Barkley Strong had had a rough day. He was starving, so he stopped at the mall for a quick lunch. Normally, he would stay out of other people’s business, but when he heard two women shouting at each other, he was worried for the two children in the strollers next to the fighting women. When the sound of a gunshot rang out, he knew he had to do something….

Carrie Boone hadn’t seen her sister Mattie in over fifteen years. She nor the rest of her family didn’t want anything to do with her. Mattie wasn’t a good person. But when Barkley Strong called her to tell her that her sister was dead, killed by her own mother-in-law, and her sister’s twin girls were in protective custody, Carrie wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She had already written Mattie out of her life. She didn’t want to care. But when she received a threatening phone call warning her to stay away from her sister’s babies, she knew something wasn’t right. She would get to the bottom of this….

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Jade Anderson would miss the restaurant where she had worked her way through school. The closing was bittersweet, but she was happy that Ms. B was getting to retire. It wasn’t the money. She had more lucrative endeavors than waiting on the tables. It was the regulars that came in she’d miss the most. Especially the elderly Strong couple that used to come in all the time before they passed away.

When Clay Strong was admitted into the hospital for emergency surgery, he first thought it was the worst thing to ever happen to him until he laid eyes on his OR nurse Lizzie. He could only see her eyes but knew he wanted to see more of her. She laughed and told him it was the medicine talking, but Clay knew better. Clay had been working with Jade in a complex job for NASA for the past five years, developing intricate equipment for them, and a new position was opening. Clay was a shoo-in for the job, or so he was led to believe. But when the idiot told him his girlfriend’s “pedigree” didn’t meet their standards, Clay was livid, and so was Jade. Heads would roll for this….

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Chapter 1

Barkley watched the people in the mall. He didn’t come there often, but he’d been close to the place when he decided he was starving and couldn’t wait the extra thirty minutes to get home and fix himself something to fill the void. So now that he was finished
eating, he just watched the people while keeping an eye on his laptop for news from a couple of firms and people that he was finding out if they’d sell to them. And at a reasonable price. He was always in the market for a floundering company to restructure. In the end, everyone benefited from the deal. He liked to people-watch and noticed that most of the people walking around were women.

For the most part, today, the place was nearly empty. Most of the women there today were fairly young. Some had small children with them, from about the age of four down. Infants, too, in strollers that more than likely cost more than his first car. But what boggled his mind the most was that about eighty percent of the mothers or
nannies, he supposed it could be, were carrying the babies and piling their purchases into the infant’s seat. He just didn’t understand people nowadays. Looking down at his laptop when it dinged that an email was dropped into his box, he pulled it up just as shouting down by one of the anchor stores began. It wasn’t just shouting, but the two women were using language he’d not heard since he’d been in college. Boy, oh boy, they were both pissed off about something. He had a very scary
thought about the two strollers that were near each woman as they screamed something about clothing and a sale.

Opening the email, he thought about how angry people seemed to be about the dumbest things nowadays. He supposed there was reason for it. Money was tight everywhere. People were being laid off right and left. And children, older married kids were moving back home to save money on necessities such as food, transportation as
well as just being able to take care of their children. He read the email twice before he realized this person was serious.“Since we both know you and your family have more money than sense, I’m going to need four million dollars for my place. That way, I can get me something out of the deal after having had to wait on my mother to die so that I can have it. I don’t want it, you understand. But if I’m going to sell it, I want to get as much as you’ll give me.” He laughed before starting a response to the man. The fight at the other end of the mall, however, had him putting away his things and heading to the closest restaurant that was still open.

The gun firing off had both women down on the floor surprised him. The older woman had pulled her gun out from under her shirt and just fired at the purple-haired one. The people who had been watching what was going on scattered, heading to the doors. He watched as all the stores at that end of the mall closed up their heavy sliding
doors. Barkley knew for a fact it was an automated thing that had been recently put in service. Barton had been working on the design with Jade since she’d told him how much it would save in the long run for stores. People were rushing by him to get out of the mall. Not that he blamed them, as one of the women stood up with their firearm still in their hand and pointed it at the woman still on the floor. Barkley shoved all his things into his briefcase and handed it
over to the restaurant that was closest to him for safekeeping.

