Page 31 of Lone Star Hostage

Working his way through his third cup of coffee, Presley sat at his desk in his home office, fighting hard to tamp down the firestorm of thoughts and emotions that kept burning away at him.

Something he’d done throughout the night.

And it was the reason he hadn’t gotten much sleep. Billie probably hadn’t either in the guestroom just up the hall. Still, they’d been exhausted when they’d arrived at his house and had gone off to their respective rooms.

Alone.

Because, hey, exhaustion and so very much to process.

Presley was still doing the processing thing, but he didn’t want to deal with how he felt about Victoria being his bio-mother. Or about the shit the kidnappers had put her through. He didn’t want to deal with the mental exhaustion from hell that he was having right now. Or keep thinking about that scalding kiss that Billie and he had shared at the hospital.

He just needed to focus on the investigation.

On finding who’d hired those kidnappers. That was it. Nothing more.

But it was impossible to shut out everything else, and at that moment, he felt like a hamster on a never-ending wheel. Hesuspected Billie was having a similar experience as she worked on a laptop on the sofa.

Since they’d gotten up shortly after sunrise and jumped straight into work, hardly more than ten minutes had gone by without an alert from incoming texts and emails. Some were from Angel to let them know that Jesep was still pushing to get Victoria released. And was thankfully failing at that. Mainly because Angel and Ruby were pushing right back to keep her where she was. Simply put, they weren’t sure Victoria was going to be safe in thelovingarms of her family.

Another ding to indicate a new email. This one was an update from the CSIs who were processing the creek. So far, they’d found squat that would help. Still, Presley was glad they were in the loop because that squat could turn into something big in a blink if the kidnappers had managed to leave any clues behind to prove someone had hired them or if they’d worked alone.

He’d barely finished reading that one when another came in from the Outlaw Ridge sheriff, Marty Bonetti. He was friends with Owen, so Owen had convinced him to copy Billie and him on any and all of the developments in the investigation. That’s why they were also getting preliminary reports from the ME who was dealing with the dead brothers, Craig and Ellis Dumfries.

This latest report, however, was to give a summary of the death notification to Craig and Ellis’ next of kin.

Again, squat.

Their mother was dead, and their dad had apparently left when the boys had been young. The mother had remarried, and their stepfather, Joe Malloy, had said he hadn’t seen neither Craig nor Ellis in nearly two years, that the brothers had cut off communications with him when he’d refused to bail them out of jail for what would have been a third time.

According to one of the deputies, the stepfather had been visibly upset when questioned about the kidnapping, but he hadn’t been able to offer them any info on anyone that his stepsons might have been working with. However, Joe had given them the name of Craig and Ellis’ older brother, Damon, and Sheriff Bonetti was trying to track him down.

Of course, reading all of that had put Presley right back on the hamster wheel, where he couldn’t shut out his thoughts about how Victoria had reacted when she’d abandoned him.

“Abandoned,” he muttered. He swiveled his chair around to face Billie. “Victoria seemed surprised, or something, when I mentioned being left at the fire station as a newborn. Or was that my imagination?” He wasn’t sure of pretty much anything when it came to Victoria.

Billie shook her head. “Not your imagination,” she confirmed. She set her laptop aside and went closer to him. “And I’ve been looking into that.”

That got his attention. “How?”

“With Strike Force’s data mining program.” She sighed. “Yes, I know some of the data in it was obtained through hacking, and that Ruby wouldn’t approve.”

“No, she wouldn’t,” Presley agreed, and then he immediately asked, “Did you find something?”

“Maybe. I believe when Victoria had you, she used the name Melissa Williams. The date fits anyway with your birth. Melissa Williams didn’t exist six months prior to your birth and disappeared shortly thereafter.”

That meshed with what Victoria had told them.

“There are no medical records, so maybe her parents had them destroyed. Or she could have done that herself. Maybe she didn’t want Jesep to know she’d had a child as a teenager.”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “But that surprised look in Victoria’s eyes make me believe…” He had to stop because there were just too many possibilities. Too many questions.

Billie eased her hip on the desk, took out her phone and pulled up a photo. “Those are Victoria’s late parents, Markham and Laura Beaumont.”

“Late,” he repeated.

“Yes, they both died when Victoria was still in college. Private jet crash,” she explained.

Presley studied the stone-faced man and the blonde-haired woman beside him in what was a posed shot at some kind of fancy party. He wanted to curse when he recognized some of his own features in them. His black hair. Hell, even Markham’s eyes.

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