Aiden (The Mavericks Book 18) Read online

  “None of this makes any sense,” Aiden agreed, “but it will. You know that we just have to get all the answers, and she apparently isn’t helping out.”

  “As far as I know, there’s no child,” Mountain replied.

  Aiden continued with his questions. “Could it be that you just don’t know about it yet? Is it likely to be, and none of her family would know about it? Have they not visited her in a long time?”

  “No. No one is close. Emotionally, that is. Her parents live in Vegas, but they are worthless. When Toby last got rid of this bad boy, she told me that she had known better than to go back to him and that she wouldn’t do it again. She was making plans for a future. Vegas was not it, but it was a means to the end to get the money to go to college. She wanted to be a scientist.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-eight,” Mountain replied. “And she knew that was a late start for college, but she refused to believe that it was too late.”

  “Of course not. So you feel she was pressured into marrying him.”

  “Yes. At least, I want to believe that,” he added, “because I don’t want to believe she went back of her own volition.”

  “Which you know happens more often than not.”

  “Yeah, I get that, but that wasn’t normal for her.”

  Aiden paused. “So what was the reason for going back-and-forth?”

  “She did tell me that his sister had something to do with her going back to him the last time or the time before that.”

  “What did the guy’s sister have to do with it?”

  “She has a mental disability, and the boyfriend was responsible for her.”

  Aiden frowned. “This bad boy never outgrew his responsibility for somebody who is mentally challenged?” There was no hiding his surprise.

  Mountain shrugged. “Apparently he loves his sister.”

  “And why would that have anything to do with Toby staying with him?”

  “I’m not sure. I do know that she really loved the sister too.”

  “That’s a hell of a reason for staying in some crazy guy’s orbit unless …” He stopped, looked over at Mountain. “With the sister having mental limitations, that brings in the ‘child’ feature I mentioned earlier, doesn’t it? Is Toby the kind to protect?”

  “Absolutely.” Mountain nodded. “And then something happened, and I’m not sure what.”

  “Okay. According to Corbin, the cops are looking at charging Toby with four other potential murder charges.”

  “And I don’t get that at all.” Mountain stared ahead. The seat belt light came on, and he added, “We’re getting out of here soon.”

  “I still need more of the story.”

  “You’ll get it, but from her.”

  “Will she talk to you?”

  “That’s the hope,” he muttered. “However, at this point in time, I’m not sure I know her at all.”

  “And yet you promised you could help fix it.”

  “Yeah. And the two fathers wouldn’t take me up on my offer to help her.”

  “So, lots of family issues are involved.”

  “Yep.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “What about them?” Mountain replied. “I have nothing to do with them either. My birth mother died giving life to me. My so-called dad remarried soon afterward, getting a housekeeper and cook and babysitter in the bargain. She hated me. I always reminded her of Dad’s first wife.”

  Aiden stared at Mountain, surprised.

  His buddy shrugged. “The family is messed up, and I mean all of the family.”

  “So, Toby’s family too?”

  “I would have thought she was the straightest of them all, … but now I’m not so sure.”

  Aiden nodded. “Let’s go take a look around Vegas and see what we can find.”

  As soon as they landed and walked outside, they headed over to the rental vehicles and picked up an SUV. Mountain looked at it and shook his head. “Couldn’t we get something with no top on it?”

  “Like what?” Aiden asked.

  “A jeep.”

  “You know that won’t be easy. And they didn’t have any cheap jeeps available.”

  “Great.”

  Aiden watched as Mountain folded his huge frame into the passenger side. With his knees close to his chest, he shook his head and popped the seat as far back as possible, just so he could get his knees down.

  “Shit!” he muttered.

  “I can see why you don’t like to travel commercial for the same reason.”

  “You saw the lack of leg room on the plane,” Mountain noted. “You saw me not move.”

  “Right. I guess military transport is a lot easier.”

  “And we should have done that,” he replied.

  “You’re right. We will next time.”

  “I booked it,” Mountain said. “Serves me right.”

  Aiden didn’t say anything to that. “I’m hearing an awful lot of guilt in your voice.”

  “I don’t even know if it’s guilt,” Mountain admitted. “Toby was the sweetest kid though. And I do feel like something blew up in her world.”

  “Of course you do,” Aiden agreed, “but that doesn’t mean you could have stopped it.”

  At that, Mountain shook his head and shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I was there to help her out either.”

  Aiden wondered what to do with that. Of course it was the truth. It was hard to look at things that went wrong around you and to see that maybe you could have done something to help but didn’t. Too often everybody just kept busy in their own lives. Meanwhile things blew up, before you even had a chance to realize that something needed to be done.

  Aiden followed Mountain’s directions until they got to the address they were looking for. Standing outside of the vehicle, Aiden looked up at the small home and asked, “Is it hers?”

  “It’s one of her father’s rental properties,” Mountain explained.

  “What does her father do?”

  “He runs a casino. You’ll find almost everybody here is involved in the industry one way or another.”

  “Is that how she got her job?”

  “No.” Mountain shook his head. “She wouldn’t take a job from him.” And, with that, Mountain frowned and looked over at Aiden. “Come on. Let’s go hear the story from her firsthand.”

