Chapter Nineteen
J ocelyn closed her laptop and flipped her freshly printed spreadsheets over, not wanting to see the story the numbers were telling. She changed into her running clothes, pulled her hair back into a ponytail, picked up her phone and earbuds, and slid her room card into her cell case as she stepped into the hall.
She needed a run. A long, cleansing run to clear her mind.
Waving at the doorman, she placed her earbuds in and broke into a jog heading west, her eyes on Tower Hill.
Plough-Her Hill.
Shaking Birch’s voice from her head, she focused on her breathing, on building her gait until she hit a good stride.
He probably didn’t realize the stack of bank statements he’d given her without question contained his personal ones as well, something she hadn’t even noticed until she grabbed one to track a series of cash withdrawals.
Without explicit orders from lawyers, personal accounts weren’t usually in her scope of examination. Unless someone with more letters behind their name than she had provided the required paperwork, she kept her eyes on her own work, on the business accounts and business accounts only.
Even when those personal accounts aligned perfectly with the business ones.
Turning onto a gravel road, she approached the base of the hill and cranked her music.
She could pretend she hadn’t seen the staggered deposits into Birch’s bank account, the amounts small enough to raise no flags. She could send his statements through a shredder and ignore the five-hundred-dollar influxes of cash every second Friday. Her notes would only need to include a mention of unaccounted withdrawals from Serpent’s Tongue, and it would be up to the police and the lawyers to decide if they wanted to pursue it further.
Or she could turn it all over to Angelo, hand him the reins and wash her hands of it. She could pack her bags and be back in Jersey by tomorrow night, far from Birch Baker and his silver tongue.
Coming to a stop on top of the hill, she walked to the edge and sat on the grass, following the slope of the water tower to the Baker home.
He lied.
Because numbers didn’t.
Part of her job required her to know how much Birch and Ryder took home every month, how much they paid in taxes. Both men made a decent living, enough to pay their bills with a bit left over.
But that bit wasn’t nearly enough to cover the cash tuition payment she saw on Birch’s August statement. His account balance was higher than his income allowed.
“The banks around here weren’t keen on giving a Baker a loan.”
Wrapping her arms around her knees, she rested her chin on her hand and stared at the town.
No part of her assignment approved her reviewing his personal expenses. But she had. Because she was desperate to explain where the money was coming from and, needing to know where it was going, she broke her personal and professional ethics code and dove deeper into Birch’s finances.
There was no plausible way he could pay for Grey’s education outright. The hundred or two left at the end of each month from his legitimate paycheck were consistently deposited in the Nevada prison system or sent to River.
But five hundred dollars every two weeks added up over the course of a year, padding his bank account balance.
She’d been so certain Birch was different, so certain he was with her for her and not for what she could do for him.
It was happening all over again. The lies. The deception.
The heartbreak.
Away from her cutthroat life on the east coast, she had let her guard down, foolishly believing her hometown would shelter her from men who would seek her out to curry favor while she worked to unearth some of the country’s biggest financial fraudsters.
But she should have known better. Birch may not have millions to lose, but what he had, he couldn’t afford to surrender. She’d known it. Known it and ignored it because he made her feel special, chipping away at her defenses with every glimmer of vulnerability he showed her.
She could feel the tears welling in her eyes and she exhaled a shaky breath as she stood.
It was time to get back to the hotel and face Birch’s betrayal.
*
Keeping his face schooled while Ryder droned on about needing to place another order for body jewelry, Birch grabbed his phone and keys and stood. “I’m out for the night. If anyone calls to book a tat for next week, try to leave my Tuesday open. My tiger guy yesterday wants a complementary piece done and I’ll need a full day for him if I get the artwork finished before the weekend.”
Ryder nodded as he rolled his stool to the safe. “Are you still angling to do those free temporary tats at the Fourth celebration Sunday?”
“Damn right I am. Grey’s going to help out but if you want to swing by and do an hour or two, that would be cool,” he lied, hoping his cheat of a business partner would stay far away.
Shrugging, Ryder turned his back and opened the lock. “Yeah, maybe. Have a good night.”
