Chapter 20
I put on some light makeup and dried my hair. My wigs and the wig cap were in the other room, so I was ready for James to continue our fight when I opened the door.
Room service must have just come, because when I left the bathroom, he was setting a tray on the coffee table. He glanced up at me, but I didn’t see the animosity I’d expected.
“Are you hungry?”
“Not particularly,” I said, still defensive.
“You need to eat before we go out. You had a thorough workout today and you need to refuel.”
I almost snapped at him that I could decide when I ate, but I knew this was his way of showing me he cared. That he still cared, even after our fight.
“Okay,” I said, moving to the sofa, and to make amends, I teased, “Couldn’t get a suite with a dining table?”
His mouth lifted into a half grin. “You gave me short notice.”
He had a point.
We sat down on the sofa, and he handed me my plate, then picked up his own and set it on the table.
“So you’re bound and determined to see this through now,” he said, picking up a set of silverware. “Not later.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your plan for the night?” he asked. “What are we doin’?”
I stared at him, surprised by the question, and he flicked a glance my way. “It was your contact who came through first. We’ll follow the lead and see where it takes us.” His voice turned practical. “But if it’s a bust, what do you wanna do?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
He cut off a piece of his steak. “You need to be thinkin’ that far ahead.
Ten steps ahead.” He didn’t look up. “What you’re gonna do if she has usable information and what you’ll do if she doesn’t.
What to do if her handler interrupts. What to do if he has backup.
” He glanced over at me. “You need to be ready for anything.”
“Are you suggesting I’m not cut out for this?” I asked, my defenses flaring.
“No.” He lifted a bite to his mouth. “You’re not a cop anymore, so you need to stop thinkin’ like one.” He took a bite, then started cutting another piece.
Funny how I’d given myself the same damn speech minutes before.
“I’m guessing that’s how you plan things?”
He finished chewing before answering. “Not always. Not in the beginning. Funnily enough, I learned it from J.R.”
I gave him another look of surprise.
“There was a time I practically worshiped him,” he said casually, like he was discussing the weather.
“He was everything I wanted to be. Rich. Respected. Lived in a big fancy house and drove a big fancy car. It made an impression on fourteen-year-old me the first time I met him. It stuck, long after I started working for him.”
I gasped. “You started working for J.R. Simmons when you were fourteen?”
He chuckled. “No. That’s when I met him.
He was filling up at a gas station outside of Henryetta.
I was impressed with his car, and for some reason, he was impressed with me.
” He lifted a shoulder. “He gave me his business card and told me to find him when I turned eighteen. Said he’d give me a job. ”
“And you did.”
“You bet your ass I did.” His voice went matter of fact.
“I was dirt poor. Our family was looked down on. Even if I’d wanted to go to college, I couldn’t have afforded it, and I sure as hell wasn’t qualifying for scholarships with my grades.
” He cut another bite. “And truth be told, while most kids were planning on going to college or getting jobs in their family businesses, my goal was working for J.R.” He let out a snort.
“It was a stupid plan. He was probably humoring me.”
“But he wasn’t,” I said. “He gave you a job.”
“Even if he hadn’t meant it, I suspect he would have given me a job just for having the tenacity to show up at his house.” His gaze went distant. “But when I walked in, he gave me a knowin’ smile. Like he’d been waitin’ on me.”
“You said you worshipped him,” I said carefully. “I take it he was good to you.”
“He was, at first. He said he saw potential in me and was going to help me become a man of importance. My own father was a piece of shit who only found potential at the bottom of a whiskey bottle.” He swallowed.
“For a man of J.R.’s stature to see something in me…
” He drew in a breath. “Let’s just say before him, I’d never been treated as anything other than a waste of air.
I would have done anything for him.” He paused. “Well, almost anything.”
I knew what he meant. He’d stopped working for J.R. because J.R. had asked him to kill a child who’d witnessed a murder. James had refused, and J.R. had seen it as a betrayal.
“Did you know he was a criminal when you first started working for him?” I was surprised he was opening up to me, but if he was sharing, I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. “I mean, everyone else thought he was a prominent businessman, right?”
