Page 12 of Hidden Trial

“Dorothy Rochedale. I’m Maddison’s mother. Now tell me.”

Will covered the receiver. “I think it’s your mom. You want to speak to her?”

“No. Please no. I can’t. She must be freaking out.”

“Sounds like it.”

“Tell her I’m okay.”

“It could be someone else checking to see if the job was done.”

“We’ve been through this. They didn’t want me dead. If they did, I’d be dead.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. She’s my emergency contact. Put her out of her misery before she has a heart attack.”

He put the phone back to his ear. She was still talking. “I don’t know why you would make me wait like this. Please. I already know she’s dead. Just tell me.”

“Dorothy. Take a breath. Maddy is fine. She’s alive.”

“She is?”

“Yes. She has a few broken bones, but she’ll be okay.”

Dorothy exhaled a long breath into the phone. “Thank you. Can I talk to her?”

“She wants to talk to you,” Will mouthed to Maddy, who shook her head with a lot of difficulty. “I’m sorry, ma’am. She’s resting right now.”

“What am I going to do? I’ll call Charlie. Charlie will come. I hope. Don’t tell Maddy. She won’t want that, but what else can I do?” The phone went dead.

He put the phone down. “So that’s your mom? She was pretty upset. I mean, like, really upset. Even when I told her you were okay.”

“She’s always upset.”

“She’s calling Charlie. She doesn’t want you to know.”

Maddy closed her eyes. “Charlie won’t come. Neither will my mom.”

“I’m sure they would if they knew how badly you were injured.”

“No. My mom can barely leave the house as it is, let alone her town. And Charlie doesn’t want anything to do with me, so that’s that.”

“Then I guess you’re stuck with me.”

“I’m going to go make some calls,” Turner said. “See if anything new has surfaced. Maddy, we’ll check your cell phone too and see if we can trace the texts.”

“We all know that’s a waste of time. Whoever it was would have covered their tracks,” Will said.

“Maybe, but you never know where we’ll get a break.”

“What are we going to do about Antonio?” Maddy said.

“I’m perfectly capable of running Maddison’s business while she’s away on a much-needed holiday,” Will said.

“He’ll never go for it.”

“He has to. We don’t have any other options. We can’t bring him here to see you, and you can’t go out to see him. It will be fine. If he doesn’t want to meet with only me, we can reschedule our next meeting. You’ll see. It will all work, and you’ll be out of bed in time to watch him get locked up behind bars.”

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