Walking out to his truck, he fired off a text to Grey reminding him to switch the laundry over during a study break before he messaged Jocelyn to see if she wanted him to pick up anything on his way over.
“No. I’m fine thanks.”
Frowning as he started his truck, he reread her response a few times.
Her texts were always brief, but rarely punctuated with anything other than an emoji. And she always asked about his day.
Hitting the road, he shook his head.
He was being paranoid.
Paranoid and weird.
Nodding at the doorman as he entered, he hopped on the elevator and stepped into her hallway, disappointed to see she wasn’t waiting for him in her doorway. An uneasiness slithered through him while he knocked on her door and waited for her to answer.
Maybe he said too much last night. Been too eager to follow her to New Jersey. Been too forward in his offer for her to move in with him. He knew she was still holding back emotionally, if not physically, but he was certain the barrier was falling more and more every day.
The door opened and she stepped aside for him to enter, the downturn of her lips and the redness of her eyes sending a jolt of fear through him.
“Hey,” he said, reaching out to embrace her and freezing when she backed away. “Jocelyn. What’s wrong?”
She closed the door and leaned against it, her gaze on the floor. “I need you to be honest with me, Birch. Completely honest.”
“Always,” he replied, his stomach knotting. “Baby, you’re kind of freaking me out here.”
Inhaling sharply, she swallowed and looked up at him with such suspicion and wariness he felt the hit direct to his chest. “How are you paying for Grey’s schooling?”
He could feel the blood draining from his face as he ran a hand through his hair. “Why are you asking?”
“Because it’s important.” She looked to the ceiling and walked past him, grabbing a bottle of water. “Because I need to know where you got the money to pay for his education on a small-town tattoo artist’s salary.”
He knew eventually someone would ask. But most people didn’t talk money in casual conversation. They didn’t ask and he didn’t offer and no one was the wiser.
But what he and Jocelyn had wasn’t casual. And neither was their conversation.
“Okay,” he opened slowly, gathering his thoughts as he crossed the floor and sat at the dinette, his back hunched in defense. “Before I tell you, I’m going to need two things from you. I need you to never tell anyone, and I need you to hear me out.”
She perched on the edge of the bed where they’d awoken that morning, her steel eyes red-rimmed and hard. “I’ll hear you out, but you can’t ask me not to say anything if you’re into anything illegal.”
“I don’t know if what I did is illegal,” he sighed, pressing his forehead to his fist for a moment. “It’s just…if I tell you and you let it out that you know, I’m fucked. More importantly, Grey will be fucked. River and Winter might be, too.”
Bringing her knees to her chest, she wrapped her arms around them. “If I agree not to say anything but it involves Serpent’s Tongue, I’ll be obligated to disclose it.”
“It doesn’t. This happened long before the shop existed.” When she nodded, he ran his hands over his face and laughed humorlessly. “I knew it would come back to bite me in the ass, but I never figured it would be a woman doing the biting.
“Six years ago on July Fourth, there was a break and enter on the east side of town. The intruder had a crowbar and a switchblade. The victims described him as being in his early twenties, unshaven, with dark brown hair. A tall guy, around six-foot-two. He was picked up a few blocks away the same night, skulking through someone else’s backyard.”
He could see the confusion on her face before she spoke. “That was you.”
Taking a deep breath, he shook his head. “No. It was Justin Fogerty, Sheriff Bill Fogerty’s middle kid. He and I were in school together until I dropped out. Kind of a spoiled, smarmy asshole, but I didn’t know him too well given who his dad was.
“Anyway, the two cops who picked him up brought him straight to Bill. Maybe they were thinking they could wipe the report as a favor to the boss or something, but the couple who were robbed were all over social media within hours. So someone needed to go down for it.”
“They framed you?” she asked, eyes narrowing.
“You said you’d hear me out,” he huffed, sitting back in the chair as he told the story for the first time ever. “Bill pulled me over on my way to work the next morning. He looked like hell, like he’d been up for days in the same clothes. He asked me to get in the car so he could talk to me, even said I could sit in front since it was a friendly chat. With Winter’s situation having just blown over, I figured it would be better to cooperate with the head honcho, so I did.”