“Call the police.” The kid just stared at him. “Wake up, damn it. Call the police and tell them there has been a shooting at the mall. Do it now!”
The kid, because he couldn’t have been much more than sixteen, finally got over the shock of what was going on not ten feet from him and closed the doors to the little place. The manager, someone he thought he knew, told him he’d put his things in the office and it would be locked up.“Good. Get out of here. And make sure you pass it along to others to get out as well. And to lock the door behind you, only letting the police in when they arrive. You can do that, right?” Nodding, the man called the police as Barkley was making his way to the two women. He was terrified out of his mind but more afraid for the two strollers that did have children in them around the two women. The babies were screaming loudly, no doubt terrified of the yelling and the gun going off so close to them. Barkley hoped that neither of them had been shot or injured when the gun had been fired.

He got their attention by whistling. Loud and long that he’d perfected over the years with five brothers in the house. They both looked at him. “I could care less right now if you kill each other. But there is no reason those children should be harmed in the process. If you’ll allow me to take them to—”“Stay the fuck away from my grandkids.” He nodded, putting his hands up when he was told to do so. “You’re not the fucking police. Why are you even here? Mind your own business.”
“I was until you two started up. The police have been called and are on their way.” He heard the sirens just as he finished telling the blond woman, the one who had claimed that the babies were her grandchildren. “Hear them? They’re not going to be
very happy when they get here.”Barkley looked at the other woman. Her hair was bright purple, and it didn’t suit her skin tone at all, he thought. It washed her out until she was almost clear with it.

However, it occurred to him then it could have been from loss of blood. But it soon wouldn’t matter to anyone what color she had her hair dyed. Because the way she was losing blood while sitting back down on the floor meant she wasn’t going to make it to
the hospital, no matter what sort of tricks the medic’s tired.
“This is all her fault. If she’d just backed off when I told her to move, I could have gotten the little dresses I wanted before her. She took them all. She started this. I don’t understand one bit why my son went and married her. She’s useless.” Barkley wanted to ask her if prison was something she was willing to go to rather than have a
dress on sale. But he didn’t. He wasn’t stupid. “You tell the police when they get here you saw the whole thing, and it was her fault. Or I might just shoot you too.”

“I didn’t see anything. Just heard you two shouting at each other.” The police announced that they wanted Blond to put down her gun. Barkley didn’t move when he heard them coming up behind him. But he did tell them what was going on when asked. “This woman here killed the other woman that’s on the floor. They’re in-laws to each other. The son is married, I guess, to the purple-haired woman. If she’s not already
dead, then she will be soon enough. I only came here to see if I could get the babies out of harm’s way.”

Purple had fallen back on the floor. He couldn’t tell if she was still breathing or not, but then he wasn’t a doctor. The police told Blond to drop the gun, and she fired at the cop standing next to him, and that was all it took to have the other officers open fire
on her. It was going to be difficult, he thought as he sat down on the floor to determine which bullet had killed the older woman. It looked as if they’d emptied their clips into her head and chest.

Barkley held the two babies in his arms, keeping them entertained while the police were doing whatever was needed to make the scene clear. He’d been asked by Officer Buddy Morgan to see if he could get the little girls to calm down. All he’d done was sit on the floor when they were handed to him, and they quieted right up.
The mall had been pretty much emptied before the police had arrived, and now they were waiting on the coroner to make his decision on what was the cause of death of the two women. Not that it wasn’t obvious. Morgan told him they were doing this by the books so that when it went to trial, it was over for the first time. The entire thing
was being recorded, and he was glad the mall manager had turned over all the camera footage as soon as it had been asked for.
“Barkley, are you sure you’re all right?” He said he was fine and he’d not been hurt. He also told the officer, someone, he’d gone to school with, that he’d only been trying to get the little ones out of the way.

