Chapter Five

Presley froze. Just froze. And he couldn't wrap his mind around what Ruby had just said.

Victoria was a familial match to him.

"What the hell?" he muttered, and he started walking. To the elevator. Back down to the bottom floor. Out the door and straight toward his SUV. Billie was right behind him.

"Presley?" Ruby questioned. "Are you still there?"

"Yeah," he managed, and he didn't say anything else until Billie and he were in his vehicle. There, he put the call on the dash speaker, mainly so Billie would hear and be able to make sense of this.

"How close of a familial match?" Billie asked. It was a good question, one that should have occurred to Presley.

"Close," Ruby said, and she continued before Presley could press her for more about that. "She has fifty percent DNA in common with Presley. I've done an extensive background check on Victoria, and there's no indication she's ever had a child."

Finally, it all sank in. And it hit him damn hard. "I was abandoned at a fire station when I was a newborn. Parents unknown. I could have siblings," he added, quickly doing the math to calculate the age difference between Victoria and him.

Sixteen.

She was sixteen years older than him.

"Or Victoria could be my…" He stopped. Had to. And gathered his breath. "My bio mother."

"Yes," Ruby confirmed. "Social media was barely a blip when you were born thirty-six years ago so there are no public photos to prove that Victoria was ever pregnant. However, she attended a private boarding school in England, and I was able to find out that she left when she was sixteen and returned a year later. I don't have an explanation yet about that gap in time."

Presley was hearing every word Ruby said, but he still wasn't processing it. Victoria Wessington was likely his mother. She'd been kidnapped. And the kidnappers had requested him.

Shit.

They'd requested him!

Presley groaned and hit his fist on the steering wheel. It was all connected. It had to be.

"Take some time to deal with this," Ruby instructed. "I'll call you when I know more. And if the kidnappers contact you, I'll try to negotiate other arrangements for the ransom drop."

"No, don't," Presley managed to say. "I don't want to be excluded from this. Please," he tacked onto that when he realized the snapping tone he'd just used with his boss.

"You're sure?" Ruby asked.

She must have had a lot of faith in him to put the ball in his court on such an emotional, critical matter.

"I'm sure. Keep me in the loop," he insisted.

"Okay," Ruby muttered before she ended the call.

Billie and he sat there in the silence that followed. Thankfully, Billie didn't pepper him with questions or try to comfort him. She just waited, no doubt coming to some of the same conclusions as he was.

"Why would the kidnappers demand you be in on the ransom drop?" he was finally able to ask. "I mean, I get them choosing me now that I know about the familial match. But why you?"

"To create more conflict for you," Billie said without hesitation. "I'm sure there was gossip about us when we both left the force. Maybe even gossip that we'd had a one-off. The kidnappers might have believed they could capitalize on a rift between us by throwing us together."

Okay, Presley could see that, but it didn't answer one huge question. "Why bring us in on this? If this is just about them getting the diamonds, why create conflict? Why not try to make things go as smoothly as possible?"

"Because maybe the endgame isn't the diamonds," she finished for him.

Bingo. And if that was true, then Victoria hadn't been kidnapped. She'd been taken . Of course, that led Presley to another why, and this time, Presley was the one to provide the answer.

"Someone wants Victoria dead," he concluded, "and the kidnapping is a way of covering up her murder."

As he heard the words come out of his mouth, the overwhelming sense of dread tore through him. He'd just learned the possible identity of his birth mother, and she could already be dead.

"I'm sorry," Billie muttered, and she did something that surprised him.

She leaned over and pulled him into her arms. Presley hadn't even known he wanted, or needed, that hug until Billie pressed closer to him and held on.

He held on, too, putting his arms around her and adjusting so their faces were touching. Presley took in her scent. Took in the feel of her. And he got a whole bunch of memories that he shouldn't be getting.

Of that night she'd ended up in his bed.

An incredible ending to a shitstorm of an assignment. Billie had been the only bright spot in that ordeal.

However, it wasn't the first time he'd been attracted to her. No, that had happened right from the start. He'd felt the heat, the lust, the pull from the moment he'd met her. Only her rank and position had kept him from asking her out, and even those barriers had dissolved when they had sex.

The memories kept coming, and Presley felt himself ease back just a little. Just enough for him to brush his mouth over hers. It was a mistake, and he braced himself for her to jolt away. Or, hell, even slap him.

She didn't do either of those things.

Billie made a soft sound. A hitch of breath combined with a moan, and for just a moment, she sank into the kiss. She gave as good as she got. Then, she moved away from him.

