Chapter 34 Lucy #2
“Oh, my goodness,” she gasps when she sees me. “What happened to your head?”
I cross the room and sink down beside her, our knees touching. My heart drops, and I suddenly wish with every part of my being that I had good news to share with her. But I’m not a child, and she has never really been my shield.
“I’m okay. But I need to tell you something, Mom.”
Her chin lifts a fraction, and there’s a wary caution in her eyes. “What is it?”
“It’s about Dad.” My voice is calm as I find that place inside that allows me to make closing arguments, even when I’m nervous I haven’t done enough for my client. “Dad’s work. His clients. He’s not clean. He’s been paying judges. Bribing. Fixing trial outcomes.”
Mom’s hand shakes as she puts it to her chest. “I knew something was wrong recently.”
I take Mom’s other hand. It’s elegant, and cold.
“It’s bigger than that. Way bigger. And has been happening for well over a decade. Worse, Mom. The Midtown Rebels Motorcycle Club are involved and there is no way out for him.”
I watch the truth hit her. Her mouth opens, and there’s a soft sound, like a moan, but not quite. She looks around the den, as if she can see her entire life slipping away.
“Are you sure?” she manages, finally.
“Yes. And I wish I didn’t have to tell you this, but he’s been having an affair. For years. It’s connected. The Rebels used that to blackmail him. To ruin his reputation if he didn’t help.”
A tear escapes the corner of Mom’s eye. “So, he had no choice?”
“Dad is complicit. His illegal actions go back farther than the Rebels. He set up Zach. My ex-husband never went back to Justin Loeb’s apartment.
Dad set it up, so it looked like he did.
He’s ruined lives, including yours and mine, because of greed.
And some of those choices came back to haunt him when the Rebels found out. I’m sorry.”
“Of course, he did.” There’s no further denial. Just an exhausted acceptance of the truth. “Of course, he did,” she repeats.
“Mom. To make it right with Zach, I need to expose all of this. As a lawyer, I’d remind you that you have spousal privilege and can never be made to share anything about my father.
But as your daughter, who wants you to live a happy life, I think you should distance yourself as far from him as you can. ”
“What do you need from me?”
“I’m going to search the house for further evidence. A laptop. Notebooks. Any kind of portable storage device. I’m not totally sure.”
For a moment, Mom is still as a statue. With pursed lips, her eyes are fixed on something outside of the window. She looks regal. A tear cuts a clean line through the make-up she carefully applies every day, for a man who stopped seeing her a long time ago.
She inhales. It’s ragged around the edges. Then, she looks at me. “Will you help me through this, Lucy? I’ve tried and failed at being a perfect wife, and as a result, never tried to be a perfect mother. It’s time I switched that balance.”
I shake my head. “I don’t need you to be perfect, Mom. I just need to know who you really are.”
She laughs, shakily. “I’m not even sure I know the answer to that question.”
I squeeze her hand. “We’ll figure it out.”
She nods. “A raid. I overheard your father asking for there to be a raid on the Outlaws’ compound.
I don’t know who he was asking. But two days before his stroke and heart attack, he heard from the police chief that you and Zach were seen together in the station parking lot when you first came home. And he was furious about that.”
That explained the raid I’d witnessed. And it sharpens the case I intend to bring for Catfish’s injuries while being arrested if he chooses to go forward with the claim. If there were no real grounds beyond an angry father, the warrant was flawed.
“Thank you, Mom.”
She stands, straightens her shoulders. And I get a flash of the inner strength my mom isn’t even aware she has, yet. “If you are going to start looking, can I at least go and make us some coffee? It might be a long afternoon.”
“That would be amazing.”
I follow her out of the den, but as she heads to the stairs, I walk down the hallway, where my father’s office door is closed. It’s ominous.
Looming.
The knife Catfish loaned me sits sheathed and heavy in my coat pocket.
“You’re being ridiculous,” I mutter to myself, taking a deep breath. But I stand still, listening for anything that would give someone else’s presence away.
But there’s no noise. So, I push the door open. His office is at the back of the house, paneled in wood the color of expensive whiskey. The familiar scents of old leather and tobacco linger.
I take off my jacket and roll up the sleeves of my sweater and start with the most obvious place I can think of: my father’s desk. Apart from learning my father has an expensive pen habit, it’s an uneventful search, as there isn’t a false bottom in any of these drawers.
“Too obvious,” I mutter.
I look at all the books on the bookshelves. Pulling each one off to see if there is a key inside will take an age. My gut tells me it would be too obvious to have the same kind of hiding place, but one of the books on the second shelf looks a little out of place with the others.
I tap on the blue leather spine of a volume of Restatements of Trust Law.
I pull it out, open it, and…nothing.
Of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy.
So, I have no choice. I need to start at one corner of the room and be meticulous in checking everything.
“I brought some chocolate chip cookies too,” Mom says when she arrives with a tray.
“Thanks,” I say, climbing to my feet. The coffee is hot, and, at some point, I’m going to need something more nutritious than baked goods to eat. But I take a cookie anyway.
“There’s a safe,” Mom says, opening one of the low cupboards I hadn’t checked yet. “Your father thinks I don’t know about it. But I saw him tuck something in it, once.” She pulls out the contents of the cupboard, then wiggles something around before removing a false back. “There.”
She enters a code, and the safe beeps. “You know the code?” I ask.
“Your father is a rather predictable creature of habit, in many ways. The house alarm, his pin code for the bank, the password for his laptop and phone. It’s the same four numbers repeated once or twice.
He always complained about how modern passwords need something akin to hieroglyphics to pass muster.
” She hands me another stack of notebooks and an old laptop. “Is this what you were looking for?”
I swallow deeply, trying to bite back tears of relief as I run my fingers over the black leather of the notebooks.