“Yes, the cameras show that you only happened on the scene when the daughter-in-law was shot.”He’d realized the two women were related, and he could tell the babies were twins. Barkley was one himself and enjoyed watching over the children until the right people came to pick them up. Barkley had been told the daughter-in-law didn’t get
along with her mother-in-law from the start. Now they were both dead, and the young woman’s husband was on his way to the mall now to talk to the police. Jade showed up just as the husband did.
“I’m here to make sure you’re all okay.” He said he’d told them several times that he was. “Yes, but Buddy over there, he said that he knows you, said that shock might make you not feel any pain for hours. I don’t see any blood, so I’m assuming he’s a worry wart.”

“Yes, that’s his first name. I couldn’t remember. But I’m fine. However, this little girl seems to be too fussy. Not that I know a great deal about babies, but she’s nothing like her sister. I can’t seem to be able to put her in any position that she seems comfortable in.” Taking the little girl from him, Mick, the girl’s father, came to ask if he could hold them. “The police said to wait until they were examined. Then you can hold
them until they take them to the hospital. They want to check them out, I guess.”Mick watched as Jade stripped the little girl—Mick said her name was Sunny—down to her bare skin. Finding bruises all over her legs and arms alarmed them all. Jade asked Mick if he could explain the reason for them. They were in different stages of healing, and the most recent ones looked to be about two hours old.
“I don’t know.

I mean, my mom, she watches the girls from time to time. She had
them both last night. But I’m working on-site in Virginia now and only arrived home an hour ago. I didn’t even know they were meeting here today. This place is a good hour from where we live.” Buddy Morgan was taking notes and asked for his boss’s name and number. After giving it to him, Mick cried. “She, my mother, beat me as a child. But
since the girls have been born, she seemed to have changed a great deal. We didn’t use her as a sitter all that often, but the girls, even for as young as they are, never seemed to mind her holding them. Christ, my wife is gone. What am I going to do now?”Jade didn’t speak to the man, but she did want to make sure the other little girl, Bethany, wasn’t bruised as well. But the fact of the matter was, there seemed to be more on her than on Sunny. Instead of allowing Mick to hold his daughters, he was told that they’d have to be taken to the hospital for x-rays as well as a full workup. Mick was so over the top upset that Barkley was having a hard time believing that he didn’t know
what was going on with his own children.

Even being away from home as much as he claimed, it bothered him that he’d not noticed what was going on. He certainly would
have. After the children were taken by ambulance to the hospital, Jade sat with him on the floor. He didn’t say anything to her about what had happened, nor did he tell her what he was thinking. But when she asked him his opinion, he couldn’t help but let her know his feelings about the dad.

“I mean, even though I don’t have any knowledge of babies, I knew that one of them was in pain or at least upset about me holding her. I didn’t undress her, well, because that would just make me a target on all kinds of levels I don’t want to have to deal with. Anyway. What do you think?” She said she’d felt the same thing. That even
she noticed the children were more happy being with a stranger than they wanted to be with their own father.

“I didn’t think about that. But you’re right. Neither of them
reached out for him when he showed up. Like they didn’t want their own father to comfort them.”
“It’s something I see quite often, I’m afraid. But the hospital personal will look into things. I mentioned it to the medics when I followed them out with the children. Hopefully, I get to kick some asses to get them to see what the larger picture is.” An elderly man showed up just as the bodies of the two women were being taken away. He only had eyes for his son and no one else. He didn’t ask after the babies either, or the
women for that matter. “This is going to be a tell-tale meeting. A thought just occurred to me that he got here fairly quickly for a man who lives an hour away. That is what he said, right?”

He hadn’t any idea what she meant until the father came up to his son and spoke. Not loud, but loud enough for him and Jade to hear what he said as they were that close to them.
“Don’t worry, son. It’s going to be just fine now that they’re both going to be blamed for what happened to the girls.” Mick told his dad that his mom had killed his wife. “That’s fine too, right? Now we have them, and the girls will be just ours now.”Jade didn’t say a word but looked at the officers that were with the medical examiner right now. Barkley didn’t know what was going on yet, but he was sure it was
something huge. And he’d bet anything that this ‘incident’ that had happened today had been planned out. Perhaps not that the wife of the man being killed, but it seemed to be all right with the two of them that it had happened for some reason that sent
shivers down his spine.

