Page 48 of Deadly Vendetta

The geese had chased her once, and after that Zach had confined them permanently to the backyard, where they still raised a ruckus at the sight of anything new. “They can’t get at you, honey.”

“They hurt my ears!”

“That’s because they’ve got a job to do. They let us know if we have visitors, just like a doorbell.”

She was talking more, becoming a shade less withdrawn with each passing week, but he’d checked into an Internet site on language development and found that she seemed to be below the baseline for two-to-three-year-olds. Not surprising, if her mom had been inattentive or had left her in poor child-care situations.

So now he chattered to her. Named objects and asked questions. Told her silly stories and jokes, read nursery rhymes and fairy tales and even magazines aloud. As she responded—picking up new words, and beginning to initiate more conversations, he couldn’t have been more proud of her if she’d just won the Nobel Prize.

What had he done with his time before she came into his life?

It would be so hard to give her back to her troubled mother. Even with social services involvement, what kind of life would she have?

After letting the pup outside for a few minutes, he brought Katie and the puppy into the living room where he could keep a close eye on them. He set up his laptop on an end table, logged onto the Internet, and checked his e-mail.

There was just one. From Jerry.

I know you don’t want much contact, but we need to talk ASAP. Call me night or day.

Zach logged off, then stepped back and dropped into the upholstered chair nearby with a sinking feeling in his chest. Please, Lord. Don’t let it be true.

After a long moment he reached for the cell phone in his pocket. Hit Jerry’s one-digit auto-dial number. His heart picked up a faster beat. Cold sweat trickled down his back as he waited. The phone rang in slow-motion three...four...five times.

He’d almost ended the call when a voicemail recording started, but Jerry answered a split second later.

“Tell me,” Zach growled. “Now.”

Jerry sighed heavily. “I’m really sorry, man. They found her this morning.”

For years, he’d prayed that she would finally accept help someday, even though she’d always refused it from him. “Are they sure it’s her?”

“The cops who discovered the body didn’t know her. She was ID’d through photographs and fingerprints already in the system.”

Grief settled like a cold weight in Zach’s stomach. “Where’d they find her?”

“An abandoned house near an industrial area. Dallas.”

“How...how did she die?”

“The cops said it looked like an overdose. There was a substance at the scene—looked like angel dust.” Jerry hesitated. “From some of her injuries, it also looks like she could have gone ballistic—you know, how they can get violent and paranoid sometimes? I’m sorry, man. She’d been there awhile. Maybe six or seven days.”

Zach leaned back and closed his eyes. A thousand images sped through his mind—colliding and fusing into a disjointed collage of regret and failure. He’d tried, but he hadn’t tried enough. What if he’d returned, again and again, and forced her back into rehab? Stayed with her, night and day?

They hadn’t grown up together, but he’d always hoped they could develop a strong bond, in time. That someday they would become a get-together-at-Christmas kind of family.

But now she’d died tragically at the age of thirty, and she’d been alone.

His own voice seemed to come from a million miles away. “Has...Janet’s father been notified?”

“Yeah. They took the body down to the Parkland Hospital complex. The Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office contacted him, and he said he’d let your mom know.”

What a call to receive—announcing the death of a daughter she hadn’t seen in decades.

“Katie and I will fly back as soon as I can arrange tickets.”

“Uh...how well do you know Janet’s dad?”

“Not at all. Never saw him again after he took her away to New York. The next time I saw my half-sister she was nineteen or twenty.”

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