There was confusion in her eyes, and what she muttered was pure profanity. He got that. She didn't want this heat. Neither did he. But he was clueless as to how to make it go away, especially since that scorching kiss had seemed to clear some of the cobwebs in his head.

"We need to find Victoria," he stated.

"Yes, we do," Billie stated right back, the determination in both her voice and expression. "Let's go to my house so we'll have some computers to work on. We need to access traffic cams to and from the house on Barlett Street. That and the parking lot of Victoria's office are the only two places that we know for certain that the kidnappers or someone working for them has been."

"True." He pointed to the dash. "Put your address in the GPS."

Billie immediately started doing that just as a report came in from Ruby. It was marked as Nonurgent with an additional note of: Deal with what you're going through. I'll handle anything on this if needed.

As far as he was concerned, everything was urgent at this point. And that meant he wanted to know what was in it.

"Read it to me as I drive," Presley instructed, and he headed to her place on the north side of the city. According to the GPS, it would take them twelve minutes to get there.

"It's a report on Sandy and Charlie Belmont," Billie relayed. "Ruby's looking into it in case that's the reason the kidnappers chose you and me."

Part of him wanted to dismiss the angle, now that he knew about Victoria being his bio-mom. But dismissing it could be a really bad idea. Because Victoria's kidnapping could indeed have been fueled by what had happened to Sandy and Charlie. This entire kidnapping could have been orchestrated to get back at Billie and him and make them pay.

"Helena Frankfort is still in prison for murdering Sandy and Charlie," Billie continued to read. "And she's had no visitors or correspondence to indicate that she's made any moves to try to get revenge for us arresting her."

That was good to have Helena ruled out. The woman was a vicious snake with the heart of a killer. But there was someone else out there who might be playing the revenge card. And that person wouldn't have to do that from behind bars in a maximum security prison.

"What about Sandy's sister, Hattie Sinclair?" Presley asked when he spotted her name in the report.

Billie took a moment, reading the entry. "Two weeks ago, Hattie took a leave of absence from her job as a surgical nurse. She told her boss she was going to volunteer at Doctors Without Borders and that she'd be in touch with him when she was ready to come back."

Shit. That sounded like a red flag to him. "Was Ruby able to verify where Hattie is?" he asked.

"No. But Ruby's trying to track her down." Billie kept reading. "Ruby also says that the lab indicates that Victoria's finger wasn't removed with actual surgical precision, but that it wasn't a sloppy job either. So, that doesn't rule out Hattie one way or another."

Presley couldn't allow himself to think of the horrific pain Victoria had gone through during that ordeal. He couldn't think of a lot of things when it came to her, not yet anyway, so he focused on the kidnapping.

"Hattie could have arranged for all of this," he said, talking it through to hear if it made sense as a theory. "She could have hired the kidnappers and dragged us into this so she could try to mentally torture us and then kill us during the ransom drop."

He paused because this is where the logic of the theory fell short.

Way short.

"Why didn't Hattie go through with killing us when we got to the house?" he asked. "She could have stashed herself in the closet and come out with guns blazing when we entered?"

Billie made a sound to indicate she was giving that some thought. "Maybe because she wants to get away with the crime and the diamonds?" But she shook her head. "Or the diamonds might not even matter."

True. If this was all about getting revenge for her sister's murder, then money wasn't going to appeal to Hattie.

"And there's another thing about this that doesn't make sense. How the heck would Hattie have even known that Victoria could possibly be your birth mom?" Billie pressed. "Because I can't buy that you and I and the choice of hostage played no part in this."

Neither could he. Victoria was a key player, just as Billie and he were. But what the hell were they a key for?

"Victoria's DNA was in the bone marrow registry," Presley reminded her. "As a nurse, Hattie might have access to that. Of course, that doesn't explain how Hattie would have made the leap to compare Victoria's DNA to mine."

"Definitely a leap." She paused. "Unless Hattie learned some other way. We need to find out who knows that Victoria might be your mother."

Yeah, they did, and finally Presley had a focus. Because that could be the critical piece of info to unraveling this and finding Victoria.

His phone rang, the sound shooting through the SUV, and he answered it when he saw Ruby's name on the screen.

"I just found out something about Jesep's will that you both should know," Ruby explained. "A month ago, he had it completely rewritten."

Presley groaned. "Did he cut Victoria out of the will?"

"No. Just the opposite," Ruby corrected. "He's cut out his kids, and he's leaving his entire estate to Victoria."