~*~

“Carrie, there’s a phone call for you. Something about your sister.” She told her secretary to take a message. “It’s the police, honey. They said they can only speak to you.”“Christ.” Punching in the numbered line the call was on, Carrie barked out her name and told the person on the other end she wasn’t going to bail her sister out, no matter if she only needed money for a ticket. “Also, tell Matty that since she married the
fucking prick, then she’s going to have to deal with whatever has happened to her. I not going to get caught up in her drama again.”
“I’m sorry to tell you this, Ms. Boone, but Madeline Cartwright was killed yesterday evening by her mother-in-law, Jane Cartwright. Who was then killed by the police when she wouldn’t put her gun down.” Well, that was nothing she expected, and she told the man that.

“I thought not. Right now, the babies, you did know she had a set
of twin girls, didn’t you? They’re in protective custody.”
“I had no idea, to be honest with you, that she was still alive.” He didn’t say anything, for which she was grateful. She thought that she sounded cold and heartless. But she couldn’t deal with this. Not anymore. “Look, Mr. Strong. I can’t help you out with anything, including the babies. My sister parted ways with us a long time ago, and we’ve not spoken in…let me think. At least fifteen years. I can’t raise her children or
even take them in. I just can’t. If you’ve been able to find me, you’ve more than likely found out Mattie has four brothers. They’re not going to help with them either. You can ask them if you want, but I know they’re going to tell you they can’t do it either. Mattie
is…was a handful when we were children, and she burnt all her bridges and used up all the goodwill she might well have had from us a long time ago. Thank you for informing me of her death. But I’m sorry. I won’t be able to help.”

Putting the phone back in the cradle, she sat there for a while, thinking of her last conversation with Mattie. It really had been fifteen years ago. Carrie herself had only been ten or eleven at the time when Mattie had had her arrested along with her parents. She claimed that they’d had her chained up in the basement of the home and had
starved her over the last six months. While she was in jail on those trumped-up charges about abusing her older sister, Mattie had gone through the family home and stolen everything of any value.
Including Mom and Dad’s social security check, their bank card, and credit cards. It wasn’t until they got out that they saw what they’d lost.
Picking up the phone again, she called Robert. He wasn’t working today, so she knew she had a fifty-fifty chance of getting in touch with him. His life partner answered on the first ring.

“Hello, my lovely. What can I do for you today?” She asked if Robert was home.“No. He’s gone to the—what’s happened? You sound very upset.” She told him everything.“I don’t know what the guy wanted for me to do. I didn’t ask him, but I’m not going to take on her issues anymore. She hasn’t been a part of our lives forever, it
seems.” Dan agreed with her. “I’m going to call the others and let them know what is going on. Could you please tell Robert for me? You’d more than likely be nicer than I’d be telling him that she’s gone.”
“I will. But I can almost guarantee you he won’t want anything to do with—did he tell you she called here about five months ago? She wanted money, of course, and said that he had to pay her for all the pain and suffering she had to go through being a sister to a faggot. I kid you not, Carrie. I thought he was going to blow a gasket. But all
he did was hang up, and he asked me to have our number changed. I did that the very next day.” She asked why he hadn’t told her.

“You have your own demons about Mattie, honey. I’m sure that was the only reason he didn’t tell you. But it’s all water under the bridge now, and we’re going to keep going the way that we were before.
She’s not been a part of our lives for so long. We’ve gone on without her. Right?” “Right.” She didn’t feel bad about her sister dying, not even the way that she had died. It had been too long, as Dan said. Carrie pulled out her cell phone and called the others. None of them, as she had predicted, wanted anything to do with Mattie. Not after all that she’d done to all of them over the years. Going back to work, she was just finishing up for the day when Robert called her back. He wasn’t upset either but invited her over for dinner.

Any chance she had at not having to cook for herself or go out to eat was something she would jump on. Telling him she’d be there in twenty minutes. She was just leaving the office when her phone
rang again. She didn’t know the number that came up and almost didn’t answer it. When she did, she had to sit down on the floor.
“This is Mick Cartwright, your dead sister’s husband. I need to make a few things clear to you. Are you coming here to try and take my precious daughters from me?” She asked him what he was talking about.

