Page 52 of The Deputy's Secret Double
“Riker didn’t get me too far, despite his best efforts. We were caught by two men, and, weirdly enough, we were lucky that one of them was the actual leader of the group. A man named Jonathan Cole.”
Price’s eyebrows pulled together.
“Any relation to our friend Lawson Cole from the elevator?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Jonathan was his father. And, let it be known right now, Lawson is nothing like his father.” She leaned forward a little and held up two fingers. “Jonathan had only two rules that he made sure no one broke, no matter what scheme or activity they were running. That was you don’t hurt women, and you don’t hurt children. No matter what.”
“Chivalrous,” Price commented.
She nodded.
“And the only reason why the Ortiz children are alive.” JJ put the fingers down and started to rub at her palm. “Jonathan struck up a deal with Riker right then and there. If Riker didn’t release the evidence, Jonathan would keep the secret that not everyone had died in the car accident. He would also cover our tracks until we could leave our lives behind and start new ones. Riker, a single man who had never dreamed of having a family and then suddenly had a ten-year-old to look after, took the deal. We left, got new identities, and have lived as father and daughter ever since with no trouble ever coming our way.
“I had a good childhood with Riker. I really did. He gave me the world and really did become a second dad to me. He also helped me work through a lot of emotions that I struggled with, about knowing my dad’s killers were just out there. I even thought for a bit that I had moved on as much as I could. But then Jonathan Cole himself visited me last year.”
This was where JJ’s emotions fluctuated a bit.
This part was new.
Price’s eyebrow rose. JJ still couldn’t forget her own surprise when she had seen the old man for the first time since she was a kid.
“Apparently, he had known for a while where I was but had kept his promise through the years. He’d worked hard to not let anyone know that there had been survivors in the accident. He saved a life to pay for his man taking a life, is what he’d said. The only problem was, he’d kept the secret too well. He didn’t even tell us that my mother had also survived. So we had no idea that she was pregnant.”
This part undeniably hurt. JJ had to speak in facts not emotions or she’d be crying soon. Telling Price had been hard enough. Losing it on his couch…that would be too much.
And she couldn’t afford that right now.
Her words came out cold for her effort. She muscled through them the best she could.
“Jonathan said he never told her that I had survived either and so, thinking she lost her entire family, she accepted the protection he gave her and hid away from the world throughout her pregnancy. Then, when the time came to give birth, she had several complications. They continued to be an issue months after my brother was born and she passed away before he turned one.”
Despite her best efforts, a lump formed in JJ’s throat.
She would never know the end of her mother’s life, and it tore at her soul to think of her going through everything by herself.
It was one reason finding her brother had become everything to her.
JJ clenched her hand into a fist. She eased it out in the next moment.
“Jonathan said he purposely lost track of my brother after that, thinking that knowing anything more than a general location would put him in danger. All he knew was the town he had gone to live in, nothing else. And that’s when he told me about Seven Roads. And that’s why I came.”
Price’s brow was still drawn in together.
“But why did he tell you at all? Why did he reach out after all of these years?”
“Because the old man was dying and I was the last stop on his attempt-at-redemption tour,” she said.
“He felt guilty,” Price guessed.
JJ shook her head. She laughed. It was unkind.
“No. He even told me he didn’t regret what he did. What hedidregret was what he believed would happen once he was gone.”
“You mean after he died?”
JJ nodded.