Chapter 12 Reed #2
The whiskey is gone sooner than I’d like. I pick at the bread, not tasting it until the meals are served.
Kat was right. It’s helping Cill, at least. He’s not as tense. Kat watches him even more than I do.
I didn’t know how things would go when we showed up on her front porch this past weekend. I was scared to death. If she kicked him out, I didn’t think Cill was going to recover. She barely speaks to me anymore. She stopped talking to him too.
Now, staring across the table, I know everything happens for a reason.
It was one thing for him to lose his freedom for four years. It would have been another thing to have the one girl he loved most shut the door in his face.
Cill’s plate is gone in minutes. I’ve barely touched mine and Kat’s made a small dent in hers. But he inhales his dinner.
A faint smile tugs at my face when I remember the time we were here last and Cill was going off about something.
She said he needed to eat and then he wouldn’t care about whatever it was he was complaining about.
I remember laughing but not paying attention to whether or not it was true back then.
It’s only a joke but I wish it were true.
I wish a good meal and a conversation were all it would take to fix this.
Kat pushes the basket of bread in front of him.
It’s the best bread in the city. The inside is soft and the outside is crusty.
It tastes like home. This restaurant is almost as familiar as the rec room at the garage.
I know this bread like I know the recliners in that room.
We must’ve spent hours there watching football and poker games.
Cill’s eaten enough food for the three of us but it’s done him some good. He might be different than he was before, but he’s still my best friend. The hurt look in his eyes has faded a bit. Enough that we can talk.
The waitress brings dainty mugs of coffee once the waiter has cleared our plates.
It’s all done silently. Kat has tea instead.
She stirs in sugar, the spoon clinking against the ceramic.
I can feel her discomfort as well, though she’s trying to hide it.
For Cill’s sake, I think. She glances over at me.
I take that as a signal to start talking.
“I think …” I start, then trail off and lick my lower lip, knowing what I’m about to say is a bombshell that could destroy Cill. But he has to know. “It wasn’t just Kat’s father who ratted four years ago.”
Cill narrows his eyes, his brow pinching. His tone is level and low when he says, “The hell do you mean? Everybody knows it was him. He’s the one who called Kat to warn her what was happening.”
“And that didn’t seem off to you?”
“No,” answers Cill.
“It seemed off to me. The more I think about it, the more it doesn’t make any sense.
” I look at Kat. “If your dad knew ahead of time, he wouldn’t have let you go to Cavanaugh Crest that night.
He didn’t want you mixed up in all of that.
He has his sins to pay for, but he loved you. It just doesn’t fit.”
Kat looks down at her empty plate. Cill’s still looking at me, his eyes questioning.
“I don’t think your dad died of a heart attack either,” I tell him. I’ve held this knowledge for so damn long, and it’s a relief to get it out into the open. “I think your uncle wants it all and he’s working for both sides. The Ruin and the feds.”
My mind races with a million things.
The fact that Missy went missing and his uncle claimed she was a rat and that she took off. Yet her house was cleaned out months later and she hadn’t taken anything.
“I think he set her father up. I think Missy caught on and your uncle killed her. I think we have the cops come every other fucking month because he’s slowly taking out anyone who stands in his way. I think it was supposed to be me that left when the cops came last.”
“Slow the fuck down,” Cill demands, his eyes locked on mine, his voice so low it’s barely heard. Barely moving at all, he commands, “Start from the beginning.”
With a racing heart, I swallow and tell him everything.
“When you left and her father disappeared, the charges they brought against you … her father didn’t know it all, you know?
He didn’t know about the frequency of drops …
it had to be someone else and Missy brought that up.
” I can barely breathe remembering how it all went down, but how Eamon played it like it happened differently.
“When she disappeared, he said it made sense because she was asking questions and poking around. He said she had to be a rat.
“But the questions she was asking weren’t something a rat would want to know. She was trying to figure out who else was in on it—”
“Missy was like a second mom to me,” Cill says, his hand firmly wrapped around Kat’s.
“I know. So did your father.” His eyes whip back up to mine at the mention of his dad.
“He wasn’t with it like he was before you went away.
But he never believed Missy could do that to him.
I think he caught on. I think he figured it out.
’Cause they said he died of a heart attack, but I heard them fighting before that, Cill.
He and your uncle were going at it. Everyone who’s questioned your uncle Eamon left shortly after.
Either they died or they were a supposed rat who disappeared. ”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t have proof until Kat’s place got broken into.
” A heat breaks out across every inch of my skin as I look at Kat.
“I didn’t tell you, but I found two bricks of coke in your guest room.
The same stock he had me moving during the bust. He knew Cill was getting out and he planted it and was going to wait for the perfect time. ” I look back to Cill.
“It had to be Eamon. He was the only one with a key to the stock. He planted it at Kat’s place and I bet his plan was to take me down as I was moving it, and then to get you for possession, blaming it on me. Then we’re both out of his way.”
I don’t even know if what I said makes sense to them. If they’ll connect the dots like I did. “It sounds fucking crazy, but it’s the only explanation.”
My pulse races, praying they believe me. I almost add that he’s why I let Kat go. Eamon is why when she broke down and told me she couldn’t ever see me again, that’s why I let her back away. If she stayed close, he could see her as a threat too.
I was still there for her. Still someone she trusted and I would be there any time she was in need, but at a distance.
I can’t bring myself to speak about her, though. There’s too much that’s already been said.
“Say something, man,” I plead after a long moment of silence. “I’ve felt like I’m going fucking crazy and paranoid for a year now. Ever since your pops died.”
“You think my uncle sold out my father, his brother?” Cill’s voice breaks when he adds, “You think my uncle killed him?”
There’s a long moment of staring into my best friend’s eyes, telling him something there’s no way in hell he’d want to believe and having no evidence at all, only a gut feeling. “Yeah.”
“No.” He’s quick to deny it, shaking his head.
Kat, though, she stares back at me, realization clear in her gaze.
“No, you’re wrong.” I hear the betrayal in his voice.
I felt the same thing when I figured it out.
The Cavanaugh MC wasn’t about backstabbing bullshit and stealing power.
It was about the bikes, and goddammit, the family.
Founded by two first-generation brothers and their buddy Finn, something like this … it’s soul shattering.
“I know it’s hard to believe, but–”
“They were supposed to have each other’s backs.” He stabs his finger on the table, emphasizing his point. Readjusting in his chair, he starts to say something and then stops.
And then he does it again, choosing his words carefully. “My uncle was supposed to be the example. He’s supposed to take care of all of us. And now you’re telling me he’s turned? You’re telling me he killed my father?”
“I think he—”
“That’s one fucked-up thing to say if you don’t know–”
“Yes. They fought and then your father died suddenly of what they said was a heart attack, but the autopsy didn’t confirm that.
Then Missy started poking around and she died.
He lied, said she left but I know she’s fucking dead.
Everyone who goes against him disappears and I know it was him who broke into Kat’s house. I know for a fact it was him.
“I don’t have evidence of everything, but I know he planted evidence in her home.”
“What did you do with it?”
“The coke? I dumped it.”
“When did you start thinking he killed my father?”
“It was only a thought a year ago when he died, but then it made sense when Missy disappeared. I just … I didn’t want to believe it.”