Chapter 5
Gail tried calling Riley again and again but didn’t get an answer. Finally she phoned Selene. “Did the men ever surface?”
“They did, but I guess Riley caused quite a stir.”
“That’s Riley for you. What did he do now?”
“Apparently he knows the location of a couple areas in the tunnels. … Do you remember that case from a few years back?” she asked. “When they found the smuggling going on?”
“Vaguely.”
“Well, he says he knows one of the areas and wants to check it out. Anyway, Derek gave him permission to go back down, using the pub entrance, and Jacob is going with him.”
Gail listened to her ramble. “So, he’s gone back down now?” she asked in surprise.
“Yeah, and I know what you’ll say. It’s dark, but it’s always dark down there, so it really doesn’t matter,” she explained.
“Anyway, everybody’s kind of … not upset—except Rory and Gerald are the most upset—but I think Riley’s an element that nobody really understands.
” She added, “At least that’s the impression I got. ”
“Yeah, that would be about right.”
Selene muttered, “Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not really okay, but that’s all right for now.”
“Are you sure? Because you don’t, well—if I’m honest—you don’t sound okay.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s what I just said. I’m not okay, but I will be.”
Selene didn’t quite know what to say. “Look. We will all be at the pub later—if you want to come join us.”
“No, that’s all right,” she muttered.
“Are you sure? Because I don’t know what’s going on between you and Riley, but he’s got to come back out from the tunnels at some point in time.”
“Right, so, of course, I’m supposed to wait for him in the pub in the meantime, right?”
“I’m not saying that,” she corrected. “Obviously something still needs to be settled between the two of you. So, if coming here and talking with him again helps, then please feel free. And I, I’m really not trying to overstep or anything.
I don’t even know what’s going on, but it’s obvious that something is. ”
“Yeah, something’s going on all right.” Then she took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fight. I, … I’m just in a different space right now.”
“Oh, yeah. … I noticed,” she agreed, with a laugh. “Anyway, come if you want. And, if you’re not ready for that, that’s fine too.”
“What did the men think of Riley?”
“Well, Derek was absolutely in love with him, how he was great, calm, careful, didn’t make any waves, didn’t upset anybody—except Rory and Gerald maybe. Rory didn’t like anything about him, stating he was arrogant, trouble.”
“Oh, he’s probably trouble if you’re doing something wrong,” Gail noted, “but I don’t think he’s trouble unless that’s what you’re doing.”
Selene laughed. “I think that came up, and he said something similar to Rory, you know, that he should watch it because he makes it sound like he’s got something to hide, which pissed off Rory and honestly several of them.
So, there’s definitely some animosity and some people who are okay with him.
I think he stood up and made a point of saying what he would do and what he wouldn’t do.
And that impressed some and pissed off others of the group. ”
“Of course, because he is very much that person,” Gail noted.
“And I know that things got really ugly with the two of you,” Selene began, “but did you know what your dad did?”
Gail froze at that. “Did Riley say something about it?”
“Yeah, briefly, but not enough for any of them to really get a good understanding.”
“Right,” she muttered. As she got off the phone, she realized that it was his right to say it, but that in itself would likely cause all kinds of headaches.
She didn’t know how she felt about the fact that it would soon become public knowledge because, with that part revealed, her part would be too. Everybody would think she was wrong as well. From Gail’s perspective, she definitely had a hand in it.
She let out her breath very slowly as she considered what she was supposed to do next because she didn’t really have a whole lot available in terms of solutions.
Her father was her father, and she couldn’t expect him to change at this point in his lifetime. Even if she wanted him to, he wouldn’t. Why would he? He was doing great. Harold Montoya was one of the most stubborn, most controlling, and most influential people in town.
His little empire was booming, and, as long as all his peons kept their place and their mouths shut, it would continue to work well for him.
But the fact of the matter was, Riley was out of the military, and, from the sounds of it, doing something he loved.
So her father probably couldn’t touch him at this point.
But then again, she thought about it and realized that her father’s long-reaching animosity could easily destroy everything Riley even tried to rebuild.
And she was definitely not in favor of that. But what would she do to stop it? Nothing. Because stopping her father was impossible.
