Chapter Thirteen
Lawson was nowhere to be found. Security didn’t see him and the cameras around the convention center were of no help. The fact that there had been none in the area where they had fought Lawson definitely was a blow to Price’s mood.
As was Marty Goldman’s apparent lack of information about the man.
“He said he was one of the investors from a group I’ve been trying to get in touch with,” he’d told JJ and Price once they confirmed he was absolutely fine.
“He said he could get me into his higher ups’ good graces if I could pitch my newest idea to them here.
I—I didn’t have any of my notes or information, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. ”
So the panicked Marty they had seen had been because of business, not safety.
He wasn’t JJ’s brother, but she couldn’t help but feel sisterly and scold him.
“Next time a stranger asks you to come with him to a secluded place, don’t,” she’d said.
Marty, to his credit, looked sorrowful for his error in judgment. He made another one as he accepted her lie that she believed the man had been a scammer, ready to take his money.
Price, in hearing this, followed up with such a serious warning that both she and Marty had snapped to attention.
“If you ever see or hear from him again, immediately call me.”
Marty had agreed to the terms and JJ had lightly suggested he keep what happened quiet. Since he had been the one to wander off with a stranger and, in his mind, nearly get robbed, it was a concession he was more than willing to make.
After that, Price had simply turned to JJ and said four words that zipped her mouth shut tight.
“We’re going home now.”
The drive back took place in stony silence.
JJ didn’t know how she should break it. Or, really, what she should break it with. Price not enlisting the authorities for Lawson had been a surprise. Him not driving her directly to the department once they were back in Seven Roads? Also a surprise.
One she was glad to meet as they parked in the driveway.
Price’s driveway.
“Winnie is staying the night at a friend’s house,” he announced. “Let’s go.”
His tone was sharp but not particularly loud. JJ didn’t like the change from the happy-go-lucky man she had grown used to seeing. Then again, she had been the reason for the change.
She watched him exit the truck and walk around the hood.
He didn’t even look back at her as he went and started to unlock the front door.
I could run right now, JJ thought. There’s only two more names and now I know Lawson’s here. I don’t have to keep playing pretend. I can just hide.
JJ opened her door and then closed it softly behind her.
He may know who I am but if I wanted to, I could disappear from his life forever.
She walked up the sidewalk and paused as he opened the door.
I can do all of this alone. I don’t need him.
JJ followed Price into his home.
She didn’t have the mental bandwidth at the moment to think about why, for the first time ever, she was deciding to trust someone.
Instead, she let her instincts take over.
And, for whatever reason, they were at ease around Price Collins.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
Price’s voice broke through her thoughts with a start.
JJ shook her head.
“Nothing but bruising.” She tapped her side. “He only landed one hit and, thankfully, it was this side.” JJ stopped herself from adding that it was a lucky hit, considering she had just recovered from Price’s rib shot during their fight at Josiah’s. She cleared her throat and motioned to his chest.
“What about you? He slugged you pretty good from what I saw.”
Price’s face was impassive. She couldn’t read a thing on it.
“I’m fine,” he answered. “Want some water?”
“I’m good,” she said.
“Good.”
He walked off like the conversation was over.
JJ couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow as she followed him into the living room to the right.
Its decor was rustic and warm, covered in knickknacks and walls with framed pictures of Winnie and him through the years.
If she had been there under different circumstances, JJ would have liked to have taken a closer look at everything.
Instead, Price motioned to the couch.
No sooner was JJ sitting then he brought over a dining room chair. He sat it opposite her, a small coffee table between them, and then settled onto its seat.
Then those bright eyes of his were zeroed in on only her.
“It’s time you explain.”
JJ didn’t know what she expected.
Still, she found herself tamping down the urge to sigh.
Price had saved her life in the fire. At bare minimum he deserved her respect.
So, she started at the beginning without any more hesitation.
“My dad used to work for the FBI, dealing with white-collar crime cases in the South. His father had been conned out of all their family savings when he was a kid and, because of it, they had a lot of rough years.” JJ adjusted in her seat.
She hadn’t told this story to anyone and now, even though she was okay to tell Price, she felt wholly uncomfortable for it.
“But that made my dad work all the harder to help others avoid the same fate. So, he didn’t just do his work. He made sure he was really good at it.”
JJ wanted to smile for her father reaching his life’s dream. She only stopped herself because of the nightmare that had followed.
“When I was really little, there was this anonymous group of men in suits that fit the kind of criminal my dad went after. They cropped up in Tennessee and really started becoming a problem. That wasn’t my dad’s jurisdiction, but he followed the case like a football fan might follow a team’s schedule until eventually he met a man named Riker Shaw, an agent working the case.
They became fast friends and, eventually, Riker became my godfather. ”
Price didn’t stop her here, like she thought he might.
Instead, he kept listening with obvious rapt attention.
JJ continued, not exactly wanting to say what happened next but knowing she needed to do it all the same.
“A few years later, a branch of that anonymous group had popped up around Georgia and, finally, in my dad’s jurisdiction. By that point, he and Riker had become almost experts on the group, so Dad was the point person here.”
JJ smiled a little. She pointed to the wall behind Price but envisioned the city they had just come from.
“We actually didn’t live too far from Seven Roads when I was a kid,” she said. “In fact, before everything, I had been here a few times with my mom. She had a few friends we would occasionally visit. It was when I was younger though. And it was before the accident.”
JJ let out a quick breath.
Price’s bright eyes kept on shining on her.
“My dad was apparently finally able to get enough information on the group that he wasn’t just about to shut down the branch, but cut down the entire tree,” she continued.
