Chapter 19
NINETEEN
CAL
Lane takes Copper and has him follow us, looking like he might be a bit carsick but pretending he’s not so he doesn’t break his “cool guy” routine.
When we reach the room where we’d left Audrey and Thomas, Ned thankfully has a handle on things.
“The rest of my people, are they okay?” he asks, sounding anxious.
“They are. We’ve told them to get out of here. It’s not safe,” Grayson explains.
I can feel Ned’s relief when these words reach him. “Thank god. I was… I never should have pulled anyone into this. I never should have risked anyone’s life but my own. It was foolish and I… I thought I could make him pay for her death.”
“Let’s talk about it in the SUV. You can go with us.
Audrey, you’re coming too,” Grayson decides as he grabs her bound hands and starts dragging her toward the door.
She willingly follows him out to where the SUV pulls up.
We load everyone into it, which is a tight fit, especially when the pig bulldozes his way to where my feet should go before they’re rudely shoved out of the way as the pig lies down flat.
I now have to rest my feet on Brigs, which gets glares out of Felix like he thinks I should hold my legs up in the air while his pig lives in comfort.
“Ned, what do you have for us?” I ask while Antonio drives, much to Lane’s horror, although he’s back to being a model citizen as he heads away from the marijuana farm.
“How are you all involved?” he asks, so Grayson catches him up on what’s going on and why Grayson joined him, including using an alias in case his name got back to Lt. Allen.
Ned sighs, sounding mentally and physically exhausted.
His injuries aren’t severe, but one eye is swollen shut and he’s bloody and bruised.
“I worked with Leonard—Lt. Allen—here and there for years before I started to notice strange occurrences, which led to where we are today.
Things like military vehicles missing after hours without being checked out before returning by the next morning.
Transports going from different locations than we were originally told.
So I began monitoring it and soon realized that someone was using military resources for their own gain.
“I made the mistake of raising this concern with Leonard. He was a higher-up I put a lot of trust and faith in. I didn’t know anything about it at that point.
I simply raised a concern I had… and then all of a sudden, I was facing a darkness I had no idea how to get through.
Suddenly, I was notified that I was the one suspected of being involved in illegal activity.
That was their excuse—‘illegal activity’—but I know they found out about my father’s farm and were planning on using it to get me arrested if I spoke a word.
My term was coming to an end, and they told me to willingly leave or they would make sure I left.
“And that’s when I made the mistake of trying to be defiant—a mistake that ruined my life.
They took my fiancée Pamela… they sent me pictures every day of what they were doing to her with the threat of killing her if I didn’t listen.
So I did everything they said. I was prepared to leave, I was quiet.
I stopped looking into anything and turned away from it all…
but I guess my telling a friend about it before they took Pamela is what sealed her fate.
“Unbeknownst to me, my friend tried to dig into things himself, resulting in his death. But it got back to Leonard that I was the one who told him. And in response… you know Pamela’s fate.
They killed her because I didn’t listen.
After that, I felt like I had nothing else to lose.
He ruined my life. He destroyed every ounce of it, so why couldn’t I destroy his even if it cost my own life?
Well, you see where that’s gotten me. It turned me into a man willing to sacrifice others to gain something.
” He looks remorseful as he turns to Antonio. “I don’t want to be a monster.”
“We all make horrible choices when we’re pushed to that point,” I say. “If I could rewind time, I would do so much to save myself this pain, but we can’t. We have to keep moving forward. And right now, I feel like we both need the same thing to keep moving.”
“Sounds like it.”
“So your plan before was to try to draw my family in?” Antonio asks. “You thought my family would just… wipe them out?”
“The marijuana business isn’t mine, it’s my father’s, but after being in this line of work so long, he got to know those who were deeper in the business and actually held some control.
We just supply others with marijuana, whereas your family has an entire empire.
So yes, I thought that if your mother or brother got notified that you were with Leonard, they would tear him apart to get you back. ”
Ned swipes at his eyes. “Fuck,” he mutters. “When I was young, I decided this business wasn’t for me, and that’s when I went into the military… instead, I should have stayed here with my high school sweetheart. I should have stayed… and she’d still be alive.”
“We can’t change the past,” I say, knowing I’ve wished for it so many times.
Grayson reaches over and sets his hand on mine, gently squeezing it. I flip my hand over so I can cup his, and I feel his fingers tightly wrap around mine. It gives me comfort I didn’t know I could feel from a simple touch.
“I know,” Ned says. “But I can still regret it.”
And I understand that far too well.
“Audrey, it’s your turn. What excuse do you have for yourself?” Grayson asks. “Because of your lies and deceit, so many lives have been destroyed. Clearly, you don’t care.”
She looks over at us from where she’s bound and sitting on the floor, given little room with the two dogs, pig, and multiple people.
“You think I should have ended up like you two? Cal, you’re over there with a part of yourself missing that makes it hard for you to even function.
Or do you want me like Ned, with people I love torn apart and killed?