She sat here, still lost in thought, when the doorbell rang. When she didn’t answer it, her father pounded on the door, and she knew it was him because he was shouting at the top on his lungs, “Open this damn door now!” She closed her eyes.
“If you don’t, I’ll get security to open it. When the hell did you change these locks?”
She realized that he used to have a copy of her apartment key and somewhere along the line he had either lost it or she had actually changed it.
She thought about it, then realized it was one more change that Riley had made when they were together because he felt it was absolutely ludicrous for anybody with that much hate in his heart to have access to her apartment like he did.
At the time she just laughed and said it was nothing. And now she realized that not only was it not nothing but it actually was something very important. And knowing that her father meant every word he had just bellowed, she got up and opened the door, letting him in.
He glared at her and muttered, “Damn good thing.”
“Yeah, and why is that?” she asked, staring at him.
One of the neighbors had opened their door at the pounding. Her father looked at him and glared, but she looked over at the neighbor and instead of smiling, mouthed, Help.
He frowned and immediately stepped back into his apartment.
She turned to her father and asked upfront, in a no-bullshit way, “Did you get Riley reassigned and deployed to a war zone?”
He stopped in his tracks, his eyebrows shooting up as he stared at her, but she saw that look, that acknowledgment. She slowly went back inside and sat down. “You did.”
“Yes. So what?” he asked, his tone hard. “It’s not like you gave a shit. He was a problem. He needed to be taken care of. I took care of it. That’s what I do. And don’t give me that look.”
She kept staring at him.
“You sit there looking at me like everything is so unfair or some other BS,” he quipped in a mocking tone, “because all the things I have ever done for you are things you just never wanted to know the details about.”
She stared at him and nodded slowly. “You’re right.
I never wanted to know the details. I never looked any further than the results.
I didn’t realize or even consider that anything ethically wrong was involved with everything that you do,” she stated, as she continued to stare at him. “Imagine my surprise when I found out.”
“What’s to be surprised about? You got what you wanted. You got rid of him.”
“No, that’s not what I wanted,” she corrected.
He narrowed his gaze at her and asked, “What is this all about?”
She gave a broken laugh. “I get that, for you, everything is just black-and-white. Nobody has a problem now because you’ve taken care of it all. You’ve sent people off to the front lines. You’ve done all kinds of horrible stuff, and you don’t care.”
“What is this about? Did he die or something?” He posed it like a question, with that note of possible hope. He pulled his phone out as if to check if he had received a notification.
“That’s really what you’re doing, isn’t it?”
“Doing what? What are you talking about?” he asked impatiently.
“You’re checking to see if you received a notification of his death.”
He looked at her and shrugged. “What do you care? You always need to follow up on plans to make sure everything goes off as expected, and, if they don’t, then you adjust the plan. What the hell is this all about anyway?”
She snorted. “I want you to leave now.”
He looked at her in surprise. “I have no intention of leaving. You have an event in a few hours,” he declared, “and I expect you to be there.”
“And if I’m not?” she asked, eyeing him quietly.
His eyebrows shot up. “I really wouldn’t want you to do that, but I can see that whatever mood you’re in right now is not conducive to a resolution. I don’t know what the hell is going on, and, if you won’t tell me, I can’t fix it.”
“I don’t want you to fix it. Not if your version of fixing things is sending people out to die.”
“Well, he didn’t die though, did he?”
“And the only reason you would know that is if you had been given a notification that he had passed on,” she noted. “How the hell am I supposed to reconcile that?”
“Reconcile what?” he asked. “He was a loser. You knew it. I knew it. Everybody knew it. The only thing we could do was move him out of the way. We did it with the most expedient process possible.” He laughed. “So, any kind of caterwauling on your part now is ridiculous.”
She let a breath out slowly. “Of course that would be the answer for you, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t even know what the hell this is all about.”
“So why are you here?” she asked, her tone sharp. “I’ve already asked you to leave, and yet, true to form, I don’t seem to have any rights, even in my own home. So, you’re not going to leave?”
He just stared at her and blinked, then came more pounding on the door.
“Police,” yelled the voice from outside. “Please open the door.”
She immediately walked to the door, but her father grabbed her arm. “You didn’t call the cops.”