  When Toby opened her front door, she stared at Aiden in confusion. Then her gaze landed on Mountain. Her face lit up, but then, almost as if it took a force of will, she wiped it clean and gave him a blank look. “Wow. What the hell brought you back?”

  Mountain glared at her. “You knew I would come—as soon as you let me know you were in trouble.”

  “Well, I didn’t let you know that I was in trouble, now did I?” she asked in an odd tone, as she walked back into her living room. “You might as well come in though, knowing you won’t leave anytime soon.”

  At that, Aiden looked over at Mountain, who just shrugged. “She’s right. I’m not. We have a lot of shit to sort out first.”

  Aiden stepped inside, not particularly liking the innuendos floating around him. As he walked in, he looked around the small living room, noting not a whole lot of furniture was here, as if she didn’t have a whole lot of money. He wondered if the cops had looked at any of that, considering how, if she had stolen money from any of these dead gamblers, she sure as hell wasn’t spending any of it. But then that wasn’t necessarily an issue because a lot of people waited until they moved and spent it then.

  As he sat down in the living room, he looked over at her. “You obviously know Mountain. I’m Aiden.”

  She looked at him and frowned. “I may have heard that name in the past.”

  He shrugged. “Mountain and I’ve known each other for a long time.”

  She nodded, cast a sideways glance at her cousin, and snapped, “At least he’s good at keeping up with some people.”

  Aiden looked from Mountain to Toby and added, “Look.
I don’t know what’s going on between the two of you, but I would like to be clear. Get past it, so it doesn’t interfere in our work.”

  “Too late,” she stated immediately. “I’m Toby by the way.”

  He nodded. “And I am here to help. Mountain is too.”

  She shook her head, gazing at the two men. “This isn’t your doing.”

  “I told you that you should’ve just asked for my help,” Mountain said.

  “That wouldn’t do me any good, would it? And I sure as hell don’t want the families involved.”

  “Why don’t you want them involved?” Aiden asked.

  She frowned at both men again, then addressed Aiden. “Has Mountain not given you the full details?”

  At that, Aiden shook his head. “He’s been remarkably tight-lipped about it all, and it would be really nice to know what the hell is going on.”

  The two relatives shared a look, and then her shoulders slumped. “I don’t even know what you’re here for,” she replied. “It’s not as if this is anything you can help with.”

  Toby stared at the two men. Her cousin just made her heart ache, bringing up so many hard feelings in so many ways. Yet she couldn’t remember what was the core of it. All of it paled now, given everything that had torn apart her world since then. Except that she was different, and so was he. She sagged into a chair and stared at the newcomer, Aiden. “I get that you’re probably one of those hero kind of guys who’s here to help rescue the damsel in distress,” she stated, “but sometimes no rescue can happen.”

  “And sometimes you just need a little faith,” he argued calmly. “I have no intention of failing, regardless of what you may think.”

  She stared at him for a moment. “I don’t even know what I think anymore,” she admitted softly. “And, if you think you can do anything to help, that would be lovely.”

  “I need to know a few things,” Aiden began. “One, is anything between you and your cousin here that will stop you from helping us or will interfere in our work?”

  She smiled. “The only thing between Mountain here and me that’s a problem,” she replied, “is the fact that he told me to walk away from my ex-boyfriend. So, when things changed, and I went back to my ex, I felt like I needed to stay away from Mountain. When you let people know your feelings in a rather strong manner, it’s a little hard to go back to them and ask for help.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Mountain countered. “You just move on from the bastard.”

  She nodded. “I didn’t kill him, you know?”

  “I know you didn’t,” he agreed, looking at her. “I never thought you did.”

  “You’re the only one who didn’t then.”

  “What I don’t know is why you married him,” Mountain admitted. “I’ve never thought of you as being one of those abused women who couldn’t shake off her abuser.”

  She stared at him with an anemic look for a very long time. “No, but I also cared about his sister. Then once the blackmail started—”

  “Blackmail?” Aiden pounced.

  “And everything I tell you will just make it seem very much like I did kill him,” she protested, turning to address Aiden.

  “If we take that off the board,” Aiden suggested, “maybe it will help me understand what’s going on here. So, how about we just start with the truth?”

  She sank deeper into her seat, marshaling her thoughts. “He had a sister, … has a sister.”

  “Okay,” Aiden replied calmly. “What does she have to do with this?”

  “She’s the only reason I went back to him,” she explained, “and only because he blackmailed me, saying that he’d leave her alone if I came back.”

  “Leave her alone? How?”

  “In every way possible,” she stated. “I don’t think he sexually abused her, but I know he mentally and emotionally abused her. Everything he ever did has her waking up in the middle of the night, screaming in terror. He was probably always this kind of an asshole, but I can’t be sure.”

  “Hang on a minute,” Aiden said. “Let’s get back to the beginning of your relationship with this guy.”

  “Fine. We were besties in high school, and I got very close with his sister, but then I decided to leave and go to a community college with some grant money—only he followed me there. I couldn’t stay because he was …” She stopped and frowned. “I guess the term is abusive.”

