Chapter 8 Lucy
LUCY
The door to my father’s law office creaks open like it resents me just as much as my father does. Or maybe it knows I’m an interloper, not on my father’s side.
After all, it’s the reason I’m creeping around in here on Saturday morning, in the hope I’ll be left alone to investigate exactly what is in my father’s hidden drawer.
It’s been on my mind since last night, wondering what secrets are waiting in that false bottom and on that phone.
Now I’m in, the office is deserted, and I can get the files out of there.
The office smells like my father. Expensive cologne, stale coffee, and the seedy fragrance of misused power linger in the air. The desk is exactly as I left it yesterday evening.
After locking the door behind me, I walk to the chair, wondering what it must feel like for this to be the sum total of your ambition.
One that lacks morality and gravitates around dollars and cents.
Someone once said that, at the end of the day, when it’s just you in your bathroom, brushing your teeth before bed, you need to look in the mirror and feel proud of what you accomplished.
And I don’t know how a man like my father manages to do that.
It takes less than five minutes to pull everything out onto his desk. With the phone plugged in to charge again, I turn it on. But, as I expected, it is password protected. The screen flickers to life, asking for a passcode. Six digits.
I try 112259…his date of birth. No luck.
I try mine and my mother’s.
Still nothing.
I know if I try too many times, I might get locked out permanently.
I slam the phone down, my frustration rising.
I don’t know what I thought would happen this morning. I’m not even sure why I hadn’t thought about the password.
My father is an intelligent man. For all I know, the password date could be the year the Supreme Court was founded or President Nixon resigned.
There are about ten brown manilla folders and two black notebooks.
I open the first notebook. Its corners are tattered; its pages so well flicked through that they curl.
Inside are dates. Dollar amounts. Initials.
RD - 15K, cash envelope - July.
WG - 5K, crypto transfer - August.
My pulse jumps.
It’s a ledger.
And if there is one thing I love more than the law, it’s a good puzzle. The initials in the book remain consistent for a period of time, changing only every four or five years.
If I can convert the initials into names, I might be able to cross reference them with organizations or businesses. And if I can convert them into businesses, I might be able to then match those with Dad’s client base or connections to other cases.
It hasn’t even occurred to me, for a moment, that they might be legitimate transactions. Because if they were, they’d surely be on the company system, on a laptop, kept in digital format, and connected to annual company filings.
The second notebook is formatted differently. There’s a sticky note jammed inside.
MRMC - Q4. Understood.
A second page says Rebels.
Midtown Rebels Motorcycle Club.
My heart lurches in my chest.
Didn’t know the lawyer had a pretty daughter.
There isn’t any other explanation. My father was familiar with the Midtown Rebels in some way. And they are very familiar with him.
Grudge’s words from last night come rushing back to me.
It’s a fucking warning, Luce. One of those bastards walked into Wraith’s home and murdered his wife and kid. You think they’ll blink coming after you?
My father’s heart attack and stroke were an accident. I’m not sure how the Rebels could ever have manufactured the timing of those events.
But there’s a very real chance they may want me to provide whatever services or payments my father was doing for them. I try to see if I can make sense of exactly what that is from the notebook, but it’s going to take me a while to decode and untangle the content.
A loud bang outside my father’s private office makes me jump, and I quickly shove the papers back in the drawer and kick it shut. My heart races as I stand and head to the door, unlock it, and pull it open.
As I do, Nancy appears at the top of the stairs that lead from the reception area. She’s pink-cheeked, her hair windblown. “Hey. Morning, Lucy. Sorry about that. The wind snatched the front door out of my hand.”
I glance toward the staircase and realize that, as a habit of my job, I’m trying to figure out if Nancy could have climbed the stairs in the time it took me to hide the files and open the door.
Shaking off the flutter of fear, I smile. “Morning, Nancy. Catching up on some work?”
She nods. “Somehow, all my admin got away from me. Thought I would just pop in and get on top of the list. You?”