You think I should have dealt with that? ”
“But did you do it to protect someone? Because if you did, you sure haven’t mentioned that,” I say. “You can’t convince us you did no wrong if you’ve done nothing to prove it.”
“I did it to protect myself. My whole life is built around opportunities to protect myself because I learned from a really young age that not a damn person is going to do it for me.”
“So hurting others is better for you?” I ask.
“What have others ever done for me?” she retorts.
“I’m not like you, Cal. When I first met you, I wondered if we were alike.
Someone broken, unloved, uncared for. But you knew how to be a better person than I did.
You still had it in you to care for people.
I cared about myself, and that meant doing whatever it took to keep myself safe. ”
I watch her for a moment as her eyes hold mine.
I don’t know what to say to her. The world really is quite cruel at times, but that doesn’t mean we have to be cruel in turn.
I grew up with so much hatred, so much envy…
I hated my mother as much as I wanted her to love me.
It was some fucked-up tug-of-war that tore me apart every time I saw her.
How would my life have gone if I hadn’t met Arthur?
If I hadn’t met Grayson, Tate, Eddie, Felix, Lane…
My early years made life feel like a chore to even live…
but every single one of those people kept pulling me forward.
I squeeze Grayson’s hand tighter as I hold it between us before looking back over at Audrey. “I understand that Allen gave you a place to belong and sometimes… sometimes belonging somewhere is all you need to keep moving, but all of the things he’s done, all of the people he’s hurt…”
Audrey watches me for a second longer before looking away.
I guess she doesn’t have anything to say about that.
“He has information about his sales on his computer. I have access to it, unbeknownst to him. I know everything he’s done.
I know that what started as him doing proper work in the military led to him meeting up with men who promised him riches in exchange for products or things being transferred, basically using his standing in the military to procure things for them.
And then when that wasn’t enough, he began using the people around him to take out those men who paid him, to consume their empires and make them his own.
“The day Eddie and Tate died, they were meeting with a man who once supplied him money in exchange for intel. And Allen was done with him, he wanted what he had. He was going to take it over and had sent us inside to kill him. You were going to shoot that man in the head and Eddie and the rest were going to clean up, but that’s when Eddie fucked it all up and got himself and Tate killed.
But I know all of that. I’ve helped Allen ever since it was just one man on his side.
And I know how to find everything he’s ever done and send it to someone.
Law enforcement… someone higher up in the military.
I don’t care. You could stop him as easily as that. No one else would have to die.”
“How can we trust you?” Grayson asks.
“It’s a gamble you’re going to have to take if you want my help.”
“Just tell us the information,” I say.
Audrey’s lips flatten. “Absolutely not.”
“Then what do you want out of it?”
“I want to not get killed.”
“Then isn’t it safer if you give us the information and stay in here?” Grayson asks.
“I’m not handing it over. I don’t trust you. You could stab me in the back the instant you hear it.”
Felix gasps. “How dare you! I would never want to get blood on my pig like that.”
“What about my SUV?” Antonio asks. “I can’t just pick Frank up from the airport with our SUV looking like a freaking crime scene!”
I look over at Grayson. It’s not even a “What do we do?” look. It’s a “What the fuck is happening?” look.
Grayson gives me an “I don’t know what the fuck is happening” look right back.
I pull out my phone and quickly text the group so she can’t hear it. What I’m not expecting is for Antonio’s SUV to beep as the notification flashes across the screen. What I expect even less is for Antonio to poke it so the car will read it loud and clear for everyone to hear, including Audrey.
“Text from Cal: What the fuck do we want to do? She’s the most suspicious person I’ve ever met.
She obviously wants to fuck us over and is going to do so if we take her to Allen’s house.
I think we should tell her that we’ll let her go in exchange for the information and then toss her ass into prison too. I also kind of want to punch her.”
Everyone in the vehicle looks at me.
“Why the fuck are you looking at me? I sent the text in private! Antonio’s the one who clicked it for the whole car to hear!”
“I see a text, I click! I didn’t realize we were texting private information to each other!” Antonio says.
“You don’t think that if it was something I wanted everyone to hear, I would have said it out loud ?”
The car takes this opportunity to go, “Would you like to reply?”
“Not really!” Antonio cries.
“You said, ‘Not really.’ Would you like to send it?” the car helpfully inquires.
“NO! Stop!”
“How the hell are any of you going to accomplish anything?” Audrey rightfully asks.
“We’ve actually stopped a crime group, a serial killer, and a man willing to kill for fraud. We’re professionals,” Felix says as he whips out a business card and hands it to the bound woman.
I hastily snatch it back. “Why the fuck would you hand deliver to her a business card detailing where she can go to murder us if she gets free?”
“She’s not going to murder us. If we treat her with kindness and don’t declare that we’re going to stab her in the back and then punch her, she might be useful,” Felix says.
“I know you hate me, Cal, but I really had no idea Devon was going to have you kill Eddie. I really cared for Eddie. It upset me so much that I told Allen I was done, but I couldn’t just…
leave him, no matter how much I wanted to.
It was… all of it was shitty. You can blame me if you want. But I really will help you.”