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“Yes, I did.”

Yes, he did. It was why he asked Landry to stay.

My stomach lurched hard.

“Mr. Carter, where is your son, Landry?”

“I have no idea.” He shook his head. “I don’t. Brendan took him somewhere, but he was supposed to call yesterday, and now… something must have gone wrong.”

“Tell me, when Brendan took Landry, what was his plan?”

“To ask for the amount of the trust in ransom.”

“And so because it was for Landry, to get Landry back, the trust could be opened and the money released.”

“No,” Scott interjected, shaking his head. “It doesn’t work like that. The trust is sealed until Landry either dies or turns thirty. There’s no way to get that money out. To pay off a kidnapper, we would have had to dig into the company assets.”

“Which Brendan Arnold didn’t know,” Baylor told Neil, “because you never told him that Landry’s trust couldn’t be transferred to him.”

“Jesus,” Chris yelled, startling us all, especially since I had basically forgotten he was still there. “For fuck’s sake, Dad, call your fuckin’ bastard son and tell him to bring my brother back right fucking now!”

And even though it had been an outburst, Baylor didn’t even chastise him. The story was out by that time; we all knew what was going on, now it was simply getting Landry home.

Baylor turned back to look at Neil. “Do you have a number to reach him?”

“I’ve been calling it. He doesn’t answer.”

“Is that his cell number?”

“It’s one of those disposable ones.”

“Tell me what it is.”

As he gave the detective the digits, the rest of us just stood there silently.

“Okay,” Baylor said after he called in the number to someone, told them to try and start a trace. “It’s been close to forty-eight hours; Landry needs water and food. Try and think of anywhere that you think he might be, something Brendan said or did.”

“I just don’t know.”

“His mother, maybe,” Baylor suggested.

“As I said earlier, his mother died two years ago,” Scott told him. “There was a skiing accident, but my father let Brendan live here rent free even after his mother didn’t work for us anymore.”

“And now we know why,” Chris told his brother.

Scott nodded. “Yes, we do.”

“Please,” my voice cracked, because I was barely hanging on. When all eyes turned to me as I moved to stand beside the sitting detective, having freed myself from Conrad’s supportive grasp, I didn’t care. “I need Landry back. I need you to think of where the hell he could be.”

“Right now it’s not murder,” Detective Baylor told Neil. “You and Brendan will still face serious charges, but there are mitigating circumstances here. If Landry dies, though…. You need to think, Mr. Carter.”

“I don’t know!” he yelled, getting up, crossing the room to the edge where it opened out onto the porch. “He didn’t tell me anything; he—”

“Somewhere you two have gone,” Baylor cut him off. “Someplace where no one would see you and question what you were doing with the maid’s son.”

“I don’t… there’s nowhere. I gave him scraps of my time and he had to watch my children receive all my attention and never get any. He… he hated Landry so much because he left and Brendan thought he had everything because he had me, he had a father.”

“Oh shit, I know,” Chris said suddenly.