Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
HAYLEY
My worry for Stone was through the roof. I kept looking at the clock. Looking at my phone. Looking at the clock again. I kept my eyes outside and my ears pointed toward the road, hoping I’d hear a bike. Hoping Stone would come let me know he was okay himself. Or at the very least, call.
But there was nothing.
Nine rolled around. Then ten. And as it pushed eleven, my mind began to swirl with all sorts of things.
Had Stone taken my advice? Were the guys okay?
Had my father apprehended them in whatever setup he had going on?
For some reason, my father had immersed himself in the idea of taking down this club.
And while I couldn’t blame him for the reasons, I wondered where his real motivation was coming from.
There was plenty that didn’t add up, and I knew when my father became obsessed, he bent the rules.
Skewed things to fit his motive until he could find hard evidence of something else going on.
I didn’t understand why my father was like that or why he had dedicated his career to undercover work and infiltrating motorcycle crews.
Granted, my father did more than that. He did regular detective work as well.
But it seemed as if his growing focus was gangs.
Hell, he had traveled out of the state three times to places like New Mexico and Arizona because his reputation for taking down crews like Stone’s was growing within the departments.
Rumors circulated about his reputation. I wasn’t an idiot. I wasn’t blind to what my father did.
I was blind to why he did it, though.
I didn’t understand anything about why my father was really doing this.
Or why Stone was wrapped up in all this bad shit.
But I trusted him. More than my own father, actually.
Which felt weird. I had always trusted my father.
But these past couple of years raised a lot of questions about him.
Questions I found no answers to in his office.
Despite the answers that should have been there.
I sat down on the couch around midnight and sighed.
My legs hurt from pacing. My head hurt from thinking.
It was dark outside, and all I could see were the stars on the horizon.
The few stars the skyline of San Diego afforded me in the dead of night.
What would happen if my father found out I’d tipped Stone and his guys off?
What would happen to me if he found out I was involved with Stone?
Would I be arrested? Aiding and abetting? Would I go to jail, just like them?
You crossed a line, Hayley.
It was true. I crossed a line I couldn’t come back from.
Despite the fact that I didn’t hand over the pictures I took, I still tipped off men who were seen as criminals.
I had officially taken a side, whether I understood that at the time or not.
My father would see it no other way. He’d see it as me taking their side instead of his. Seeing things their way instead of his.
“Guess we’ll cross that bridge if, and when, he finds out,” I murmured to myself.
I pulled out my phone and checked for any phone calls.
None from Stone and none from my father.
I pulled up a message to Stone and typed it up quickly, telling him to let me know when he was safe.
If he was safe. I hovered my finger over the green button to send, knowing damn good and well this could come back to haunt me if they had been caught.
If Stone’s phone was in evidence, eventually they would find my text to him.
Our phone calls. All of this would come back on me, and all because of my own actions.
“You’re already in deep,” I said.
I sent off the text and then pulled my laptop onto my thighs.
I needed to pass the time somehow so my heart rate would settle down.
I pulled up the internet search and decided to do a little pop culture investigating.
I typed in “Lost Boys MC” into the search bar and started opening tabs.
There wasn’t much, to be honest. No matter the variation I typed, I only got two or three tabs out of the searches, most of them conspiracy blogs. A couple of them local newspapers.
And all of my tabs only had good things to say about the crew.
Local MC Rallies Around Soldier’s Funeral, Wards Off Protestors.
Lost Boys MC Gun Down Senator’s Almost-Killer.
Local MC Holds Charity Event at Bar, Benefits Children With Cancer.
Everything I read was wonderful. I took in stories about the crew helping people in the neighborhood and donating to charities in all corners of the city.
I read about how they took down our Senator’s almost-assassin three years ago when he came into town to give a massive election speech.
Story after story about the crew helping with funeral protestors and keeping the people of San Diego safe.
Why would my father go after a crew that apparently did wonderful work for the community?
I closed out all the tabs and pulled up a clean search history. I erased all the cookies and data, anything that could clog up what I was about to type in. Then, after drawing in a deep breath, I typed it in.
Rose Woolf, obituary.
If my father didn’t have this information in his office, I knew I’d be able to find it in public records. But my original search didn’t turn up anything. I pulled up the online public records for obituaries in the area and typed in my mother’s name. And still, nothing.
“Maybe it’s under her maiden name,” I murmured.
I typed in every form of her name I knew. I used her first and middle name. First and last initial. First name and maiden name. I tried looking it up by her birthdate. Hell, I tried looking it up by her death date.
And I couldn’t find anything.
I furrowed my brow as I continued searching.
I combed through records. Archives. I used my father’s login information I knew from way back when on the secured backend of the police website, trying to figure it all out for myself.
I dug through it all for a few minutes before I closed everything out, hoping I didn’t raise any red flags at twelve thirty at night.
There’s nothing.
I tossed my laptop off to the side and sat back into the couch.
What the hell did that mean? Why wasn’t there any record of my mother’s death?
No certificate, despite the fact that my father told me countless times where the accident had occurred.
Right in the heart of San Diego. There was no formal obituary as was almost always run in the newspapers.
Nothing in their online archives about it and nothing when I plainly searched her name on the web.
I really needed to speak with my father.
It was almost one o’clock in the morning, and I gave up hope of hearing from anyone.
I’d know by morning if things were okay or if I had fucked up.
If Stone was caught, the police would be banging down my damn door, wondering why we were calling and texting and shit like that.
I’d be able to call my father in the morning anyway.
Ask him how he was doing. How things went.
Then, I could ask him about all the questions running through my tired mind.
Like why he never talked about my mother. Or why he never talked about her death. Or why I couldn’t remember much from her funeral, if anything at all. Why we never went to her graveside, and why I couldn’t ever get him to regale me with memories of her.
Me, her own damn daughter.
“My father’s hiding something,” I murmured.
Seeds of doubt planted themselves in my mind. I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes, feeling them beginning to ache. My head pounded. My body felt weak. And as all sorts of questions ran through my head, scary little dots began to connect.
What if my father didn’t talk about my mother because she was alive?
I shook the thought away and pulled a blanket over me.
I was getting ahead of myself. I needed sleep.
In the morning, I could go over to my father’s place like I always did for breakfast and ask him.
Point blank. That way, I could get a read on him.
Like I did this morning after mentioning the club to him.
The only thing you’ve got is your gut.
It was a mantra my father chanted to me all the time as a child.
He taught me that, when all else looked as if it was failing around me, I could trust my gut.
And right now, my gut told me my father was the liar.
My father was the one with the issue. My gut told me that Stone and his guys were good people.
Maybe caught up in some shit, but good people trying to do good things.
It made me sick to think about the fact that my father was lying about my mother.
I closed my eyes and felt the couch cushions swallow me whole.
I sank into its comfort, closing my eyes and letting my mind spiral.
The questions kept popping up. The mistrust for my father grew.
Tears sprang to my eyes, as I pulled the blanket up to my chin, trying to shield myself from the world as much as possible.
A week and a half. I’d been back a week and a half, and my life was crumbling around me.
Things I knew were concrete facts about my life became nothing but unanswered questions.
Theories, if anything. The man I thought I could trust with my life, I didn’t even trust with my mind any longer.
And the men my father taught me my entire life never to trust were the men I trusted more than my own conscience.
Despite Stone’s rugged and gruff demeanor, I had more faith in him than my father. I placed more stock in his word than my own damn father’s. It made me sick to my stomach and yet somehow made a sick bit of sense.
My father was prejudiced against motorcycles crews.
And I was almost certain it had something to do with my mother as a person and not her death.