“Yeah.” He gave a short laugh. “That’s what the good, God-fearin’ Christians of El Dorado thought.
He made a good show of it too.” He speared another bite.
“And that’s who I thought he was too, at first. He had me doin’ above-board scut work, not that I complained.
He paid me well enough that I didn’t have to worry about my next meal, and that was a first.”
“James…”
He snorted and turned to me. “Don’t go feelin’ sorry for me.”
“No child should go hungry.”
He shrugged, then took another bite of his steak, and I couldn’t help thinking it was in defiance of his past.
“After a couple of years, J.R. started me on small questionable jobs,” he said.
“Probably to gauge how far I was willing to go. What I was willing to do for him … turns out, it was quite a bit.” His voice went flat.
“He gave me more and more work, and I followed through every time. I earned a reputation with his other men. Before long, I was taking the lead, not following orders.”
He cut another piece of steak. “Then one day he called me to his office and told me he was sending me back to Fenton County.” His mouth tightened.
“I thought he was jokin’. Or that I misunderstood and he was sending me to do a job.
But no. He was sending me back to live there.
” His gaze went distant. “He said he wanted me to get a foothold in the county and take over. To become one of his Twelve.”
“That had to be hard to hear.”
“I thought it was a test. And I still worshipped the guy, but it’s fair to say I wasn’t happy about it. And he knew it. I think he got off on me bein’ unhappy about it.” He set down his fork. “He gave me seed money and told me to go out and make my way in the world.”
“As long as it was in Fenton County.”
“Yep.” He paused. “So I went back, opened the pool hall, and hired Jed to be my right-hand man. We’d grown up together.
He was younger than me, but we both understood what it was to be poor and hungry.
” Emotion flickered in his eyes. “I knew he was a hard worker, and he felt a loyalty to me that I exploited.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why did he feel a loyalty to you, and how did you exploit it?”
“His sister…” He dragged in a deep breath.
“We had a pond near where we lived. Us boys fished there, always hoping to get something to fill our bellies.” His gaze went distant.
“One time, Jed and I and a few other boys were fishing. Jed’s little sister was there too, and she fell in.
” He swallowed hard. “I jumped in and got her, but it was too late.” His voice broke.
“I didn’t save her. But as far as Jed was concerned, trying was almost the same. ”
He turned to me, his eyes glassy. “His parents were shit parents too. And just like I had my little brother Scooter, Jed had Daisy. Until he didn’t.”
My breath caught. Jed had named his daughter after his sister.
And James had a small daisy tattooed under the tree on his chest.
“After she died,” he went on quietly, “I kind of adopted him as an honorary brother. But it wasn’t the same. Not by a long shot.”
“You blame yourself for not saving her.”
“She was six. Practically a toddler. I should have been watchin’ her.”
Six wasn’t a toddler, but it was too young for her to have been playing unsupervised next to a pond. It also wasn’t James’s responsibility. “How old were you?”
“Nearly a teenager.”
“James, you were a kid yourself.”
He snorted. “Trust me, I hadn’t been a kid for some time by then.” He rubbed his jaw. “But I had seen her playing on the bank of the pond. I’d been keeping an eye on her. Then Jed caught a fish and we all got distracted.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“It wasn’t Jed’s either.”
I suspected they’d both spent their lives blaming themselves for her death.
We were silent for a moment, James probably reliving that horrible moment in his past, and me trying to process it.
“You said you exploited Jed’s loyalty,” I said finally. “How?”
He shook his head slowly. “By askin’ him to work for me. By givin’ him a job when he was just as desperate for a way out as I had been when I went to J.R.”
“Wait,” I said, cocking my head. “You can’t be comparing yourself to J.R. Simmons.” I said in disbelief. “You are nothing like that man.”
“You have some delusion that I was playin’ Candyland back then,” he said derisively.
“I was there to make a name for myself. I may have been back in Fenton County, but it didn’t mean I was the automatic king of the land.
” His eyes went hard. “Where you find poverty, you find crime, because desperate people are willing to do desperate, stupid things to survive.”
