Chapter 2
TWO
AMELIA
Two Weeks Earlier…
The first nettle stings the worst.
First heartbreak. First betrayal. First death.
Amelia Havick couldn’t say how often her mother had offered that saying as an antidote to life’s little let-downs.
Getting fired.
Amelia might soon add that to the list of formative firsts, but the prospect didn’t scare her like it should. Nothing—not even losing her job—could compare to the deep unease coursing through her. Her body stiffened and heart pounded like a drum as she white-knuckled the steering wheel.
What the fuck was he thinking?
Amelia glanced at the manila folder in her passenger seat and punched the gas.
The sooner she off-loaded it, the better.
It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know. It was a simple mistake she’d laugh about someday.
She’d tell her friends over cocktails how she bolted out the door at midnight in an oversized t-shirt—no bra—and sleep shorts to deliver the folder to Burt, her scatterbrained boss.
The weight of it was wrong, though.
Simple mistakes didn’t deposit dread that sat in her stomach like a sack of bricks. And Burt was clear-headed and sharp despite his age.
Then how did this happen?
Fingers of moonlight silvered Lake Oswego as Amelia’s sedan raced along an empty road.
A mile back, she had killed the radio to soak up the silence, all but the breeze whipping in from the open window.
Amelia’s hand trembled as she swatted away tangled strands of hair.
Honeyed by the summer sun, ribbons of gold had emerged amongst cinnamon red.
It had grown long too and skimmed past her shoulders sun-kissed with a glow her mother called healthy.
Rain freshened the cool air, and the trees stood sentry as Amelia navigated the switchbacks. She breathed deep the scent of petrichor and crushed pine needles.
She wouldn’t miss much of Oregon, perhaps only these quiet nights. There was no comfort in it now, though. Sweat slicked her palms and she burned up despite the damp chill.
The folder should’ve had case law in it, a real snooze-fest. Leave it to an old man to hoard secrets in an unmarked folder tucked amongst other files for review. She wanted it gone just as badly as Burt wanted it back.
Another text pinged. The screen’s pale aura filled the darkness. Amelia glanced at her phone in the center console.
Almost here???
Triple question marks. Burt reserved those for only the direst circumstances. Amelia’s heart thrummed a frantic beat, and she sped the rest of the way.
Burt met her at the door. He must have seen her headlights cutting through the fine mist that enveloped his two-story estate.
One of Portland’s most revered defense attorneys, he lived more modestly than most of his ilk, but his home still dazzled Amelia.
She hurried up the brick steps, her flip-flops slapping the soles of her feet as she went.
Burt hushed her with a knobby finger pressed to his lips and ushered her into his study. Lamp light pooled on the floor, but shadows consumed the edges of the room.
“Leave it there,” he said and pointed to an armchair in the corner.
Amelia offloaded the folder with a quiet breath. Done.
She could apologize and promptly leave. It was well past midnight, and the ordeal had gotten Burt out of bed. He paced the room in a tatty robe and striped pajamas, his snowy hair a disheveled mess.
She’d never seen him that out of sorts before. He was brilliant in the courtroom, hawkish but affable. Judges respected him, prosecutors envied him, and Amelia admired him but never wanted the internship. For the first time she could remember, Burt wore his years, all seventy-something of them.
“Burt, it was an accident,” Amelia said and caught sight of herself in the mantle mirror.
If he was a mess, so was she. With a clammy hand, she brushed away strands of frizzy hair plastered to her cheek.
“It was careless,” he said, sounding eerily reminiscent of her father, right down to the clipped tones and vague disappointment. “Careless of me to misplace it. Careless of you to rummage through it.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
The transgression seemed beyond apology, and Amelia figured it was only fair that he fired her. She was moving to Arizona soon, anyway. In three weeks, none of it would matter.
“How much did you see?” Burt asked, unusually pallid as he massaged the base of his neck.
At a loss for how to quantify, Amelia shrugged. Enough to know it wasn’t for her, enough that the folder sat in her work bag like a telltale heart pounding on her morbid curiosity.
