Page 34 of Cold Case Discovery

“I’m sorry, Chloe,” he said, crossing the room to her. “I didn’t mean it. She just got me so riled up, poking at me with the same questions.”

This was the problem with Ry. She believed hewassorry. In the moment. She just also believed he’d do it again and again because he wasn’t sorry enough to change, to grow, to learn. He was determined to stay stuck in this everyone-else-is-to-blame place.

And she couldn’t fix him.

She’d spent so many years trying to accept that. She wondered if she ever fully would be able to.

“How was working with Cash and Carlyle?” she asked, because she needed to make sure he hadn’t ruined anything else today before she went back to the subject at hand.

He gave her a jerky shrug that reminded her of the little boy he’d been. She’d tried so hard to save him from everything, and she’d failed. “They have like a hundred of them.”

“Of what?”

“Dogs.” His mouth curved ever so slightly. “They didn’t give us that speech in high school when they were telling us we had to think about our futures. Maybe if someone had told me, ‘Hey, dog training is a thing people do,’ I would have tried harder.”

She didn’t say anything to that, even thoughshehad told him.Shehad tried to find any way of getting him tocare, to put forth an effort. Vet school. Owning his own kennel or working on someone else’s ranch.Anything.

But Ry had to blame someone else for where his life was. Always.

Which brought them right back to the subject at hand. “Ry, have you hadanycontact with Dad in the past year?”

“You heard what I told the detective.”

“I did. And now I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that for an entire year, you haven’t had a phone call, an email, a certified letter, nothing.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. Which was the third or fourth time she’d heard that in the last ten minutes. And didn’t answer the question.

“Then whatdidyou do?”

He stood there. Then slowly, his dark eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, Chloe. I really am.”

Chapter Eleven

“He lied.”

Jack looked up from the computer screen that had been giving him a hell of a headache. With Steve out and Chloe needing to ride two-man, adjusting the Sunrise SD work schedule was a hell of a puzzle he hadn’t fully figured out yet. Even with him stepping in to cover daily shifts. So he didn’t quite follow Chloe’s dramatic statement. He only knew she was standing in the doorway, looking like a storm ready to break. “Who lied about what?”

“Ry lied to the detective.”

Jack tried not to swear, tried to maintain a detached kind of calm that she no doubt needed, but he wasn’t perfect. “Lied how?”

“All she wanted to know, allegedly, was if he’d had contact with Dad lately. He told her he hadn’t talked to Dad since he went to prison, but he refused to hand over his phone, of course. And he kept saying he hadn’t done anything wrong, and that’s always when I know he has.”

She looked up at Jack then. Tears swam in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. “He’s had contact with Dad over the past year. Text messages and emails.” She raked her hands through her hair, loosening more strands from the once-tight braid she’d had at the beginning of the day.

“He said it didn’t have anything to do with anything. Just father-son stuff. I can’t believe he...” She was pacing the tiny office room. There was no room to pace, but she clearly couldn’t sit still. Anger and frustration pumped off her, but underneath all that was the impossible pull of wanting to do the right thing for her family and needing to do the right thing for the law.

“I should have handled it better. I should have found a way to get him to admit it to the detective. He always lies when he’s backed into a corner, and if I had—”

“You’re not blaming yourself, are you? Because I know you know you’re not to blame for Ry lying.”

She took a breath and finally stopped pacing. She looked at him with heartbreak in her eyes. Then shook her head. “Bad habit.”

“I know. So, let’s work through this. He told the detective he hasn’t had contact with your dad?”

She shook her head. “Oh, no, of course not. He saidI haven’t talked to himsince he went to prison, so he’s convinced it wasn’t aliebecause he only communicated in texts and emails. God, I’d like to strangle him.”

“And he says these conversations were just generic. Did he let you see any of them?”

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