Page 10 of Justified Fear (TFH Team Bravo #2)

“Bye, Keely.”

“Bye.” She looked down at Maya and smiled. “You keep an eye on your partner.”

Then, he slipped out the door. Kap and Riki were chatting like they were old friends.

“I know I’m being a damned bear, but she’s my little girl. Well, not so little anymore.” A sigh. “She’s always been independent from day one. We didn’t have to teach her anything. After three boys, I thought we would have it easy with a girl. I was so wrong. I don’t like leaving her on her own.”

He and Kap shared a look. “You’re leaving?”

“No choice. My mother…she’s not well. That’s why she lives with us now, and she doesn’t do well if I am gone for a long period of time. We’ll be staying for a few days, but then we have to get back. I would have brought my mother with us, but I felt the situation would be too stressful.”

“We’re doing everything in our power to find out what is going on with that attack. We have a top-notch forensic specialist who excels at uncovering information. We even have our FBI liaison helping.”

“If there is anything you need, I want you to call me. I can get things moving in Hawai’i. I rarely flex my muscle for my family, but that’s my baby girl in there.”

“Of course,” Kap said.

“Thank you for saving her. She’s…” He cleared his throat. “It would have broken us.”

After exchanging numbers, Riki went back into the house. They said nothing before getting into his SUV. As they headed back down to Honolulu, Ryan thought over the breakfast and everything that had happened, as well as everything the family had revealed.

“You’re right. There’s something off. At least, the boss won’t be suspicious of your interest.”

He glanced over at Kap. “Excuse me?”

He snorted. “Listen, I get it. Just be careful. That woman was at a major crime scene here in Hawai’i. She’s the daughter of a wealthy man.”

“Nothing compared to her mother.”

“Come again?”

“Her mother is the CEO of Murray Industries. I remember now that the two of them met in college.”

“Murray Industries, which owns a cattle ranch in Texas?”

“And a ton of oil speculation stuff. Yeah. They are loaded.”

“I bet Charity knows already, but if not, it is going to throw this whole investigation another curveball.”

“I still say you need to come back to Texas with us,” Riki said when he joined his wife and daughter in the kitchen.

Monica was smart enough not to say anything. She had always stayed out of this argument, but he knew which side she was on.

“Dad, it is not happening. This is my home.”

“You’re not safe here.”

“Yeah? Am I safe anywhere? According to you, New York was unsafe.”

“It was. Look what you brought home.”

“Are you kidding me right now? You want to bring up Chad?”

He did not. He hated even thinking about the asshole who broke his little girl’s heart.

“There is only one place where I was definitely put at risk.”

“You were just at a crime scene.”

“I wasn’t the target, but can we say that about Texas?”

His heart froze. “We’re not even sure what that was about.”

Her eyes turned into angry slits. “I know. I know someone grabbed me. I might have only been fourteen at the time, but I wasn’t a kid. I understood what had happened. You just have never dealt with it.”

One thing about his baby girl: she didn’t pull her punches.

“I need some air, and don’t follow me.”

She strode out of the house, the screen door slamming behind her.

He didn’t follow her but looked out from the window. As he told those two agents, he knew he was overbearing—especially where his daughter was concerned. He had his reasons.

“You can’t protect her from life, Riki.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the love of his life. From the moment she had knocked him off his motorcycle, he had been in love. Just one look into those golden eyes and he had been a goner. The same eyes his daughter had.

“I know.”

“I know you know. The problem is you have never accepted it.”

“I don’t know why she wants to stay here.”

Monica cocked her head as she stared at him. He knew that look well, and she was getting ready to call him on his bullshit.

“I love you.”

“I know.”

“But you don’t want to do this. You don’t want to insist on her coming back to Texas.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No. You will break your bond with her.”

“She will understand.”

“You know that my father didn’t want me to go to college in California and tried to stop me.”

He understood where this was going. His daughter could be tough, but she didn’t get that from him. Keely was her mother’s daughter.

“What happened?”

He sighed. “You didn’t talk for over two years.”

“Until he came to his senses.”

He nodded.

“It will always hurt because of those two lost years, but they were his choice. What do you think Keely will do? Do you think she will happily dance back to Texas and be happy? Even when she had the restaurant, she wasn’t happy.”

“That was Chad.”

He spat out the name.

“No. He had nothing to do with it. Well, he had a little to do with it, but most of it was that Keely didn’t thrive in Texas. You even said she seemed happier here.”

He glanced back out at his daughter. She was sitting with her feet in the pool now.

“I know.”

“And besides, when the end came with Chad, I think she realized he was a symptom.”

Tearing his gaze away from his daughter, he looked at Monica. “What do you mean?”

“She cried a little bit, but she got over him pretty easily. If she had been truly deep in love with him, she would have fallen apart. Not our girl. She used that contract to remove herself from the restaurant, then walked away.”

She stepped closer and wrapped her arms around his waist. “If you’re worried, get one of the boys to come over here.”

“Okay. For now, I’ll back off.”

But if anything else happened, he would put his foot down. And that was that.

“Finally!” Charity said as Ryan, Kap, and Maya walked through the front door of TFH. “What took you so long?”

She was sitting in the conference area where they had desks in a U-shape in front of a massive screen.

“I just texted you that we were parking,” Kap said.

“That feels like forever.”

“Where’s Hammer?”