He took a breath. “A man named Daniel Crocker ruled the roost back then. He wasn’t happy when I showed up in town, and he had no love for J.R. He didn’t have proof I’d been workin’ for him, but he’d heard rumors.”
I took a bite of my untouched food, worried I’d distract him and he’d stop talking, but thankfully he continued.
“We had a few skirmishes in the beginning.” He grimaced.
“He had an established outfit, and I had Jed and a few other guys. There was no way I could take him on, at least not by force. So, we reached a truce. He ran his chop shop and dealt drugs. I stuck to my pool hall, where I ran a bookie operation—which was more profitable than I’d imagined. ”
He gave me a devious grin. “Turned out I was good with numbers.” His tone sobered. “I took my earnings, then opened the strip club. We coexisted.”
“And you invested in legit businesses too,” I said softly.
“Yeah.” He scooped out some of his baked potato.
“But after a bit, J.R. wasn’t happy that I hadn’t taken over the whole county.
He told me the seed money was an investment, and so far, he wasn’t seeing a return.
And because he wasn’t, he started giving me odd jobs every now and again to pay for the interest.” His eyes flicked to mine. “Jobs to make sure I was still loyal.”
“Killing people,” I said.
He held my gaze. “Believe it or not, I still had some scruples. I made sure they were truly deserving of it.”
A week or two ago, I would have been horrified. But after my bathroom TED Talk, I understood.
I wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or bad. Maybe it was just further proof we belonged together.
He gave me a long stare, his face expressionless. “I wanted you to know who you were risking your life with and for. I understand if you need to end this.”
I gave him an incredulous look. “End this discussion so you don’t have to tell me more, or end whatever this is between us? Because…sorry, if this was your way of trying to make me stop working with you—” I shifted on the sofa so I could look him in the eye. “You’re stuck with me, Malcolm.”
He stared at me for a long moment, like he wasn’t sure he believed me.
I leaned in and placed a gentle kiss on his lips, then pulled back. “I understand you better than you think.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, I’m not a cop anymore,” I said softly. “And you’re right … I need to stop thinking like one.” I swallowed. “Sometimes an arrest shouldn’t be the goal.” I paused, letting the words land. “Sometimes a more permanent method might be.”
Understanding flashed in his eyes. “You plan to murder Gerald Knox.”
I couldn’t bring myself to admit it. “Will that hurt your position with your HSI contact?”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said gruffly.
“Of course I’m going to worry about that.” My voice grew tight. “I’m not going to do anything to get you in trouble. The plan is to get you free of them.”
“I told you, I can handle this how I see fit.”
I knew he wouldn’t lie to me, but it was still hard to believe anyone would condone him killing a suspect. Then again, the Feds ran plenty of covert operations that never saw the light of day.
“Do you want to turn him over to your contact?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“If Homeland Security wasn’t involved,” I pressed, “what would you do in our situation?”
His eyes glittered with something dangerous. “The motherfucker would already be dead.”
I hesitated. “Is that what you want to do? Find him, kill him, and let the trafficking operation fall where it may?”
He drew in a breath. “No. I want to destroy that too.” His face turned to stone. “For now, we keep doin’ what we’re doin’. But if I think he’s close to homin’ in on us, then we move to Plan B.”
“Take him out.”
“Yes.”
I held his gaze, something settling in my gut. “If it comes to Plan B, I want to be the one to kill him.”
He watched me for a long moment, as though weighing the cost of saying yes. “Okay. I’ll let you have it. But if I think he’s going to hurt you, then I’ll pull the trigger without an ounce of remorse.”
“Fair.” I swung a leg over and straddled his lap, my hands resting on his shoulders. “You have no idea what your protectiveness does to me,” I said in husky tone.
His mouth ticked up. “If this is any indication, I don’t have any complaints.”
“How about I show you?”
“Talk is cheap,” he grunted as he lifted his hips, grinding into me.
“Then maybe it’s time to put my money where my mouth is.” I reached down and started unfastening his jeans. “And I have plans for where my mouth should go.”
He groaned, leaning back as he stretched out. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”
Not if I could help it.