Chapter 5
“STALKER’S TANGO” BY AUTOHEART
Ileft the mayor’s house not long after D’arcy slipped downstairs to have dinner with her mother, Jessica.
Her father was home, in the office, neglecting his family once again, I was sure.
I felt bad for his wife—at least until I remembered how often she lied to D’arcy about screwing around with George, one of her coworkers.
No child deserved that.
Even though I was the fucking princess of this goddamn bratva, I still held my own as a parent.
I took care of my daughter the best way I knew how and stayed the hell away from the family’s influence in Chicago.
My grandfather lived there most of the year, handling shit I didn’t care about.
I didn’t want to know the exact details, because if I did, I’d find myself in deeper than I was now.
He was the pakhan. Our top man. The boss. His goal was to be on top, much like my father’s. I was supposed to have the same goals. It was in my blood.
Harrekson blood.
Goals for me never made sense. Why would I remind myself that normal dreams weren’t reachable?
I’d never be like my friends. My family would never pat me on the back for graduating from college and pursing a degree.
For me, balancing the blood lust I inherited and the nausea that came with it was my life.
That thought marinated in my mind as I peered through the windows of Yankee Doo’s fancy blue Mustang.
Estelle was with Erica. God bless that bitch. I’d kiss her on the mouth again if she’d not yell no homo at the top of her lungs after. Erica Kane was an angel who played dress up. She protected herself with devil horns and sharp teeth. I wished I could take her, and all my friends, away from here.
I knew it wouldn’t work. I knew it wouldn’t work. I was lethal. As long as they were within reach of me, they were covered in gasoline. And me? I was the flint shrieking against the steel, breaking bones and burning bridges.
The light from the flickering streetlights never reached the back of the Dawson house. I had a small travel flashlight hanging from my teeth. It jostled around as I wedged two steel picks into the lock of the passenger side door. I hardly needed time before it popped open.
I eased the door open with a smooth, quiet hiss of the hinges.
My body went stiff when I heard rustling behind me.
The car sat where I was nearly kneeling against the iron fence.
It was jagged and welded together with unmatching pieces of metal near the bottom, where I could make out a buried set of wires.
I figured it was the fed’s way of gaining more privacy in addition to his large trees and ill hedging.
It was hard to see in the dark. My flashlight was garbage.
I tried to crawl into the passenger seat and search through the sweet-smelling car, yet the sound of something moving behind me sent my nerves on high alert.
The breeze blew softly to cool the uncomfortable flush along my neck.
I didn’t have the chance to consider what was moving through the backyard when my attention yanked to the large, brick, garage-type building connected to the back of the house.
The wind rattled the old door—metal and wood, a weak mix of both materials to make a frame. It vibrated through the breeze until the side door just within the backyard gate creaked open.
I glanced inside the car and debated continuing my sleuthing.
I had all the time in the world to find the best place for this tracker.
According to Levi, there weren’t any cameras placed around the home.
Besides the new locks and taller outside fencing, Sebastian was getting a little too comfortable returning to Indiana.
Even then, any FBI agent would anticipate bugs and location devices. I’d have to find somewhere in the car that was both simple and out of sight, somewhere I could access it again if there was an issue with connection.
The door to the side of the garage swung open again. It distracted me enough that I accidentally stuck my fingers in the slimy tape.
“Fuck.” I ripped my hand back and rubbed it on my jeans.
I lazily attached the tracker far under the passenger seat before the tape could snag something else.
I slipped from the smooth white and blue leather and quietly closed the thin framed door.
The Mustang’s smell still lingered in my nose.
It wasn’t strong, just sweetly pleasant.
perfume-like, most likely the agent’s daughter’s daily aroma.
She seemed like one of those girls who drowned herself in perfume to feel prettier.
Didn’t matter how good she smelled. It was distracting.
No, disgusting. I had meant disgusting. Not only was the sweet smell of fresh sugar petals distracting, but it was disgusting.