“It was big news. News that he and Riker realized had reached the wrong people. So, one night, Dad loaded me and Mom up and had us racing to a safe house where Riker was going to meet us. We didn’t make it. ”
The small moon-shaped scar on her palm felt hot. JJ knew it wasn’t. She knew the mark her fingernails had bit into her hand were old and worn.
Still, she had to fight the urge to rub at it. To try and smooth it away.
Because the ache in her definitely wasn’t going anywhere.
“A man chased us down and drove us off the road. It was raining so the accident, which might not have been so bad, was fatal.”
She could see Price; she could see her parents hanging motionless upside down in front her.
“I was the only one who woke up,” she said, keeping her voice as even as possible. “I had no idea what was going on but then there was Riker, yelling at me to get out.”
JJ couldn’t help but pause here.
She admitted something to him that she truly had never wanted to say aloud before.
“I’ll never forget the face he made after he checked on my parents and then looked back at me. I knew it then. They were gone. They were gone but it also wasn’t done. The bad guys were still coming.”
JJ took in a breath. She didn’t pause anymore.
“Riker didn’t get me too far, despite his best efforts. We were caught by two men, and, weirdly enough, we were lucky that one of them was the actual leader of the group. A man named Jonathan Cole.”
Price’s eyebrows pulled together.
“Any relation to our friend Lawson Cole from the elevator?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Jonathan was his father. And, let it be known right now, Lawson is nothing like his father.” She leaned forward a little and held up two fingers.
“Jonathan had only two rules that he made sure no one broke, no matter what scheme or activity they were running. That was you don’t hurt women, and you don’t hurt children. No matter what.”
“Chivalrous,” Price commented.
She nodded.
“And the only reason why the Ortiz children are alive.” JJ put the fingers down and started to rub at her palm.
“Jonathan struck up a deal with Riker right then and there. If Riker didn’t release the evidence, Jonathan would keep the secret that not everyone had died in the car accident.
He would also cover our tracks until we could leave our lives behind and start new ones.
Riker, a single man who had never dreamed of having a family and then suddenly had a ten-year-old to look after, took the deal.
We left, got new identities, and have lived as father and daughter ever since with no trouble ever coming our way.
“I had a good childhood with Riker. I really did. He gave me the world and really did become a second dad to me. He also helped me work through a lot of emotions that I struggled with, about knowing my dad’s killers were just out there.
I even thought for a bit that I had moved on as much as I could.
But then Jonathan Cole himself visited me last year. ”
This was where JJ’s emotions fluctuated a bit.
This part was new.
Price’s eyebrow rose. JJ still couldn’t forget her own surprise when she had seen the old man for the first time since she was a kid.
“Apparently, he had known for a while where I was but had kept his promise through the years. He’d worked hard to not let anyone know that there had been survivors in the accident.
He saved a life to pay for his man taking a life, is what he’d said.
The only problem was, he’d kept the secret too well.
He didn’t even tell us that my mother had also survived.
So we had no idea that she was pregnant. ”
This part undeniably hurt. JJ had to speak in facts not emotions or she’d be crying soon. Telling Price had been hard enough. Losing it on his couch…that would be too much.
And she couldn’t afford that right now.
Her words came out cold for her effort. She muscled through them the best she could.
“Jonathan said he never told her that I had survived either and so, thinking she lost her entire family, she accepted the protection he gave her and hid away from the world throughout her pregnancy. Then, when the time came to give birth, she had several complications. They continued to be an issue months after my brother was born and she passed away before he turned one.”
Despite her best efforts, a lump formed in JJ’s throat.
She would never know the end of her mother’s life, and it tore at her soul to think of her going through everything by herself.
It was one reason finding her brother had become everything to her.
JJ clenched her hand into a fist. She eased it out in the next moment.
“Jonathan said he purposely lost track of my brother after that, thinking that knowing anything more than a general location would put him in danger. All he knew was the town he had gone to live in, nothing else. And that’s when he told me about Seven Roads. And that’s why I came.”
Price’s brow was still drawn in together.
“But why did he tell you at all? Why did he reach out after all of these years?”
“Because the old man was dying and I was the last stop on his attempt-at-redemption tour,” she said.
“He felt guilty,” Price guessed.
JJ shook her head. She laughed. It was unkind.
“No. He even told me he didn’t regret what he did. What he did regret was what he believed would happen once he was gone.”
“You mean after he died?”
JJ nodded.
“Apparently, word got around their organization that he had let evidence disappear that could destroy all of them. Then, after some digging, they found out that he’d not only let it go, but he’d let it go with a surprise survivor from the accident.
Able Ortiz’s flesh-and-blood child. The only problem was, they thought it was the wrong one. ”
“Your brother.”
“My brother, someone I didn’t even know existed until that moment.”
“That’s why Lawson is looking for him,” Price realized. “He thinks your brother has access to this all-destroying evidence?”
She nodded.
“Jonathan said he was holding off any moves the best he could but, after he died, he knew his son would use finding and officially dealing with the evidence and our family as a way to vie for the new leader of the group, instead of Jonathan’s right-hand man.”
“He’s going to use it as a power play.”
JJ nodded again.
“Jonathan told me he couldn’t outright stop his son because, at the end of the day, it was his son, but that he could give me a fighting chance to maybe save my brother.
” JJ opened her arms wide and motioned around them.
“I thought I was faster than Lawson but, apparently, he’s moving just as quick. ”
She could have stopped there. Price wouldn’t know that she’d held back.
Yet, those bright eyes kept looking at her like she was as normal as she had been when he’d picked her up earlier that night.
And that meant something to her.
That meant a lot to her, actually.
So, JJ added one last thing to her life’s worth of chaos.
“What Jonathan Cole and his son don’t know is that Riker and I have our own secret about that night too.”
Price’s eyebrow rose again.
JJ bit the bullet.
“We never had Dad’s evidence to take them down. We bluffed.”