“My daughters. I’m sure you’ve been notified by now that Mattie is dead. My mom is too. Stupid cow. Sunny and Bethany are staying with me. I’m their father, and you’ll keep away from us. Do I make myself
clear?” “As mud. Why would I want to have anything to do with my dead sisters, as you put it, kids when I’d had nothing to do with her long before you were in the picture.”He laughed and told her she’d better be thinking that way forever. They were his daughters. “So you keep pointing out. Why is that, I wonder?”

Pulling out her cell phone, she messaged Robert, telling him to just listen in on the conversation. Then she called him to have him listen too. As Mick went on and on about how he was going to be raising his daughters, she had a feeling that there was something off about him and the conversation. He spoke to her for another thirty minutes. Mostly it was to threaten her about coming around, but he also made it a point to tell her, several times, that he and his father were going to raise the twins and there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

Again, she had an eerie feeling he was trying hard to brag to her about something, and it was up to her to guess what that might be.
“I’m going to have her cremated too. That way, there isn’t going to be exhuming her body later down the line when you or your brothers get a burr up your asses about something and try and sue me. I’ve won.” She told him congratulations. “You bet your sweet ass it’s going to be congratulations all around for me once I get her insurance
money.” “I’m assuming this was all planned? That my sister was to die at your mother’s hands, and you’d get to collect on both their policies that you just happened to have taken out a few months ago?” She sat at her deck and looked up the name Strong. The man who had called her to let her know that Mattie was dead. She had to ask what
Mick said when she realized he was probably waiting on an answer from him.

“Well, did you? Take out the policy just to have your mom kill her?”
“I guess we’ll never know. And I hadn’t expected my mother to be killed. It’s a shame but nothing that we can’t overcome.” She asked him what that was supposed to mean. “Well, I’ll tell you this, it’s going to mean that we have to find us someone we can trust to watch over my daughters while Dad and I make plans for them.”
The most profound feeling of sickness rolled over her. While he didn’t come right out and say it—and hopefully, she was wrong—but it sounded to her like he was going to be selling off his daughters to anyone with the right amount of money to have them. They were just babies. Finding the newspaper article, just a few lines about a mall shooting, had her thinking that it was about Mattie. As she and Mick spoke, mostly him doing the bragging about shit, she found the name of a Strong family nearby. Looking up his phone number with the tools she had at her disposal, she also found a phone number and address for the Strong Foundation. Taking a chance, she emailed a plea for
someone to call her back in about an hour. She needed desperately to talk to someone about her sister’s husband and daughters.

Putting her phone back in the cradle again, she sat there for several minutes thinking about the shit he’d said to her. When her cell rang, she was glad to see the face of Robert there. The first words out of his mouth were that he’d recorded every word of what was said between her and Mick. “Thank you for that. I’m going to have to talk to this Strong guy that called me this morning. Also, I’d like to be able to get in touch with the insurance company that is holding the policy on Mattie.” Robert asked her if she could do that, find the policy.
“Yes. I mean, that’s what I do. Find information on insurance policies and determine if they are bogus or not. Do you suppose they lived in the little town that the shooting happened in?”

As she did her research, Robert told her he was going to look into something as well. That he’d call her back in a bit. While still searching for where the policy might be held by, her cell phone rang again. It was the same number that had called her earlier that had started all this.
Without waiting for the person on the other end to speak, she launched into her feelings that she’d had about Mick. She also asked him if he possibly knew who the insurance company was so she could put a hold on that.“Also, he told me he’s having Mattie cremated, so I couldn’t come back later and have her exhumed for whatever reason. I’m not sure what he thinks I’d do that for, but now that’s all I want to do. Or am I too late to have her get a full autopsy?” The man
laughed, and she felt stupid, which, as usual, flared up her temper. “Listen here, you bastard. I was doing just fine in my life, not having a clue about what Mattie was up to, as I said, even if she was alive. She was the most horrific person I know—knew.

