place is hopping, I may as well make a buck, right?”
Brendan’s a good guy. At least I always thought he was. But he’s basically blackmailing Dale and me with that quitclaim deed and other shit. Heck, I might do the same thing if the situation were reversed. Why do we even have a lien on this place? A tiny building in town. The Steels own some of the most expensive property on the western slope. What’s so special about this building?
“I talked to my dad,” I say. “About the lien.”
Brendan looks around. “Not here.”
“Dude, we’re the only two at the bar right now.”
“I said not here,” he enunciates in a whisper.
“Fine. I’ll have a margarita.”
Brendan smiles. “You and your mother are the only people who ever order margaritas in here, and even Jade usually orders wine.”
“You got a problem with my order?”
He laughs. “Not at all.”
“Good. I’d hate to have to kick your ginger ass.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
Truth be told, Brendan and I are pretty evenly matched. Still, I could take him. “If I see you with Callie Pike again, you might get your wish.”
Fuck. Did those words just come out of my mouth?
Brendan juices a lime into a stainless-steel shaker. “You got designs on Ms. Pike?”
“She’s a friend.”
“She’s my friend too.”
“Since when? I’ve never seen you in the same room with her.”
“It’s a small town, Steel.”
He’s not wrong. “She and I have a date tomorrow night.”
“You mean tonight, I think.”
“Yeah. I guess I do.” Good thing it’s Saturday. I’m going to need the extra sleep.
Brendan adds simple syrup, tequila, and a dash of triple sec to the shaker. “If you’re concerned, don’t be. My interests lie elsewhere.”
“Good.”
Brendan shakes the margarita and then pours it into a salt-rimmed glass. “Enjoy.”
“Put it on my tab.”
“No problem.”
Brendan wipes down the surface quickly and then heads out into the sitting area, taking drink orders.
I sit alone and eye the staircase leading up to Brendan’s apartment. What else is hidden up there?
When Brendan returns, I ask, “Found anything else underneath the floor?”
He scowls at me. “I said, not here.”
“Sunday, then. Your place. We’re removing your entire floor.”
“Uh…no, we’re not.”
“Yeah, we are. Don’t worry. I’ll pay for everything.”
“Yeah, you will. But what’s the point?”
“Because where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”