43
Deacon
Matty’s name lit up my phone while I was already heading back toward Tide Lofts, and every part of me went cold.
Ghost had sent me two grainy stills from the apartment security footage minutes earlier.
Richard Morgan outside the building with Jade.
Jade getting into his truck. I’d been staring at those images at every stoplight, trying to make them fit with everything we knew, when Matty called.
If he had good news, Lila would’ve been the one reaching out.
If it could wait, Matty sure as hell wouldn’t be calling me in the middle of the worst night of our lives.
I yanked the bike onto the shoulder, gravel spitting under the tires, killed the engine, and answered. “Yeah?”
“Jackson!” Matty’s voice came through shredded raw. “Jackson, Lila’s gone!”
For one sick second, everything inside me dropped. “What the fuck do you mean she’s gone?” The words tore out hard enough to burn my throat. “I left her in the apartment with you. How does she just walk out the door and disappear in front of all of you? Where did she go?”
“She didn’t go out the front door,” he shot back. Fear shook through the anger in his voice. “She was in Jade’s room. Said she wanted some time alone. Time with Jade’s things. Truth is, I think she just wanted to get away from our dad.”
I cut straight across him. “Your dad is there?”
The still frame of Richard with Jade flashed through my head again.
“Yeah,” Matty said, having no idea yet what Ghost had found.
“I thought he deserved to know something had happened to Jade, so I called him and he came over. Evan went to check on Lila after a while and she wasn’t in there.
She left a note.” His breath hitched hard enough that I heard him fight for the next words.
“She said Jade’s phone got a text. Somebody said they had Jade and if she wanted her back, she had to meet them somewhere and couldn’t say shit to anyone.
She snuck out the fire escape.” He broke for a second before forcing himself on.
“God, Jackson, there’s more. So much more.
I can’t do this over the phone. You need to get here. I’m sorry. Just hurry and get here.”
My grip tightened around the phone until the case creaked. Ghost had proof Richard took Jade willingly. Someone else knew she was gone quickly enough to use it against Lila. None of those pieces belonged together in any way that didn’t make my stomach turn.
“I’m coming,” I said, already reaching for the ignition. “Don’t let anybody move. Don’t let your old man out of your sight.”
I hung up and tore back toward Tide Lofts with two images fighting for space in my head: my daughter climbing into Richard’s truck and Lila slipping out a fire escape alone because somebody had threatened Jade.
I hit the building with whatever patience I had left already burned away. I took the stairs two at a time and hit the apartment hard enough that the door banged against the stop.
“Someone better explain to me what the hell is going on here!”
Richard sat near the couch with his head in his hands. Matty was on his feet before the door finished swinging, his face wrecked by fury and fear.
“This whole thing is his fucking fault.” He pointed at his father.
“We’d talked about doing one last trip up to the cabin, but nothing had actually been set.
He went to Jade outside the apartments and told her he’d already cleared it with Lila, said he wanted some extra grandpa and Jade time so he offered to take her up right after school.
Told her Lila was going to bring their bags and drive up later after work once he’d had time to get groceries and supplies in.
” His voice roughened with every sentence.
“Cabin rules are no electronics, so that’s how he got her to leave her phone.
She thought her mom was coming later, that everything was planned, that she was just getting some extra time with her grandpa before the weekend really started.
It was a setup. He wanted it to look like she’d been kidnapped.
He wanted to scare Lila, show her what life tied to you could look like for a few hours. ”
Every muscle in my body locked.
Matty’s chest heaved as he looked at me. “Jade is safe. She’s at our cabin.”
Relief hit so hard my knees nearly loosened. Jade was safe. For half a heartbeat, that was everything.
Then Lila’s note slammed straight through it.
I turned on Richard. “Yeah, I already know you’re the reason Jade’s gone. That doesn’t explain the text Lila got or where the hell she is now.” I crossed the room until he had to look up at me. “You behind that too?”
His head snapped up. “What? No. No, I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know where Lila is.”
I grabbed his shirt and hauled him out of the chair. “Then how,” I roared in his face, “did whoever texted her know Jade was missing? How’d they know enough to lure her out?”