She’d sensed the wrongness of it, the soft chime of something amiss. That chime wailed with a warning as Burt inched closer. He dropped his voice as if the walls themselves might absorb his secrets.
“No one can know about this. Not even your father.” He paused and added forcefully, “Especially not your father.”
“Why? He might be able to help.”
Burt shook his head and motioned to the newspaper on his desk. “He can’t stop what’s coming.”
Amelia skimmed the headline. Crime Syndicate Suspected in Spate of Gruesome Murders. Violent crime made for splashy headlines, but something sinister had cast a long shadow over the summer as rival crime syndicates, the Velascos and the Moriartys, courted war after a decade-long truce.
And that was the crux of the folder’s contents—a wealth of sensitive information on the Moriartys.
It seemed benign at first, nothing that wouldn’t be uncovered during discovery—a roster of Moriarty associates, known locations and patterns of life, vulnerabilities to exploit.
That wasn’t what piqued her curiosity, though.
Page after page, she encountered a name on repeat.
Emory Holt.
Amelia had said it out loud once and felt silly after. On her lips, his name started with a hum and ended on a sigh, the syllables perfectly lyrical. The enigma sparked Amelia’s intrigue, and it spread like wildfire when she found Emory Holt’s mug shot in the folder.
He was strikingly handsome with bronze skin and long, jet black hair framing quintessentially masculine features—strong jaw, high cheekbones, heavy brow. A smoldering intensity gathered behind piercing amber eyes. Those eyes were hypnotic, she decided, but that felt silly too.
Why then did she keep going back to his name, to his picture? A girl like her knew when to quit, and yet she scoured the folder for more of him but got more than she bargained for.
Whoever Emory Holt was, the Velasco family wanted him dead, and the folder’s contents detailed how they planned to do it.
The Velascos didn’t intend for it to be a fair fight or his death to be clean.
Amelia had seen enough of the folder then and wanted no more dirty knowledge of Emory Holt and his grisly fate.
“Are you in some kind of trouble?” Amelia asked Burt.
They waltzed along the edges of something dangerous, but Burt refused to acknowledge it. His distraught gaze dropped to the parquet floor.
“The police…” Amelia began gently, but Burt sunk the suggestion with a bitter laugh.
“Who do you think pads their payroll?”
Amelia didn’t honestly know, nor could she say if he meant the Moriartys or Velascos. Maybe both. She had so many questions. Why did Burt have the folder? Who was Emory Holt? And why did the Velascos want him dead?
Burt rummaged through the liquor cabinet beside the fireplace. “Do you drink?” he asked but had already fetched two glasses and poured a finger of scotch in each.
“Not really,” Amelia answered as Burt handed her a glass.
“In business and in life, I close the deal with a drink,” he said and lifted his glass in salute.
“It’s ceremonial. Sacred. Secrecy is sacred too.
Sometimes our lives depend on it. This is one of those times.
You will forget what you saw in that folder.
No matter what happens or who asks. Your father, the police, anyone. And I do mean anyone.”
A chill grew in Amelia’s chest that not even alcohol could burn away. Her stomach soured and saliva filled her mouth. She’d be sick if she drank. She nodded her assent as Burt sipped.
“When do you leave for Arizona?” he asked.
“Three weeks.”
Saying it out loud somehow made it feel less real, as if she was hurtling toward a horizon that would forever elude her, and her dreams of escape were just a fickle mirage.
Burt took her glass and set it on the mantle. An age-spotted hand rested heavy on her shoulder. Amelia couldn’t place what gathered in his eyes. Regret, perhaps. Fear, most like.
“Leave sooner. Please.”
His desperation disarmed her. Light-headed, Amelia swayed subtly on her feet. “I can’t. I have loose ends to tie up.”
That she was leaving at all had carved a chasm between her and her father. It’d been two weeks since their fight with scarcely a handful of words spoken between them.
Amelia didn’t bother to explain any of that but didn’t need to. Burt squeezed her shoulder hard as fear whittled his voice to a whisper.
“Amelia, you’re fired. Make peace with your father then get the fuck out of town.”