Page 30 of False Evidence

“Okay, then. I’ll trust Keith too. He seemed nice when I met him at the wedding, and I liked Trina a lot. How do we get in touch with him?”

As the head of a private security and paramilitary training organization that was owned by a sitting US senator, Keith had connections and wildly good security.

“Lee gave me a burner phone. I’ll use it to tell Keith you contacted me, but not that you’re here. He’ll be able to set up a consultation between you and an attorney.”

“Thank you.” Lex rose from her seat at the dining table and cleared their plates.

“I can do the dishes.”

“No. You cooked. And babysat for a day and a half. I can wash up.”

It was weird to be relegated to the role of babysitter, but he supposed that was what he had been. He wasn’t even Uncle Tee. It was a courtesy title for a caretaker.

He looked over to where Gemma sat on the carpet, playing with her stuffed toys and the wooden blocks he’d gotten her, which she was stacking. Building houses for Panny and Tee-Tee?

He gave a half smile. Engineer in the making already.

He and his father had both been engineers. His dad had always wanted JT to have kids to pass on T&D. Keep the engineering dynasty going. Instead, JT was selling it in a week and would be glad to be free from the business that had consumed his life since he first started working there when he was all of fourteen years old.

He looked at Alexandra’s daughter, building towers for a panda and dinosaur, and wondered once again about Gemma’s father.

He knew her last name was Vargas, but that meant nothing. Alexandra hadn’t planned to take the name Talon when they married, and it was her right to give her child her name, no matter who the father was.

Hell, JT’s last name, Talon, wasn’t even his. If Joseph Talon Sr. hadn’t been cheated out of being raised by his birth mother, his name would have been Ricky Guerrero. JT would be Ricky Junior, maybe. But then, JT probably wouldn’t exist. Ricky Guerrero would have had a vastly different life.

Better or worse in adulthood, no one could know, but definitely better than a childhood of being raised in an Indian boarding school, run by a white headmaster who hated the Indigenous children forced to live in his school.

The Carleton School for Indian Boys was one of many Indian boarding schools that was under scrutiny now, especially because it had operated longer than most of the schools that started in the late 1800s with the purpose of erasing Indigenous culture from all tribal children. The graveyard behind the school was vast and dated back to when children had been removed from their homes at gunpoint.

JT wasn’t a tribal member by blood, as he’d thought until he was thirty-seven. He’d been raised within the tribal community, everyone believing he was one-quarter Menanichoch. One of their own. In the end, that was good enough for the tribe, and after processing the rift that undermined his very foundation, he realized it was good enough for him too. They were his family in a way even Lee wasn’t, even though he shared exactly the same amount of blood with the tribe as he shared with his stepbrother. He’d grown up with the tribe’s traditions, straddling Indigenous and white man’s world as his father’s wealth grew.

Now JT was an extremely wealthy man. He was also a registered member of the Menanichoch tribe—accepted in before he was born. In reality, his grandfather had been a dark-skinned Cuban man, his grandmother a pale French-Canadian woman. JT resembled his father, whose ambiguous ethnicity had worked in the favor of the kidnapper who dumped four-year-old Ricky at the boarding school and gave him the name Joseph Talon, along with identifying him as a Menanichoch tribal member.

Alexandra’s daughter was blonde and blue-eyed, like her mother. She’d been born in Switzerland, while her mother was there on a research fellowship.

Did she have a Swiss father?

Staring at the happy toddler, he asked the question he’d never dared to ask Lee. “Where is Gemma’s father?”

“Lee didn’t tell you?”

“I…didn’t want to know.” For the longest time, he’d resisted even finding out if she had a boy or a girl. It wasn’t until he decided to set up the trust fund for her that he’d needed to know her name and birthdate. But now wasn’t the time to tell Lex about the trust.

“Her bio dad is a popsicle. Frozen sperm.”

That surprised him. “You said you’d never do that. You wanted a family.”

“I never found anyone I wanted to have a kid with, and my biological clock was shutting the door. I changed my mind.” She cleared her throat. “It’s a good thing I made the decision when I did. I ended up having trouble conceiving and had to go through fertility treatment in addition to artificial insemination. It took me nearly two years to conceive, and several expensive rounds of treatment.” She looked at her daughter. “She’s my precious Gem.”

Alexandra descended the stairs, baby monitor speaker in hand, walking softly in hopes that Gemma would stay asleep in the portable crib. She could hear JT on the phone and didn’t make a sound as she entered the study, where he sat in a large office chair, facing the dark window with his back to the desk and doorway. She silently settled into the love seat in the corner of the large office and listened to his side of the conversation.

“We need to get word to Lee and Erica that Alexandra is safe without connecting the info to me. I’m sure they’re being questioned daily, so best to keep them in the dark.”

He was silent for a moment, then said, “I appreciate it, Keith. I’ll pay whatever it takes.”

Alexandra silently vowed to pay him back. This was her problem, not his. She’d gratefully take his help now, but wouldn’t be beholden to him in the long run.

It was a relief that Erica and Lee would know she was safe. She hated the stress they must be feeling. In three hours, it would be Christmas Eve. They all deserved peace this holiday.

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