“Lucy?”
“Yeah, Mom?”
She places her hands on her knees. “What’s going to happen? To me?” She gestures around the room. “To all of this?”
“Dad is going to be convicted of fraud, bribery, and other related financial crimes. If I was his prosecutor, I’d seek to freeze and seize assets I believed to be linked to the criminal activity.
They’ll focus on whether the asset came from an illegal source of money.
This home was inherited by Dad from his grandparents, so, likely, it could be argued you should be able to keep your share as a joint asset.
It’s going to be complicated and take time. ”
Mom sighs. “Can I do anything before he’s charged?”
I shake my head. “Better to keep your status as an innocent spouse. But we’ll figure it out, Mom. I have savings. You won’t end up homeless. Hell, you can live here until they say you can’t.”
My phone rings, making both of us jump. Catfish’s name appears on my screen. He gave me his number while we were at the police station.
“Hey, Catfish. What did you find?” I ask when I answer.
“You need to get the fuck out of there or find a weapon and hide. Two men are attempting to get in the rear.”
I run to the window, keeping behind the lush curtains, and peer cautiously out. “Shit, I see them.” They’re dressed in black, their heads are down.
My pulse pounds so hard, I can feel the stitches in my temple pull.
“The club are heading to your location,” Catfish says. “But, Lucy, you better fucking hide.”
“Grudge?” I ask, shoving the stack in my hand to my mother and gesturing for her to lock it back up in the safe.
Understanding my tone, she hurries to do as I say.
“Haven’t reached him, yet. But I’ll keep trying.”
I don’t hang up, but I look to Mom. “We need to hide. Did Dad have any weapons?”
Mom closes the safe door and puts the false back and contents into the cupboard. “Yes. In his bedside table. He kept it loaded, even though he knows I hated it.”
A faint sound of shattering glass comes from the kitchen.
Mom sobs.
“We need to go,” I hiss. “Go hide in the bathroom off the den. There’s a gap at the bottom of the tub that’s hidden when the door is opened. And if they see an open door, they’ll be less likely to check inside. Go.”
“What about you?” she asks.
“Go,” I hiss.
I creep to Dad’s room and hurry to the bedside table. The drawer in the first one is empty, but I hurry around the bed and open the drawer of the second bedside table. I hate guns, but I’ve never been more relieved to hold its cold, solid weight in my palm.
The alarm system is off so I’m uncertain if the security company will be aware of what is happening.
“Catfish,” I whisper, dropping to the floor.
“Lucy. You good?”
“Armed and hiding. They’re in the house. Can you get Wren to trigger the alarm somehow. It’s currently off. Maybe the noise will scare them.”
“Wren’s saying that they’re going to try. Keep me on the line. I won’t speak. Just listen. Throw me clues, if you can.”
“If it’s in here, I’ll find it,” a man says in the hallway, and I recognize the voice as Adam.
“They’re in,” I whisper, but so close I can’t risk saying another word. The bed is high enough off the floor that I can see if anyone enters the room, but not high enough that I’m able to slide beneath it.
“You were meant to find out where all the files were hidden at the hospital,” a second man says. His voice is gruffer, lower.
Shit.
If they are searching for something, I have only a minute or two before one of them thinks to come and check this side of the bed. Without hanging up on Catfish, I quickly fire off a text message to Grudge.
Me: Help. Dad’s home office. Adam from law office plus one. Hurry.
Me: I love you
“How the hell did I know that two Outlaws would show up?” Adam says, and I hear a drawer slide open in the office. “And it’s not like De Bose can speak, right now. Getting anything out of the guy is like wringing a rock.”
“Yeah. Well. Whether he speaks to us or not, we’ll have to get rid of him. He’s of no use to us like this and knows too much. You check in here, I’m gonna check his bedroom.”
Boots come into sight, and I squeeze my eyes shut, for a second. My life flashes before me. For two seconds, I let myself believe they aren’t going to see me.
Then…
“Who the fuck are you?” A man kicks the gun out of my hand before he drags me to my feet. He’s wearing double denim and has shaggy hair and a scraggly beard.
My feet drag along the wooden floor as I try to stand. By the time I’ve stood, the stranger has his gun pointed straight at me.
Adam comes and stands just inside the room, calm and neat in his all-black outfit. His expression is carefully composed. “That’s De Bose’s daughter. The one I was telling you about.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” I demand. I have no clue what happens next. Maybe they hurt me. Maybe they kidnap me. Maybe he’ll blast my face off with that gun. Defiance and terror collide.
But I’m not going down as a coward.
“You took something that didn’t belong to you,” the man says.
Adam chuckles at that. And then, I notice the similarity between the men. The same roman nose. The same deep-set eyes. Maybe they’re related.
“Adam,” I say. “Whatever this is, don’t do it. Don’t hurt me.”
Adam glances at the man I assume from looks alone is his father. “That’s not my call.”
Oh, God. The floor tilts beneath me.
The stranger jabs the cold gun against my jaw. “Your father had a job. A responsibility to the Midtown Rebels.”
“And now you know about it,” Adam says.
Frantically, I search for something to say to pacify them until help gets here. “I barely know a thing and haven’t exposed anything.”
“Yet,” the man says. “But I don’t intend to let you get that far. And killing you is a side benefit. Adam and Gulch tell me you’re intimate with Grudge.”
“It’s no secret I was married to him, once. But that was a very long time ago.”
“Kellan Granger was my brother,” the man says.
“And Grudge hit him so hard that day he protected Butcher in prison, he left him with life-changing injuries. Maybe we should send you back to Grudge in the same condition.” He tips his head to Adam.
“Tie her up and we’ll take her to the truck when we get out of here. ”
So, I do the only thing I can think of.
I pray that the Outlaws get here fast.