I like Nancy. At least, I think I do. My gut tells me she’s not involved in whatever my father is, not least because she’s a woman. But I lie anyway. “I have some client work from back home I’m trying to keep moving.”
“Well, I won’t keep you. Don’t stay too late.”
I smile. “Just another hour, maybe.”
I close the door and lock it before returning to the desk.
It takes a moment to pull everything out of the drawer again.
The first of the manilla envelopes seems to contain email threads and wire transfer receipts.
My guess is that the companies are dummy corporations, making them harder to trace, but not impossible.
I’m scanning everything quickly to get a sense of what is there, but I’ll need to sit down and go line-for-line, extracting every clue from it.
There’s also a sealed file with a note that says sentencing packet.
Could that be Zach’s? I reach to slip my fingers beneath the lip of the envelope to open it but pause for a second. Once I do, my father will know someone has been through the contents of his hidden drawer.
Someone hammers on the office door.
“Lucy?” It’s a deep voice, likely one of my father’s associates.
“One second,” I say, shoving everything, including the phone, into my tote bag, even as my hands shake.
I hurry to the door and unlock it. Standing just outside is Adam, my father’s junior associate.
“Nancy mentioned you were here. You locked the door?” he asked.
“Common practice at my current firm to ensure confidentiality,” I say, making up an excuse on the fly. “You don’t do that here?”
He shakes his head. “What are you doing here on a Saturday?”
“Client work from my own firm.” I smile as my heart races and sweat gathers under my arms. “And I needed to pick up some things to take to the hospital to see my father.”
Visiting him was not in my plans for the day, and I’ll have to decide whether I now feel obliged to go or not.
“Oh, right.”
An awkward pause hangs between us as Adam tilts his head to peer over my shoulder into the room. He can see nothing except a tote bag on the table.
“Did you need something else?” I ask.
Adam shakes his head. “I just wanted to return this.” He holds the copy of the Harvard Law Review he borrowed, and hands me the beast of a book.
“Great. Thanks. I’ll put it back.” My lips feel taut as I force a smile onto my face.
“Good. Well, have a great day.”
“You too.”
I return the book to the shelf and then lock the door again. I reach for the notebooks, but it’s clear there are no easy answers so I leave them where they are. And given the way my heart lurches at every little sound, I know I won’t be able to focus here.
By the time I have zipped my tote bag tightly closed, and locked the hidden drawer, the hallway is empty.
I place my hand over the tote bag on my shoulder. Now, it contains precious cargo. Step one will be figuring out how to break into the phone. And deciding if I’m going to open the envelope.
I hurry along the hallway and down the stairs, praying I won’t have to make small talk with anyone else.
When I step out of the law firm, the sun is shining, but the air is crisp. I pull my jacket tightly around my middle and head toward my father’s truck.
Anxiety pulses through me. A blend of fear of being caught, with the heady power of feeling as though I uncovered something important.
It pushes my feet forward on the sidewalk as I hurry to the truck, until I also see two men standing next to their bikes in front of it.
The patches on their backs are that of the Midtown Rebels.
As if sensing my gaze, they look up at the same time and see me, and there is an immediate shift in their body language.
“Baby lawyer,” the one who kissed my hand the previous evening says.
Gulch.
So close in name to Grudge, and yet, worlds away.
The second man stands a little straighter and reaches for something inside his cut. I tense, fearing the worst.
“What do you want?” I ask, mad at the slight waver of fear in my voice. I take a deep breath to control it.
He smiles. “My president just wants to talk with you.”
I glance around. “Just spit it out, whatever it is. I don’t have time for games.”
There are people milling about farther down the street. The Rainbow Diner is just a block away.
It’s closer to me than it is to them. But they’re probably faster than I am if I run.
“I have no intention of speaking with your president.” I start the slow and steady edging away, backtracking to the intersection.
“If you value your father’s life, you will.”
A million negotiating strategies flash through my head. Ones that get me information, ones that get me to safety, one that uncovers motivations. But I opt for the obvious. “You overestimate just how much my father’s life actually means to me.”
