The Bomb Maker's Son Read Online Free PDF

needs a father and yet you voluntarily put yourself in this place. You’ll probably never be free again. How could you do that to her?”
    “Her name is Emily,” he repeats. “And she’s your sister . You can denounce me all you want, can deny Dylan, because what does it matter, but Emily has nothing to do with this. She’s your blood relative. And she can’t stay with Ernesto forever.”
    “Why not?” I ask.
    “He’s a good guy, but he’s having some problems at home, so she can’t stay there permanently. I want you to make sure she’s okay, Parker. She’s a good kid, but all teenagers struggle, and now she’s got this to deal with. There’s no other family.”
    “Why can’t your brother, Jerry, watch over her?” I ask.
    “Jerry’s from the past. I don’t even know if he’s alive.”
    “I’m from the past, too,” I say. “More accurately, the never-was.”
    “Well, now you’re very much my present.”
    The only person I’ve ever had to take care of was my mother, and that was when I was a child. When Lovely and I were together, I protected her, but she’s a person who looks after herself. Mostly, I’ve been alone, satisfied with drinking good coffee and reading good biographies and trying interesting cases.
    “I didn’t sign up for this,” I say.
    “We don’t sign up for a lot of things,” Lovely says. “They sign us up.” She knows. She took responsibility for the ten-year-old son she’d given up at birth.
    As usual, when things get difficult, I default to the law. “Give me a name, Ian. A place to start so Emily won’t be an orphan.”
    He looks at me with a combination of disappointment and distaste, then says, “Talk to a man named Moses Dworsky. He works in Van Nuys as a private investigator. He was a lawyer once. He represented Rachel O’Brien. He blamed me for the bombing, but I trust him.”
    Lovely and I exchange glances. We’ve both heard of Moses Dworsky. I thought the man was dead.

CHAPTER FIVE
    The next morning, a Saturday, I meet Lovely at The Barrista, dodging the news reporters who’ve gathered at the front entrance. She grumbles that she’s missing her son Brighton’s soccer game but in the next sentence tells me how excited she is to work on this case.
    The capture of Ian Holzner is already big news, even bigger because I’m on the case. The tabloids and celebrity websites have a bizarre interest in Little Parky Gerald. The usually even-tempered Romulo, who’s working the register, frowns when I walk in and won’t look up at me—his silent indictment for my allowing my legal career to interfere with the shop’s business. It isn’t the first time that it’s happened. As a lawyer, I’ve tried some newsworthy cases. People close to me have died because of them.
    I hurriedly brew myself a double espresso and make Lovely one of those cloying chocolaty mochas with extra whipped cream. Together, we escape out the back entrance and get into my Lexus. After a forty-minute drive through Beverly Glen into the San Fernando Valley, we arrive at a seedy strip mall in Reseda.
    Moses Dworsky’s office is located on the second floor, over a half-price sushi restaurant and a dry cleaner. We squeeze into a creaky elevator, which seems to take forever to ascend. The doors open onto a dank, mildewed alcove that bears the sign Moses B. Dworsky Private Investigations . Business must be better than I thought, because Dworsky has the whole floor, though his office is furnished in cheap pine that’s been stained dark.
    I tried to set up an appointment but couldn’t reach anyone, so this is a cold call. Fortunately, the door is unlocked. There’s no receptionist at the front desk, which is bare except for an old-fashioned telephone that I’m surprised has buttons rather than a rotary dial. In response to my loud “Hello,” a voice bellows, “Please make yourself comfortable in the waiting room. I shall only be a moment!”
    Thirty seconds later, a hulking man in his