Page 16 of Twisted Empire

Dexter’s hand skimmed upward to run through his rumpled black curls. “For her to fake her own death to run away with him, she would have needed pretty major motivation. Just feeling like she owed him for a service she paid for wouldn’t cut it.”

“No,” Logan said with a ragged bark of a laugh that had no humor in it.

Beckett leaned forward, his hands clasped together on his lap. “Let’s lay out what we know in the order it happened. Logan had his transplant operation—fourteen years ago?”

“Yeah.”

“And I’m guessing your follow-up treatment was in the same hospital where Maddie’s father worked, since that’s the only one in your hometown.”

“That’s right,” Logan said again, a little of his typical determined energy coming back into his voice. “That’s how Evan could have stumbled on evidence. Maybe there was something in my post-op treatment that tipped him off that something wasn’t quite right.”

“That would make the most sense,” I said. “If Doom’s Seed has been running this scheme for a while, there’ve probably been other transplant patients of his at that hospital, but I wouldn’t think there’d have been any others around the same time as you. It’s not that big a town.”

“So your dad started digging into Doom’s Seed’s dealings,” Slade said slowly, “following whatever trail he’d gotten on, and once he got to the point of poking around those properties, Doom’s Seed obviously caught on that something was up.”

Dexter cocked his head. “If he was still in touch with Yvonne then, which seems likely, he’d have mentioned that this was someone from the same town she lived in. She’d have been worried that he was going to exposeheras well as Doom’s Seed.”

Beckett raised his hands. “I don’t think there’s any need to pin the murder on her. Doom’s Seed would have wanted to eliminate anyone trying to expose his illegal work without any extra factors in the mix.”

“But she might have encouraged him to get on with it,” Logan said, his jaw flexing. “She kidnapped Maddie at gunpoint. Brought her into a place where her lover could threaten to kill Maddie. She obviously doesn’t have anywhere near as much of a conscience as I’d have wanted to believe.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” I said. “Doom’s Seed would have had his people set up the murder. But your mom hadn’t left yet at that point.”

“No. It was three years after my operation when she—when wethoughtshe died.” Logan sighed and sagged back against the sofa. “I guess she got sick of family life and found an escape so she could be with the psycho she’d fallen for permanently.” His voice got hoarser. “Other people reallydiddie in that explosion. She ran away from her responsibilities—and she was selfish enough to not care that she screwed up dozens of other lives in the process.”

A gloomy silence descended over all of us. I had no idea how Yvonne justified any of her actions to herself. Maybe she blocked out everything from before she’d run away to join Doom’s Seed, like that’d all been some other woman who didn’t count anymore.

“That’s everything,” Slade said, sitting a little straighter. “We’ve got the whole story pieced together.”

Dexter knit his brow. “Not exactly. We still can’tproveany of this. Even the conversation Maddie overheard, if she gave testimony, a lot of what we’ve determined is making deductions rather than anything outright stated.”

My heart leapt with a sudden jolt of hope. “I might have something that can help with that.”

I scrambled off the sofa and found the purse I’d dropped beside it last night. Brandishing it like a trophy, I returned to the guys. “This is Yvonne’s. I took it because she stuck my phone in it, but she’ll have her own things inside. Things important enough that she wanted them within reach when she left home. There’s got to besomethinguseful in there.”

Logan let out a chuckle that sounded less pained this time and pulled the purse out of my hands into his lap. “Maddie the purse thief. You never cease to amaze me. God, I love you.”

My cheeks flushed even though he’d confessed those feelings before. It made me a bit giddy just seeing more of his enthusiasm for the investigation returning now that he had something concrete to delve into.

He dug through the purse and pulled out a phone that was definitely not mine.

Beckett whistled approvingly. “I’m guessing you can get a lot of mileage out of that.”

Logan smiled at him. “And anything I can’t crack, your tech people should be able to.” A fiercer light came into his dark eyes as he considered the possibilities. “I’ll go through the contacts and messages—and I need to check the records at all the hospitals in this city and the area around it for someone named Baldwin who had an organ transplant. If his file was the one your dad thought was the most important, it could be the key to blowing this whole thing wide open.”

Slade rubbed his hands together. “I don’t know how to hack, but I can definitely run searches on the records we already have.”

Logan paused. His gaze dropped to his torso again. “We also have evidence in me. My liver is proof of what happened, no matter how well Mom and Doom’s Seed covered their tracks. If we can connect it to the businesses Doom’s Seed is running, then we can be sure he doesn’t get away with any of this.”

Beckett stood up, his tone calmly authoritative. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, let me know what you need so you can start hacking into those other hospital systems. I’ll have my people help in whatever—”

The ring of his phone cut him off. Frowning, Beckett dug it out of his pocket and raised it to his ear. “Beckett here.”

A moment later, his stance went rigid, anger flaring in his normally cool gray eyes. “Theywhat? Those pricks…” He sucked in a sharp breath. “Hang tight. I’ll get you out of there—I just need to summon reinforcements.”

My stomach had already knotted by the time he hung up and glanced around at us. “What’s happening?” I asked, dreading the answer.

Beckett’s fingers gripped the phone so hard his knuckles whitened. “He’s not wasting any time showing his true intentions. Doom’s Seed has launched another attack on my territory.”

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