He took a moment to recall the events of that morning, giving her a tight smile as he resumed. “He drove me out toward the Chatterly’s farm and pulled onto a dirt road, not saying a word until he parked. Then he told me everything. What Justin had done, how his wife blamed him for fixing speeding tickets for the kid, how Justin was going to lose his position in the police academy. Just let it all out. When he was done, he offered me a hundred grand—cash—to take the fall for his son. He said he knew I was behind on land taxes and Winter’s lawyer fees, knew Grey was smart and could be college-bound and that the shit money I was making every month wasn’t going to cut it for much longer. He promised he could work the evidence and negotiate a lighter sentence with the prosecutor if I turned myself in with a full confession and a guilty plea. Easy in, easy out, and a hundred thousand dollars paid in installments the moment I stepped into prison.”
She stared at him, her mouth opening and closing before she finally spoke. “Birch, you…why would you do that? Why would you throw years of your life away like that?”
“Opportunity,” he stated. “My golden goose.”
“Opportunity?” she echoed, getting to her feet. “There had to be other ways other than taking someone else’s prison time.”
Shrugging, he looked up at her. “Some people can look back on their lives and pinpoint the moment their life went to shit. They can identify the decision that set them on their path. But guys like me? Like Winter? We were born into that moment, Jocelyn. Every choice we made since birth branched off of the fucked-up road we were already on. The money he paid me kept our house. Sent River to LA. It buys Winter all the books he wants. It gives Grey a future where he won’t always be scrounging and scrambling to catch up and prove he’s not trash.”
She paced the floor in front of him, smoothing her ponytail as she did. “So you went away for three years and Bill’s son just, what, joined the police force somewhere else and continued on with his life?”
“Last I heard, he was arrested in Maine for the same thing he had been when I took his sentence for him. Except he had a decent amount of cocaine on him when he was brought in, so he’s been off the streets for over a year and will continue to be for a lot longer.”
She knelt in front of him and grabbed his hand, the simple gesture almost destroying him. “Is it him depositing the cash into your account? If Bill didn’t give you all the money upfront, how did you know he would follow through? It’s not like you had a lot to negotiate with six years ago.”
Looking into her eyes was physically hurting him, knowing it was the path he chose with such careful consideration that was putting the anger, worry, and fear there. “Bill isn’t a bad guy. He was just desperate to save his family. He used one of those old school recorders to tape his own offer and gave it to me that evening along with ten thousand in cash. River received the next ten the day I was sentenced, and every four weeks since, another grand showed up in the mail until three months ago when the deal was officially done. One of us deposits a bit of the money every couple of weeks so we aren’t showing up at the bank with a wheelbarrow.”
Her gaze moved to their hands. “What did Winter have to say about it? He couldn’t have been happy. And what about River and Grey? Who looked after them?”
The confession was lifting a weight off him he hadn’t realized he’d been dragging around alone, but the guilt over sharing it with her was quickly taking its place. “Winter was pissed we weren’t serving time in the same prison, but he understood why I took the deal. River was almost nineteen, Grey was turning sixteen. I sat them down after Fogerty dropped me off and we made the decision together.” Giving her a tight smile, he squeezed her fingers lightly. “So that’s where the money came from. We caught the property taxes up, paid off the last little bit left on the mortgage, covered Winter’s legal fees, splurged on a big hot water tank, paid for some of Serpent’s Tongue’s startup costs, and there’s still enough set aside to cover most of the next three years of tuition now that Grey’s been earning scholarships at university.”
Her eyes narrowed as she studied him, as though trying to see through him and know if he was being truthful.
“We can go to my place now and listen to the tape if you want,” he offered.
He could see her debating it in her head, her brows furrowing as she bit her lip. “I—”
“Let’s go,” he said, making the decision for her. “You can follow me in your car so you can take off after if you don’t want to stay, but I want you to hear it. Because I don’t want you doubting me. Anyone else can think whatever they want about me, but not you.”
She followed him to the door, protesting the whole way. “Birch, you don’t have to prove anything.”
“Yeah, I do.”