Now that you’ve opened up this can of worms, you’re going to be helping me out so that whatever plans that idiot has for those children, I can put a stop to. I’m serious here when I tell you that I think he’s going to be selling them off for sex to perverts. And if he does that, I’m going to kill him myself.” “I agree.” She’d not expected that and told the man that. “I know. You seemed to have a full head of steam going as soon as you answered. And I do have answers, or at
least partial answers, for some of your concerns. Mattie hasn’t been cremated as yet. Her body and that of Mick’s mother are being put on hold until the state can bring in a person to do the autopsy on them. Nothing will be done to them until that time. Also, the girls are in protective custody. He made some odd comments around the police that had them keeping him away from the girls for the present time. Also, you’ll be happy to know he’s already tried to cash in the policy on her but can’t without a death certificate. Could be another reason he wants her cremated so quickly.”

“I’m an insurance investigator. If you can tell me the name on the policy, I can get more information on it than you can.” After he told her the company and the policy number his dad had found, she started to work immediately. “It’s for one million dollars. I’m betting if you have a look around like I’m doing right now—bingo. He has seven policies on Mattie worth a million each. And he’s the benefactor on all of them.
However, there isn’t one on him. I guess he plans on never dying. All right. Let me dig a little deeper here and find out about his mother. Yes, the same thing. One million with each of the seven policies. Also, there are none on his father. Which to me it’s a giant red flag.”Her desk phone rang, and she answered it. Robert told her he’d found a few things. Telling Mr. Strong that she was going to put him on speaker phone with her brother and her, Robert started telling them what he’d been able to find out.

“There are several records of the little girls being in and out of the hospital emergency room over their lifetime. The first one was when they were two weeks old, and Sunny suffered a broken arm. Mattie told them that she’d been picking her up in the middle of the night and had dropped her on the bed railing. They must have believed her because there isn’t any record of a police report filed. It happened again, a
burnt hand for Bethany when she was flaying her hands around and touched her too-hot coffee. That was investigated as well, but no arrests were made. There are a few for Mattie, too, but nothing like the girls.” Mr. Strong asked about the mother-in-law.“Hang on a minute. I can pull that up right now since I’m already in the system. Yes. I
have fifteen times where she was brought into the hospital by ambulance over the last twelve months. The husband or her son would go and get her, take her home, and there wasn’t any follow-up made to any local doctors. Let me see here. Broken leg. Broken jaw.

There is also a couple of times when she was unconscious when she was found. Blunt trauma is what I’m seeing here. Again, she didn’t stay any longer than it took for one of the others to come and get her out.”
“What is it you do, Robert? Carrie said she is an insurance investigator. You have to be something similar to that.” Robert told him what it was he did. “So you’ve gotten into the hospital system and gotten what you need. I don’t think that is legal.”“Depends, I suppose. Neither is trying to kill off your wife or sister. Nor selling off six-month-old babies to perverts. I do what I do in order to help Carrie with her job.
It pays well, and I have no reason to leave the house unless I want to. If you have a problem with me and—” “No. No, I’m sorry if I gave that impression. What you’re doing for this case, and I’m thinking that it’s going to have to be taken before a judge sooner rather than later, is
going to be a great deal of help keeping the little girls safe.” Robert thanked him. “No worries there. But I do have to ask again. Will any of you be coming here to help out with your sister’s murder? If for no other reason than to help the children of her be safe?”
“I’ll be there on the next flight out. That is if you’re accepting of my husband being with me.” Mr. Strong said he didn’t care who he was partnered with so long as they could get to the bottom of this. “Carrie? You’re going as well, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I’ll be there. If for no other reason than to see Mick put in jail for the rest of his life.” She didn’t want to ask but needed to know. “I’m assuming the children were examined by a doctor. Have they been sexually abused?”“Yes.” Nothing more was needed than that answer to have her hurting for them.“I’ll wait to hear from the two of you when you’re arriving and have a place for you to stay. We’ll get this prick.”
After they all hung up, she sat at her desk for a few minutes just to think about what had happened to those babies. Then it occurred to her that Mattie more than likely knew it. She had to. And that made her hurt all the more for those two little girls.