“These days, you can’t get a burner without ID,” Adinah went on. “It’s an antiterrorism measure, and it makes sense when you look at it that way, but it does no favors to abuse victims who need anonymity. Ours is not an approach most people approve of. They want things done cleanly and legally. But that’s a luxury we don’t have in every case. Sometimes, it’s a life-or-death situation. Caroline understood that. She stopped working the hotline when she finished school, but she gave us a lot of money.”

“Thraxton money,” I said, but my brain was stuck on the burner phone. Ben had mentioned my sister having one, and I hadn’t believed him because I couldn’t picture how Caro could get one. Turned out my imagination was lacking.

“Now that she’s gone, there’s something I should show you. Her message says Theo’s the threat, but . . .” She punched a code into a desk drawer, and I heard six beeps. “Caroline asked me to arrange this for her.”

She handed me a pair of passports. I opened the first one and saw my sister’s image next to the name Deirdre Jane Brooks. The second passport made my heart skip a beat. Teddy’s face was identified as belonging to Edward Ryan Brooks.

“What the hell is this?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”

“She didn’t really explain, except that she had to get away from the Thraxtons,” Adinah said.

“Not just Theo?”

“The whole family. Her sister-in-law made her miserable. Her mother-in-law . . .”

“Ursula? I thought they got along.”

“You know there was some strange issue about Caroline’s stuff being moved around, right?” Adinah said. “Caroline blamed Theo for it. But Theo was gone a lot, and it went on. Then one day, Caroline found her mother-in-law in her room.”

“Ursula was the gremlin?” It sounded crazy, but Adinah’s face was serious.

“Apparently she was going through Caroline’s things,” Adinah said. “I asked Caroline about it later, and she claimed everything was fine. She and her mother-in-law had talked it out, and they understood each other. She said Ursula was on her side.”

“That’s something, I guess.”

“That was also the day Caroline asked me to get passports for herself and Teddy,” Adinah said. “Caroline told me the whole family was like a Greek tragedy, and she had to get her son out of there.”

CHAPTER 34 THEO

CHAPTER 34

THEO