My comment catches them off guard as they spare a quick glance at one another. It takes me a split second to decide.
The soles of my shoes slap firmly on the sidewalk as I clasp the bag tightly and hurry toward the diner. I try not to focus on what the bikers are doing, but it’s impossible to ignore the thud of boots as they move toward me.
My run turns into a sprint, and so does theirs.
“Shit,” I mutter. My phone is buried in my bag, which jostles on my shoulder. My breath comes out in crisp puffs.
Weirdly, I wonder when I should scream.
They’re closing in on me, but just as I get close to the diner and finally cry out for help, a large truck swerves in front of me. Grudge is driving, but his mom is in the passenger seat.
He’s yelling at his mom, who jumps out of the truck and grabs my elbow, hurrying the two of us toward the diner.
I glance over my shoulder as she drags me, and I’m relieved to see the flashing lights of a squad car.
“Keep running, Lucy,” Corinne Williams says, without the hint of a waver in her voice.
Meanwhile, my knees shake. Hell, my whole body does.
She shoves me into a booth away from the window. “Sit. I’ll be back.”
It’s impossible to sit when the sheriff is shouting instructions and Grudge’s truck obstructs my view. I can’t see him or the two other bikers.
And I want to at least be a witness to whatever is going on.
“Drink this,” Corinne says, slapping a cup of coffee down on the table, the dark liquid sloshing over the edge. “Then get out of here as soon as this bullshit is wrapped up.”
The sharp words hurt more than just about any I’ve heard.
Because once, I looked at Corinne as the mom I always wished I had.
She remembered my birthday, even made me a cake.
She knitted a sweater in a rich amethyst color because she thought it would suit me.
And she welcomed me into her home and family, telling me I was the daughter she longed for.
When I did what I did to Zach, I didn’t just lose him, I lost the idea of the family I dreamed about. A functional one, that talked, that ate together and genuinely enjoyed each other’s company.
When my father spoke, my heart would catch in my chest in fear of whatever it was he was about to say. When Corinne spoke, I leaned in, ready to hear whatever it was she wanted to say.
“I’m sorry, Corinne,” I say.
She places her hands on her hips as she looks out the window. “Yeah, well, you’re way too late with that, so save it.”
It hurts almost as much as her son’s response to seeing me. Maybe it’s self-centered to consider myself in the damage I caused, but I lost a whole family that day, not just Zach.
“It wasn’t as simple as you think,” I say. I hug my hands around the mug, the tightness in my chest easing as Grudge climbs back into his truck and parks it properly. When I have a clear view of the street, I see that the other bikers have left.
The knowledge that the crisis has been averted allows my heart rate to normalize.
Grudge stomps into the diner, scans around, and sees us. “You okay, Ma?” he asks, placing a hand on her shoulder. When she nods reassuringly, he turns his gaze to me. “What the fuck was that about?”
I can see the rage and confusion in his eyes when he looks at me. Yet it’s hard not to collapse into him. To let him wrap me in those big strong arms of his while he reassures me everything is going to be okay.
“I don’t know.” It doesn’t feel good to lie to him when he was ready to step in front of me, again, without explanation.
But l can’t share my growing hypotheses about my father’s connection to the Rebels.
Not when I don’t have the full picture. I’d never present a half-baked case to the jury, especially when the story might change with further discovery.
At least, that’s what I try to convince myself.
“You don’t know why two Rebel bikers were charging toward you?” He tugs a hand through his hair. “Good thing we turned the fucking corner when we did. You really want to end up in their crosshairs, Luce?”
I’ve stood in a courtroom and held my own beneath the withering stare of prosecutors, witnesses, subject matter experts, and detectives. But the weight of Corinne’s and Grudge’s glares is enough to make me wilt internally.
“No,” I say quietly. “I really don’t.” Finally, I look up at him. “I don’t want most of what is happening right now, but we don’t always get a choice, do we?”
Then, I place my cup of coffee on the table and try to keep my head up as I leave the diner before I ruin both our lives all over again by telling him everything.