Page 29 of Deadly Secrets

“Yeah, but it seems as though your case was lumped in with other missing women around the town at the time,” he informs me.

“I was looking over my shoulder for years, worried they would come for me and drag me back,” I tell Hawk.

“Where’d you go?” Stone asks, taking up a spot on the other end of the couch closer to where Rhett is standing.

“I bounced around, a lot in Pennsylvania,” I say. “Finally got to a city that had a bus station and bought a ticket, made it all the way to Kansas City, Missouri.”

“Where were you staying?” Brass asks.

“Sometimes the streets or an abandoned house,” I lift a shoulder, acting like it wasn’t a big deal even though I was scared out of my mind. “Once I found where the nice shelters were, I stayed at those.”

“But your name didn’t pop up in any database,” Hawk states with a slight tilt of the head.

I shake my head. “I changed my last name and age hoping that it was enough to not raise any red flags. Met some really nice people at one of the shelters. One of the ladies helped me get an ID and a fake birth certificate so that I could start working. She had been a runaway too and it helped once I told her a little bit about my situation.”

“What happened to our baby? He’d be what, thirteen or fourteen?” I hear Rhett ask and turn to see him holding one of Ryder’s tee ball photos when we were staying in Salt Lake City, Utah.

“What do you mean, what happened to our child?” I ask, confusion hitting me at his question. He’s staring right at a mini version of himself.

He finally looks up and waves his arms around the room at the photos of Ryder. “I mean you obviously have had another kid, he’s everywhere.” There’s a bite to his tone and I cross my arms, ready to hand him his ass.

“Oh boy,” I hear Brass mumble. “That’s not gonna go over very well.”

“You really are stupid, Rhett Miller,” I say with narrow eyes. “Our son is alive and happy. Take a closer look at the picture and the year printed. That’s from seven years ago,” I inform him and watch as he examines the photo again, placing his fingers up to the glass and across every feature.

Rhett pulls the picture to his chest then whirls around and storms out the back door, practically ripping the door off its hinges.

“Let’s give him a second,” Stone says and stands blocking everyone from where Rhett just bolted.

“Huh, didn’t think the guy had a single emotion in his body other than fightin’,” Brass says before taking a sip from his coffee mug.

“Shut it, Brass,” Stone growls, crossing his arms over his broad chest.

“So, Reaper is Ryder’s father?” Cole steps closer to me, voice low.

I nod. “He is,” I say and watch as his shoulders deflate slightly.

A painful roar from outside catches all of our attention and my legs are carrying me towards the noise before I even realize it. Out the window I watch as Rhett falls to his knees and grabs his head with both hands. His shoulders are shaking and I know he’s crying.

I don’t think before I act, moving around Stone and out the back door. I can hear the men protesting but I don’t listen. There are still so many unanswered questions that need to be cleared up. But seeing Rhett, the boy I loved so much and had the perfect little boy with, in agony isn’t something I ever want to see. Dropping down in front of him I reach for his shoulder but his arms snatch me up in an embrace and pulls me into his chest. Rhett buries his face in my neck and I can feel the wetness from his cheeks on my skin. It sets off my own that I’ve been suppressing for years.

We sit there for a while as time stands still.

“I never knew,” he keeps repeating and my heart cracks at his voice. “I’m so sorry.”

The flood gates opened up after hearing that I have a son. Being in prison, I shut off every single emotion in my entire being. Prison isn’t for the weak and once I learned that, I mastered locking down my reactions. I was a vault and no one knew the internal battles waging within me. But hearing about what Remi went through tore something in me. When I was behind those four walls of my cage, I didn’t think she was out here struggling like she was.

“It’s okay, we’re fine,” she tells me as she holds me just as tight. Her voice wobbles as I continue to break and bleed out all over her.

In the distance I can hear the loud voices of Stone and Bulldog from inside the house but don’t pay any mind to it. Having Remi in my arms feels like being home again and that can be dangerous.

“Tell me about him,” I say to her as I pull her gently back so that our faces are a few inches from one another.

“Ryder, is the best kid,” she starts and her face lights up. “He loves baseball and football and is so good at it. School seems to come easy for him so far,” she lists off.

Ryder. When we were planning out our future, Remi had already made up her mind that we’d have several kids and had a name picked out for each one. Ryder was at the top of her list.

“Does he know about me?” I ask, a little nervous at what she might, or might not, have told him of his convicted father.