Page 64 of Truthfinder’s Promise

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“There isn’t anywhere else to look.” Meredith’s voice was just short of a growl, which she considered ironic since, of the two of them, Jensen was the one capable of actually growling.

Dusk was falling, and each team had been through every “sector” of the property. She and Jensen were finishing the final sweep of the eastern half of the acreage, but it was obvious they weren’t going to find anything.

Everyone was in the predictably sour mood that could be expected from searching for an entire day with such diligence that they were all now cross-eyed, and having nothing to show for it. Nothing that was going to help them get Jensen’s sister back.

The worst part was, Meredith couldn’t even say she was surprised. It was just like Savannah Townsend to stifle her daughter even after death.

“Are you sure it’s on the property?” Jensen sounded as tired as she felt.

“No, I’m not sure,” she snapped. “If I were sure, I’d have some kind of clue as to where it was.”

Jensen raised his hands in the universal sorry-I-asked gesture.

Meredith blew out a breath. “Sorry. But my mother wasn’t the type to leave something this important to chance. The repository would be on a property she owned. This is the only property she owned.”

“Any chance the lawyer who handled the estate lied to you?”

Meredith shook her head and started trudging back to the four-wheeler parked by the outer wall. “No. I hired Random to double-check everything. He doesn’t miss things.” And he was honest. It had been a tense working relationship, seeing as how at the time she’d still been on the outs with the Jace/Valkyrie/Random friendship team, but if he hadn’t been willing to do his due diligence, he would have simply turned her down. She’d always been surprised he hadn’t.

“She didn’t have any businesses that could have owned properties?”

“No.” Meredith swung her leg over the four-wheeler. Jensen had earned major points for never once suggesting that she let him drive. “Savannah Townsend didn’t do businesses. Social scheming and power plays? Yes. But actual businesses require actual work. Work was what my father was for.”

She had her fingers on the keys when Jensen’s hand covered hers, stopping her from turning the engine. “What happened to him? Your father?”

Meredith’s throat closed up. But she wanted to tell him, to tell everyone, because it felt like her father’s life had been erased the way her mother had covered everything up. “She killed him. Once he’d made her enough money that he was more trouble than he was worth. He knew something wasn’t right in the house. With me and her. He was going to take me away, so she killed him.”

She twisted the key in the ignition, the loud roar of the engine cutting off any response as she opened the throttle and sped back toward the house. On the bad days, she let herself wonder what her life would have been like if her father simply hadn’t confronted Savannah.

If he’d just told Meredith to pack a bag and they’d run away in the middle of the night. If she’d grown up with him teaching her how to drive the cars they both loved and taking her to the baseball games he’d always told her she’d like, but they never went to because her mother wouldn’t let her.

Meredith liked to think maybe she would have been someone nice in this alternate life. Sweet and happy, the kind of woman who would never date a man because her mother told her to, and never break his heart because she didn’t know how else to save him. The kind of woman who wouldn’t have developed a drinking problem so she could sleep at night, who had mostly pretty memories with a small dark spot in the past she could pretend was nothing more than an old nightmare. The kind of woman who would have been useful to society.

Maybe it was the bright sunshiny day. Maybe it was Jensen’s hands on her waist, or the way he never acted like she was a waste of space, even when she was being difficult. Maybe it was all the people in her house, making noise and waking her up from her year-long bout of self pity, but for the first time, it struck her that she could still become that woman.

She would never have her father back. She would never have the happy childhood she’d so desperately wanted. But she could take the ragged edges of herself and mold them into something different. Something better.

Someone better.

As Meredith and Jensen walked back into the kitchen, she quickly surmised that no one’s mood was any better than had been conveyed via walkie-talkie phone interactions. She highly suspected the array of readily available snack foods was the only reason no one’s temper had snapped. Thank the goddess for Random. She was getting him the world’s best birthday present this year, just as soon as she found out when his birthday was and what the perfect gift was for a motorcycle-riding lawyer married to Valkyrie.

He’d had to leave two hours ago to meet with a client for his actual job, and Siren and Jace still hadn’t returned from Aunt Ella’s, which left her, Valkyrie, and the Shifters.

Jensen had barely dropped onto a barstool when his phone rang. Which was odd because he’d just bought that phone. Who outside this room would have his number?

He looked at the display and stilled. Then he turned the screen around at the Shifters, and they all went quiet. “Who wants to explain this?” Silence. “Dom?”

“It wasn’t him.” Serenity straightened, brushing invisible dust off her jeans. “Rebekah had a right to know her grandson was alive. She had a right to know what’s going on.”

Jensen fixed the woman with a look Meredith herself hoped to never be on the receiving end of. “We’ll discuss this later.”

The defiant lift to Serenity’s chin told Meredith nothing good would come from the two of them having that conversation. Jensen answered the phone with a terse, “Grams,” and stepped outside.

Suddenly, all the Shifters had pressing business that demanded they go upstairs, leaving her and Valkyrie alone.

“Given everything that’s happened,” Val began, “you should rethink my offer to school you on the basics of self-defense.”