Page 23 of Ransom for His Secret Son

Christina sighed and closed the file. “The only strong candidates I’ve got left are Eloise Davenport, Dr. Curt Langley, and Mellie.”

“And who’s your top of those three?” Brody demanded.

The woman certainly didn’t give a quick answer this time. She clamped her teeth over her lip for a moment. “Eloise. She’s got every reason to want Tarrant dead—but good luck getting in touch with her,” she tacked on. “Eloise has gone full-blown hermit. Won’t answer her phone or her door. She only takes calls from people already in her Contacts.”

Remi straightened. “I should be in her Contacts. I spoke to her when I was digging into Tarrant’s case.”

Christina shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. She changes her number every month, sometimes more. And her security? Might as well be Fort Knox. Cameras, gates, private guards, you name it. She’s terrified Tarrant will come after her, convinced he’ll try to kill her for speaking out against him in the death of her son. Eloise had publicly pushed for the manslaughter charge against Tarrant to be changed to murder.”

Remi frowned, her mind racing. Eloise’s feelings weren’t unwarranted. Tarrant had a history of violence. But if Eloise was this locked down, it made it even harder to know what she was capable of from the shadows.

“I have Eloise’s current number,” Christina said, her tone casual now, as if she wasn’t offering them a potential lead on the biggest nightmare of Brody’s life. “I’ll call her.”

Brody gave a tight nod, and Remi’s stomach knotted as Christina hit the button and switched to Speaker. The phone rang twice before it picked up, the line crackling faintly.

Before Brody or Remi could say a word, a woman’s voice burst through, tight and brittle with fear.

“Christina, I’m glad you called. Someone left a message with my assistant,” Eloise blurted out, no greeting, no hesitation. Her voice dropped to a frantic whisper, like she thought someone was listening. “It said, ‘Sheriff Brody Walker and Remi are hunting for Tarrant. When they find him, they’ll exchange him for the sheriff’s missing son. Give them all the help you can, and we’ll both get what we want—Tarrant’s head on a silver platter.’”

Remi exchanged a quick glance with Brody. It was identical to the text Christina had shown them. Remi’s mind raced, piecing it together. If Eloise was behind this, she could have had that message sent to herself to throw them off her scent.

“I got the same message, Eloise,” Christina informed her. “Sheriff Walker and Remi are here with me now. You’re on Speaker.”

There was a pause on the line. Not static, not hesitation from a bad connection, just silence, like Eloise was holding her breath on the other end.

Remi glanced at Brody, the tension tightening in her chest. She expected Eloise’s next words to be frantic questions about Tarrant, about whether they were any closer to finding him. But instead—

“I’m so sorry about your son. Have you gotten any news about where he is or if he’s all right?” Eloise asked softly, her voice stripped of the sharp edges it had carried a moment ago.

Brody’s jaw clenched, caught off guard. Remi felt it, too, that jolt of surprise. She’d braced herself for obsession, for fury over Tarrant still being free. But this? Compassion?

Remi’s mind spun, trying to make sense of it. Maybe it was genuine. Eloise had lost her son, so she knew that kind of grief, the ache of an empty space where someone should be. She could empathize with what Brody was going through.

But Remi had seen enough people lie with total conviction to know that empathy could be faked.

Brody swallowed hard, his voice rough when he finally answered. “I have twin sons. One of them is safe. The other’s still missing.”

Another pause.

Remi felt like the room was shrinking, the weight of the moment pressing in. She didn’t know what was worse, thinking Eloise was genuinely terrified or thinking she was a master manipulator playing them both.

“Two of them,” Eloise murmured. “How can I help?”

“We need to find the baby,” Brody said. “That’s priority one, but we might have to find Tarrant to get to him.”

Remi heard the woman sigh. “I don’t know where he is. If I did, he wouldn’t be breathing. I swear that on my son’s grave.” Another pause. “But I have files and such, like Christina. You can come to my house and get them.”

Brody groaned, and Remi knew why. More files meant more time poring through them, and there might be nothing in them that would help them find Tarrant. What they needed was a fresh lead.

“Yes, I’d like those files,” Brody said. “We’ll come straight over and get them. But we need more. Who could be helping Tarrant? Because he likely didn’t put all of this together himself.”

“Agreed,” Eloise said, and Christina echoed the same. “Which means you’ll have to talk to Dr. Langley.”

The silence on the line stretched just long enough to feel heavy before Eloise spoke again, her voice tighter now, like she was wrestling with more than fear.

“But whatever Langley says to you, don’t believe it,” Eloise warned them. “The man is a liar, I’m sure of it.”

“Do you have any proof that he’s helping or has helped Tarrant?” Brody pressed.