His eyes widened. “I don’t know!”
I dragged him closer. “Bullshit.”
“I don’t know!” Fear finally broke through the arrogance. “I just wanted to prove to her how bad you are for her. How corrupt you are!”
I shoved him back into the chair and stared down at him. “That’s rich coming from you.”
The room went silent. Matty stopped breathing hard enough to hear. Evan stood frozen near the kitchen, and Cage had lifted his head from the corner. Richard’s face changed because he knew exactly what I meant.
There was no reason left to protect him.
“Me overhearing that the deputy chief of police of Wicker Falls was on the Kings of the Fall’s payroll is the reason I left town.
” My voice stayed low because yelling wouldn’t make the truth any uglier.
“Destroying evidence. Creating blind spots. Falsifying response times. Making case files disappear. Using confidential police databases to check motels, commercial properties, apartment complexes, making sure the places the club wanted weren’t under federal surveillance or local vice investigation so they could set up safe houses and brothels with your all clear.
” I leaned closer. “Planning to gut vice, trafficking, and juvenile exploitation units over time so nobody’d be around to look too hard at what they were moving. ”
Richard shook his head, color draining from his face. “No.”
“Yes.” Seventeen years of silence sat behind the word.
“I heard it. Then I got caught overhearing it. They either owned me for life after that or they were going to put me in the ground.” My jaw ached from clenching it.
“So I ran. I left behind the only friend who ever meant a damn thing to me and the woman I loved more than air because I couldn’t stand there and tell them their hero was the villain in town. ”
Richard looked past me toward Matty, suddenly desperate for his son. “Matty,” he said, voice cracking. “It’s not what he says.”
Matty didn’t move.
Evan’s hand flew to his mouth before the words escaped anyway. “What the everloving fuck. Lila is going to lose her mind when she finds out this.”
That broke whatever shock had held Matty still.
He stepped toward his father, face going cold in a way I’d seen on cops who had just realized the person across from them had been lying for years.
“Is this true?” His voice stayed quiet. “Did you work with the club? Were you dirty? Did you talk shit about Jackson all these years while you were taking money from the people you said were trash?”
Richard pushed himself to his feet, hands trembling.
“It’s not what you think. I wasn’t dirty.
” Desperation climbed into every word. “It was for your mother. We needed the money for her treatments, for the trials, for keeping her alive. Insurance didn’t cover all of it.
I was trying to save her. It was only supposed to be for a little while. ”
Matty recoiled like the confession had landed physically. “That’s not the defense you think it is,” he shouted.
“It was for your mom!”
“She didn’t want all of that!” Matty’s voice cracked loud enough that Cage flinched.
“She wanted to stop long before you let her. She hated the trials. Hated the meds. She was exhausted and miserable and you forced her through more because you couldn’t let go.
” Grief twisted his face, old and fresh at the same time.
“You did all that for nothing. She would be disgusted with you if she knew where that money came from.”
Richard folded in on himself. “I couldn’t lose her, son.” His voice dropped with the rest of him. “She was my everything. I... I couldn’t let her go.”
He sat heavily, and for a moment nobody moved. I remembered Rose sick. Remembered how Matty had carried losing his mother while still trying to hold Lila together, all of it happening after I’d already disappeared.
Then Matty turned to me, and the anger in his face had changed shape. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “You held this all this time?” Hurt broke through next. “You should’ve told me.”
A short, ugly laugh escaped me. “Fuck you. Told you what? That your dad was dirty? That the man you and Lila looked up to was taking money from the same club you wanted me to claw away from?” I stepped toward him because I couldn’t hold still with seventeen years sitting between us.
“It would have destroyed your family. It would have broken her heart. And in the end I’d have been the bad guy anyway. ”
Matty’s mouth tightened, but he let me finish.
“So yeah,” I said. “I made the coward’s choice.
I ran. Fuck man, I was twenty. I had no time to think.
No good options. Stay and get owned forever or killed.
Tell you and destroy your whole goddamn life.
Leave and maybe keep all of you safe while you hated me.
” My voice roughened around the truth I had lived with ever since. “I chose hate.”