“God, yes. He whaled on Reid and me. Reid got the worst of it after Rock left. I was a loner. I learned how to avoid him. But Reid got his ass kicked regularly.”

“And Riley?”

“He wouldn’t dare lay a hand on his perfect princess,” I said. “She was everything to him. They went on special trips overseas and everything.”

“Wow. Really?”

“Yeah. Reid and I didn’t care too much, though. We hated the bastard, and he seemed to hate us. The last thing either of us wanted was to be alone with him anywhere.”

“Hmm.” She lifted her brow, looking pensive.

“What?”

“If she had such a good relationship with him, why hasn’t she been clamoring for a major memorial service sendoff?”

“Well, she’s not here, for one.”

“Why would she take off now?”

“Who knows? None of us knows why she takes off. Reid and I tried to help her when this first began, but we didn’t get anywhere.”

“It just seems, if they were so close, as you say, sharing trips and all…”

I shook my head. “Like I told you. I have no idea.”

But I did have an idea. An idea I couldn’t force to the forefront of my mind for fear of what I’d find there. Those images, those words… The things I couldn’t unbury…

But I had to. The time was coming.

If we were all going to find the truth, we needed all the facts.

Even those facts buried deep within my psyche.

The problem was…I wasn’t sure what bringing them to the surface would do to me.

And I didn’t want to find out.

17

Charlie

I was riding in a limo. In a damned limo!

I’d come to Helena in a private jet, and now I was in a Hummer limo, going to the best hotel in the city.

Crazy, this life. So crazy.

Roy sat beside me, dressed in jeans, Italian leather shoes, a white shirt unbuttoned at the top, and a sports jacket.

And my God, he looked scrumptious.

He hadn’t come on to me on the plane, a fact which had surprised me quite a bit. We’d talked a lot, mostly about nothing in particular, but some about his family. His brothers and sister.

Riley Wolfe seemed to be as much of a puzzle to her brothers as she was to me.

If she and Derek Wolfe had been so close, why wasn’t she here mourning? Or if running off was her way to deal with stress, what had happened the other times she’d run off? How many times had she pulled this? I’d have to ask Roy. If he even knew. He wasn’t exactly family-centric.

We pulled into the hotel and the driver opened the door for me and helped me out of the limo. Crazy!