I inhaled the perfume again and stumbled over my words. It was poisonous, for all I knew. A shot at my ability to communicate properly.
My flashlight helped my boots slide across the gravel of the back drive.
I tried to mute my steps as much as possible under the sound of the creaking door and the rabid wind.
When I reached the iron fence, I leaned over the top as much as possible.
My neck strained to see the large windows on the side of the house, tendons pulling as I searched the multiple long panes upstairs for any noticeable lights.
I waited for the breeze. Just as my uncle taught me, with my eyes closed, I pushed open the gate in time with the sounds around me.
A breath slipped from my lips with each step.
The light of the moon lit my path through the overgrown moss along each brick.
I bet they were like the old bricks at the cemetery.
An old gazebo sat in the distance, just close enough that I knew the reflection wasn’t a ghost, but a dying structure. I didn’t pay much mind to anything else and focused on making my way into the garage.
The door closed behind me as I floated inside and finally relaxed my shoulders.
The old seal didn’t work well, so I could hear the whistle of the draft through the wooden plank of the frame.
I waited a moment, listening for another noise, though nothing came.
The wind was the only whispers I’d sing with tonight.
My flashlight scattered across the room. Cobwebs and a surprising number of boxes were stacked up around a Corvette. Much like the Mustang, it’d been worked on and kept in impressive condition. The sleek black of the hood reflected at me as I shined the flashlight down and stared into my dark eyes.
In the refracted image, I spotted a box high up on the shelf behind me. I turned and used my flashlight to confirm my suspicions.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
Harrekson.
It was a stupid idea to sneak in here. He had to know who I was if he had a box with the family’s signature cross under my mother’s maiden name—an upside down, pointed crucifix made to mimic a star.
I doubt some fancy federal agent was a member of the family. There would have been an uproar from Chicago if they found out my father had placed a hit on one of the next generation members. No, this box was only proof the Dawsons were keeping tabs on us.
I’d heard the stories about him. Now that I could put a name and face to the hateful folklore he became, I understood why Papa wanted his head on a stake.
There wasn’t only a box in this garage with Harrekson written on the side, but also one with Battles. In fact, I counted four with Battles written on the sides.
My fingers brushed the top of one of the file boxes with a large Q on the top.
I tucked the flashlight between my molars and pulled the top off.
My heart pounded in my chest, expecting pictures of myself and my baby girl.
Why else would a random box be labeled Q in the middle of these other boxes labeled with my linage?
“What the hell?” I ripped the flashlight out of my mouth.
The first picture I pulled out was of a young girl. Her eyes were dark, not only in color, but in discomfort. I tilted my head and observed the football jersey held out in front of her, then examining another photo of the same little girl hugging the neck of a canine.
This box was filled to the brim with photographs of his daughter, not mine. Thank fuck. Although I was relieved to see Estelle and I hadn’t made it into one of the multiple boxes in here, it was discomforting to see how many photos of his kid he kept over the years.
It was intimidating. I didn’t have this many photos of my daughter. Sebastian had every photo possible: football pictures, field day pictures, class photos, snapchat screenshots, professional sketches, and hundreds of other images capturing every angle of this girl.
Sebastian Dawson had a few dirty secrets.
While most of these photos were screenshots or taken directly where Yankee Doodle Dawson clearly knew she was being photographed, there were still a great deal taken from a distance, shot by a professional camera.
What man puts his own daughter under surveillance?
It took me a moment shuffling around to find anything that seemed recent.
The chocolate eyes of a curly-haired girl with a medical band on her wrist and a smile that didn’t reach her eyes confirmed my suspicions.
Something had happened before they moved here.
I could vaguely make out a date on her medical bracelet, putting this picture back in April.
It came off as an innocent picture. Sebastian’s daughter held a peace sign to the camera, her pink tongue caught between her teeth. Maybe I was reading too far into it, and she only had a small procedure done, much like Erica when she had her tonsils taken out.