  “What do you mean, you guess?” Mountain asked, almost growling.

  Aiden immediately put up his hand and glared at Mountain.

  Mountain subsided. “Did he hit you?”

  “No, not …” She hesitated. “That would have been a clear-cut sign that I was in trouble. Still that doesn’t mean I would have listened to anybody or would have seen these early warning signals because, hey, I was young and stupid and knew everything, right? Isn’t that how the world works?”

  At that, she glanced over apologetically at Mountain. “You were right. I mean, Moscow was an asshole. I didn’t understand how bad things had gotten, but I was trying to save Michelle,” she explained, “and I think the opposite has happened. He threatened to kill her if I didn’t marry him, and he said he would blame that murder on me too.”

  “Whoa.” Aiden let out a deep breath. “Back up, back up.”

  She nodded. “I managed to get away from him for a couple years. I don’t even know where he went during that time period. I think he went back East for a while. Michelle was in a special group home, and she seemed really happy. I saw her on a regular basis, even though I no longer had anything to do with him. She’s very sweet,” Toby explained, “and I don’t have any other family I care to have anything to do with.”

  “Including me,” Mountain added, with another growl.

  She shook her head. “No, not you. However, if I didn’t do what you said immediately, then I wasn’t taking your advice, and I felt ostracized.”

  He just stared at her and shook his head. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I know, but I took it that way.” She looked over at Aiden and continued her story. “Anyway, for a couple years, everything was fine. About four, maybe five years ago, he came back to town. He wanted to pick up where we left off, but where we left off was a bad place, and I didn’t want to get back into that scenario. Yet he realized that I was seeing his sister on a regular basis, and he used that against me. He told me that, if I wanted to continue to see her, I would have to play nice. I told him that I didn’t want anything to do with him, other than being friends, but that was it. So, if it came down to leaving his sister to get Moscow out of my life, then I would walk away from his sister.” Toby shook her head. “I hated to do it, but I didn’t know what else to do. He then turned around and told his sister that.”

  “Wow. Nice guy.”

  “No, not very much,” she countered. “At this point in time, that stalemate lasted for a while. I stayed away from Michelle, until his sister called me one day, asking for help. She said the cops wouldn’t help her, and she had nobody else who she could turn to.”

  “And why didn’t you call the police?” Aiden asked.

  “We don’t deal well with the police in our family,” she murmured. “My father runs a casino, and, I mean, I won’t say he does it illegally, but I won’t say that the law looks on him kindly either.”

  “And so you think that, if you had phoned the police, you would have gotten the same kind of response that Michelle had gotten?”

  “I think so, yes,” Toby agreed. “No, I don’t know that for sure. I also didn’t know if anybody would even believe Michelle because I wasn’t sure I even believed her because of her disability. Whenever she would describe what was going on, she often couldn’t get the words out. So I had to talk to Moscow. I finally ended up—over weeks of talking to him—realizing that he was threatening to take her away from the home where she was. I don’t know if it was due to costs or was just his mind games. Like I told you, he wasn’t a very nice guy. The bottom line? She felt
like her life was in danger.”

  “How?” Aiden asked.

  “Again we’re dealing with somebody with a disability,” she repeated, “and that just adds to the problem here.”

  Aiden nodded slowly. He didn’t have very much experience dealing with this particular health aspect. Yet he could imagine that would definitely lead to some extenuating circumstances, where life would become quite difficult, where they could perceive a threat when, maybe, there wasn’t one. He waited for Toby to continue. “And …”

  She nodded. “So I talked to Moscow and asked him what was going on, and he said it was none of my business and to butt out. He had already contacted the home and had told them that I was to have no access to Michelle, in person or on the phone. However, Michelle contacted me again and again. It became a worry and then a nuisance.” She raised both palms. “And I’ll admit that I didn’t think very much of myself when I realized that Michelle really did have a legitimate problem, and I was pushing her off because I couldn’t deal,” she explained, “so that made me feel like I was a terrible person as well.”

  “Of course,” Mountain agreed calmly, “and you didn’t have anybody you felt you could ask for help.”

  “No,” she confirmed. “If you’d been around, I would have asked you, but it was pretty hard to even get a hold of you there for a while.”

  At that, he winced and nodded. “It often still is,” he shared, “and part of the problem is, who did you talk to?”

  “I tried to talk to my mother about it once, but she got quite angry that I was even involved in something like that and told me that it was a bad deal and that I should just step out of it.”

  “Well, gee, what a surprise,” Mountain quipped. At Aiden’s look, Mountain explained to him, “Toby’s mom has a habit of not dealing with anything that’s unpleasant. If it will upset anybody, especially her, she won’t get involved.”

  “Even if Michelle was being hurt?” Aiden asked.

  Mountain shook his head. “Toby’s mom won’t have anything to do with it. Even if Toby herself were getting hurt. It won’t matter. Toby’s ma likes her grand conflict-free lifestyle. Everything else is a moot point.”

  Aiden looked over at Toby for confirmation, and she nodded. “Hate to say that,” she noted, “but he’s right. My mother doesn’t like anything unpleasant. My father too. He works hard to keep all that conflict away from my mother.”