Page 100 of Deserving Ryleigh
“Don’t hang up. It’s Bryce.”
Ry blinked in surprise. Then panic hit.
She hadn’t heard from her brother in…years. She’d known her dad still talked to him very infrequently, and the last thing she needed or wanted was to get rid of one threat, only to find out the relief she felt at her father’s death was premature.
“Ryleigh? Thatisthe name you’re going by these days, right?” her brother asked.
Obviously seeing her distress, Tiny took her arm and pulled her off to the side, out of earshot of everyone else, taking her phone out of her hand. He clicked a button to put it on speaker and asked in a low, harsh tone, “Who is this?”
“Who’sthis?” Bryce countered.
“Ryleigh’s man. And someone who will do whatever it fucking takes to protect her. Now who the hell is this?”
“Bryce. I’m her brother.”
Ry took a deep breath and nodded her head at Tiny. She hoped Tiny remembered her telling him about her brother. How Bryce was older than her and wasn’t around when she was growing up. He’d left the house even before her mom, and didn’t exactly get along with her father. Ry barely knew him…but she could never take the chance that he wouldn’t tell their dad where she was hiding if she’d reached out to him while on the run. From everything her dad had told her, thrown in her face, he was a computer genius…so it wasn’t hard to understand how he’d found her. But she had no idea why he was contacting her now.
“What do you want?” Tiny clipped.
“Ryleigh? Are you still there?”
“I’m here,” she said.
“When we’re done talking, I won’t contact you again, and I’d appreciate if you did the same. We’re free now. Both of us.”
“Both of us?” Ry asked, intrigued.
“Dad’s been unhinged for a long time, but even more so lately. Bitching about you and that place where you’ve been hiding out. I ignored him, the way I have for years, until he decided to blackmail me into helping him get you back into the fold, so to speak. He figured with my…experiencewith Army databases, I had connections. Dad didn’t find Archer and Arthur Anderson. I did. They were total morons. They knew about explosives only because they fancied themselves preppers or some such shit. Anti-government, the whole shebang. I recommended them to Dad because I knew they’d do theminimum they could to get paid, and they’d screw up even that much.”
Ry couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly. And I was right. They only placed half the bombs they were paid for. And those bombs on the bunkers were easy to disarm, weren’t they?”
“Yeah,” Ry said softly.
“Good. Then everything went as it should.”
“You sent those messages, didn’t you? Telling me what parts of the videos to watch?” Ry asked.
“Yes. It would take too long for you to find what you needed to know, so I pointed you exactly to what you needed to see. I knew your SEAL boyfriend and his friends could handle the bombs, and I’d hoped they’d take Dad out as well. We’re both free. He’s been a thorn in my side for years. Blackmailing me, threatening me, basically making my life a living hell. And now it’s done. For both of us.”
Ry had mixed feelings about what she was hearing. She never knew Bryce really, had no idea their dad had been using threats to control him much as he’d done with her. Since he’d never attempted to reach out, had left her to suffer alone for decades, she figured Bryce was probably cut from the same cloth as their father. That he was just as bad. Hearing differently, that he’d done what he could to help her, to rid them both of the black cloud hanging over their heads, was a huge surprise.
“Be well, Ryleigh. Have a good life. I know I will.”
Then the line went silent.
“Bryce?”
But he didn’t answer. He’d hung up.
Ry looked up at Tiny, at a loss as to what to say.
“Fuck me!” Tiny exclaimed as he pulled Ry into his arms. She snuggled against him, feeling better knowing that her man seemed just as surprised as she was by the entire conversation.
Eventually, she pulled back. “Should we tell the police what we just learned?” she asked.
Tiny sighed. “Probably. But I’m thinking we should let it go. We have no proof that what he said was true. And do you want them tracking your brother down to find out more information?”