“He had a meeting, and he is not important.”

Ryan chuckled. “Can we tell him that?”

“No. What I found is very important, and it has to do with Keely.”

“We know about her father. I texted you that,” Kap said.

“No. Well, yeah, that’s cool and all, but once you sent me that, I found all kinds of stuff on our girl. Thank God everyone decided to pay attention to my text because I don’t have it in me to do this twice.”

Their team seemed to converge all at once.

“Everyone shut up and sit down,” Charity said.

“Ohhh, pregnancy has made you grumpy,” Drew Franklin said as he strode into the room. He mainly helped out Elle in the morgue, but he also filled in for Charity at times. Ryan understood that he had worked in the field a time or two.

Charity opened her mouth to probably destroy him, but he handed her a candy bar.

“Your sugar is low.”

“You are a prince among men. Your wife is lucky.”

Drew’s wife, Cat, was on Team Alpha. Charity tore into the candy bar.

“No. I did it because I got a text from your husband. Do you want me to tell the team about this?”

She nodded as she chewed her food.

“Have a seat, everyone. Let’s get started.”

He told Maya to go lie down. She trotted over to her bed in his office, and he took his seat to the right of Kap. Seth sat on his left, then Rami and Nikki sat on the other side of the “U.”

Drew grabbed the clicker. “So, once you let us know who her parents were—how they hid it so well, I have no idea?—”

“Rmamph,” Charity said.

Drew nodded as if he understood. “Yeah, rich people. It’s easy to hide connections. Anyway, we gathered a lot of information about the family once we discovered who they were. Odd that she didn’t tell us right off.”

Ryan blinked. “What the hell does that mean?”

He sensed Seth studying him, but Ryan didn’t look over at his captain.

“Why hide it?”

“I know that Ryan is getting ready to tear you a new asshole, Drew, so I’ll answer,” Kap said.

Drew blinked, apparently realizing he had pissed off Ryan.

“The Templetons are really just normal people. Seriously.”

Ryan nodded while not taking his gaze from Drew.

“Oh, I agree. Just Charity and I wondered why they were that way. Her mother comes from a well-connected family. Riki was a football star, but for years, they have done everything in their power to shun a connection with their daughter.”

He opened his mouth to yell at Drew, but he felt Kap’s knee hit his.

“You’re taking too long, Franklin,” Charity said, taking the clicker from him. “We found out one of the reasons. Sixteen years ago, there was an incident at a Texas mall.”

“So, that would have made her fourteen?” Nikki asked.

Charity nodded and hit a button. The screen showed an old newspaper article from the San Antonio Star.

Riki Templeton’s Daughter Left Shaken

“What happened?” he asked.

“They said that she told authorities that someone had attempted to kidnap her. The cops didn’t think she was telling the truth. Now, they never use her name. Pretty sure the family had something to do with that. Did she tell you all about that?”

He shook his head.

“No,” Kap said. “Not that we really asked. We just knew there was something off.”

“Off?” Seth asked.

“Her father is trying to get her to go back to Texas,” Kap said.

“She told him to stuff it,” Ryan said.

Kap laughed. “It was something to see that big man being taken down by his daughter.”

“We need to dig into this. We need to make sure that no one is looking for her.” Seth glanced at Charity. “Did anything come of it?”

“No. I did a deep dive and read some of the reports.”

“You got them that fast?”

“No comment.”

Seth sighed. “Okay. What did they say?”

“Cops seemed to think she was trying to get attention, which I call BS on.”

“Why?” Rami asked.

“She wasn’t like her brothers. Didn’t play sports, wasn’t in the family business.

Later on, after school, was the only time she was interviewed, and that was when she was starting her restaurant.

” She glanced at Ryan. “You know about that douche she was involved with? What a piece of garbage. Anyway, she never really wanted attention in that way. There was one detective who believed her. The rest of them were a bunch of misogynists.”

“Are you going to tell us, or are we going to have to read it?” Rami asked.

“Okay, she was at this mall,” she said, clicking on a picture that brought up a picture of a mall with a giant boot in front of it. “She was there with some friends, but decided she wanted to go home early. She wasn’t feeling well after they had some snacks.”

“Friends?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah. Girls’ day out. Anyway, she called her parents, and when they arrived, they couldn’t find her.

After about forty-five minutes, a mall security guard found her walking around one of the hallways that customers aren’t supposed to be in.

He reported that she was dazed and confused, but when EMTs checked her out, they said she had no injuries. ”

“And?”

“That’s it. Nothing came of it, but that reminded Hammer of some incidents that happened around that time.

Houston, El Paso, and San Antonio all had kidnappings of rich kids.

They were usually kids, and the incidents all happened at malls.

By the time they realized what was happening, the abductions stopped. ”

“And the kids?” Seth asked.

“All returned when the ransoms were paid.”

“Is there any indication that her family did that?”

She shook his head. “This all happened within an hour or two. The other kids were usually released within seventy-two hours. About the time it would take someone to get that money lined up.”

Ryan was still staring at the screen. There was no picture of Keely in the news article. Her family had kept her hidden.

“Her family believed her,” Ryan murmured.

“Yes, I think so too,” Charity said. “And an important thing about that possible kidnapping.”

He looked at Charity, who was staring straight at Ryan. “What?”

“No other kidnappings happened after Keely’s incident.”