Hunting Death

Chapter 2

Madison sat in her office for another half hour, the first fifteen minutes with a blank stare on her face as she looked at the closed door the lawyer had left through, and the next fifteen reading through the will again.

Afterward, she called her supervisor and explained about her 'visitor' before asking to go home for the rest of the day. Given the circumstances, and the fact that she hadn't taken a single day off in the three years that she'd worked there, her boss seemed more than willing to oblige, telling her to take the entire weekend if she needed it.

A whole weekend. Hell, if she decided to agree to her father's request, she'd need a lot more than a simple weekend. She wondered if they'd grant her a sabbatical, ha, that's a good one! And if the numbers in the will were anything to go by, without seeing his full financial portfolio, she likely wouldn't even need a job at the end of the year anyway.

Her father had been a wealthy man, yeah, what an understatement.

She decided to go straight to her parent's house from work. Because her mother had told her she'd be on call this weekend, as a flight attendant for a busy airport in San Diego that meant she'd probably pick up at least one job over the next three days, Madison called ahead to make sure she'd be home.

She didn't knock when she got there, but rather, slipped her key into the lock and called out to her after walking through the door. "Mom, hey, I'm here, where ya at?"

"In the kitchen dear!" Tammy, her mother, called back.

Madison dropped her purse and keys on the coffee table on her way through the living room, but kept her father's will hugged tightly to her chest in the manila envelope she'd taken from work. She found her mother right where she said she was, in the kitchen. Tammy sat at the small dinette table that occupied one corner of the large kitchen, her feet propped up in the chair opposite her and a book in her hands.

She looked up and smiled as Madison approached, putting the book down and sitting a little straighter, her feet on the floor. "Hey honey, you surprised me when you called earlier and said you wanted to come over. Is everything okay?"

Madison pointed to the half-full coffee pot on the counter, "Is that fresh?"

Tammy nodded.

She helped herself to a cup, loading it up with cream and sugar, before sitting in the chair next to her mother. She laid the will on the table.

"What's that?" Tammy asked.

"My father's will."

Madison watched with curiosity as all the color drained out of her mother's face. On the way over, she thought about many things. She considered whether she wanted to and if she should take her father's offer, and more importantly, she considered if her mother was aware of his death. Pretty obvious now that she had no clue.

"Robert's dead?" Tammy asked weakly.

Madison nodded, pulling the envelope towards her and slowly taking out the will. She thought about her father, and her life, the life she'd lived, as she pondered the truth.

Her mother had told her shortly after her eighteenth birthday about Rick not being her biological father that he had adopted her soon after she turned four. Naturally, she'd been in shock at first, and didn't want to believe it. It had taken her a couple of weeks to come to terms with the knowledge that the man who had raised her, the man who had loved her, and called her his own, wasn't actually her father.

Of course, a lot of things made sense after that.

Like her height, on the taller side, at almost five-nine, Madison also had dark brownish black hair, depending on the light, and dark blue eyes that sometimes hinged on a more purple hue. A lot of people over the years had asked her if she had any gypsy or Romani blood in her since she looked somewhat exotic.