Chapter 30 Lofton
LOFTON
Within seconds of the police arriving, the men of Guardian Protection had raced into the parking lot.
They’d scattered. Jude had come straight to me, trying to help Devon rush me inside before the chaos fully descended, but I refused to go without Brooke.
Lark and Leo had gone to her, physically restraining her so the paramedics could look at her head while she fought them both. She didn’t want her head looked at. She wanted to chase a car that was already gone.
Johnson had gone straight to Alex.
Through the window, I’d watched the color leave Johnson’s face not gradually, just gone, like someone had pulled a plug.
When the paramedics loaded Alex onto the gurney, Johnson had nearly bulldozed two of them getting into the back of the ambulance.
Nobody stopped him. The doors closed, and it pulled away fast, lights already going.
Alex was alive, but the speed at which the ambulance left made everyone aware just how bad it was.
My name must have been all over that police scanner, because the paparazzi descended upon that small sushi joint like a swarm of locusts. Devon moved us to a back corner table, mostly hidden, while Jude got to work taping cardboard over the windows.
Brooke sat beside me spinning a bottle of soy sauce on the table.
Around and around. Her eyes fixed on the wall as if she could see straight through it, back in time to before any of this had happened.
The gauze the EMT had wrapped around her head had soaked through on one side.
She’d refused to let them take her to the hospital.
I think a part of her was just hoping he’d bring Zoey back.
Nothing felt real. The world moving in slow motion and fast forward at the same time, every detail either blurred or unbearably sharp with nothing in between.
The cops drifted in and out, asking questions I must have answered because they kept nodding and writing things down. We were waiting for the detectives. That was all anyone would tell us.
I kept thinking about Zoey.
Scared out of her mind, with a man she didn’t even know, who had already killed two people and shot a third.
It had to be a nightmare.
It wasn’t.
The soy sauce went around and around.
When the two officers finally stepped outside, Devon sat down across from me and Brooke. Lark took the chair beside her. Leo and Jude stayed standing, close enough to hear everything.
When Devon took my hand in both of his, a tear rolled from my eyes. It was the first time since I’d met him his touch wasn’t enough to cast out the fear.
“Hey, babe,” he called, gentle but pointed, like he needed my full attention. “I need you to tell me everything you know about Jason Horton.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. “He hasn’t been around in so long. I don’t really know where to start.”
He released one of my hands long enough to gently still the soy sauce under Brooke’s fingers. “Okay, let’s start there. He’s Zoey’s dad, used to work at Arrow, knew Marty. I got that. But why hasn’t he been around?”
Brooke’s empty eyes lifted to his. “He left her in a car.” Her voice was hoarse from screaming. “It was either I ran over him with mine, or he gave her up. Those were our options.”
Devon’s eyes narrowed. He looked back at me, needing more than she was capable of at the moment.
I hooked my arm around Brooke’s shoulders and pulled her into my side.
“He was kind of a one-night stand turned relationship. After Zoey was born, he got into drugs. Cocaine, mostly. Their relationship fell apart, and the custody situation turned into a nightmare. She pushed for a drug test, he failed, but after thirty days in rehab he got visitation back.”
Devon’s thumb moved slowly across my knuckles. “Rehab didn’t stick?”
“Nope. Six weeks, maybe. And then—” My throat tightened around the words.
“Zoey was about ten months old. He had her for an overnight visit, and he didn’t answer when Brooke called the next morning.
So Marty went over there to check on things.
He’d forgotten about her and left her in the car all night. ”
Around the table, something moved through every man simultaneously.
Jude shifted his weight.
Lark’s hand balled into a fist.
Leo muttered a curse.
Devon’s jaw ticked once and locked.
Brooke pressed against my side as if she were holding herself together with pure force of will and me.
I curled her closer. “We’d gotten lucky that there’d been a storm that rolled through and dropped the temperature that night.
If it had been any other night—” I stopped and shook my head.
“Before that, Marty had done everything he could to help him get clean. He told me he felt responsible because he’d brought Jason into our lives through Arrow.
He kept trying to be some kind of fatherly influence, but Jason just kept choosing the drugs.
Finding Zoey alone in that car was the final straw for Marty. ”
Brooke went solid. She already knew what I was going to say. She’d been there every step of the way. But hearing it now, in this context, in this restaurant, after her daughter had been torn from her arms, she braced for it anyway.
“I paid him half a million dollars to sign away his parental rights.”
All four men turned to stone.
“It was my idea,” I rushed out. “Jason had gone off the deep end, and Zoey wasn’t safe.
We tried doing it the right way first. Marty called the cops when he found her in the car.
Jason lied and said she’d only been in there for a few minutes.
Because technically Zoey hadn’t suffered any major injuries, all the court did was make him take a weekend parenting class and then hand her right back to him every other weekend.
” I looked at Devon. “He didn’t want her.
There wasn’t a fatherly instinct in that man’s body.
He just liked having a way to hurt Brooke after they broke up. ”
Devon rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. He circled his other hand in the air for me to continue.
“I had Marty approach him with an offer.” I paused. “He signed away his rights the same day. And never looked back.”
“Until now,” Devon said.
I nodded. “Until now.”
A fresh round of tears pooled in Brooke’s eyes.
“I told the cops about him after the break-in. When they asked Lofton for a list of known contacts. I specifically asked the detective if I needed to list Zoey’s father.
They said since he had been out of the picture for so long and that he was connected to me and not Lofton, he didn’t seem relevant.
Even when I told them about the drugs, they patted me on the shoulder and said they’d look into it.
” She paused and shook her head. “They never so much as asked for his full name.”
“Son of a bitch,” Devon muttered. “He was right there. But we were all looking in the wrong direction.”
Tears streamed down Brooke’s face. “I should have pushed. I should have made them take him seriously. I just never thought he was capable of something like this.”
“Me either,” I said, crying right alongside her. “I’m not even sure he knew the money came from me. Marty made the offer, delivered the cash, had him sign the papers. All I did was make the withdrawal.”
“Oh, he knew,” Leo rumbled, retrieving his phone from his back pocket.
“And I refuse to believe half a million dollars carried a junkie for four years.” He put the phone to his ear.
“Apollo. I need you in Marty’s personal financials.
Large cash withdrawal, last two or three years.
Cross-reference with the tax office to rule out a property or vehicle purchase. ”
Brooke looked at me.
I looked at Devon. “Why is he looking at Marty’s records?”
Devon’s lips thinned. “Whether he knew the money came from you or not, if Jason needed more, he knew where he could find it.”
Brooke’s hand tightened around mine so hard her nails bit into my skin.
“You think he came back?” I whispered.
“I think it’s worth looking into,” Devon replied. “If he did, and Marty caved, paid him again, and then decided to stop? That might be exactly why things escalated the way they did.”
“Oh God,” I choked.
Devon was around the table and beside me in the very next beat. His arm came around my shoulders, pulling me into his side. Brooke leaned with me, both of us pressing into him like he was the only fixed point left in the room.
Which, honestly, he was.
Apollo’s voice came through Leo’s phone. I could hear the shape of it but not the words.
“How much?” Leo asked.
My stomach sank.
“When?”
My chest tightened.
He exhaled slowly through his nose. “That’s what I thought. Stand by.” He lowered the phone. “About a year ago, Marty made a cash withdrawal from his personal account. A hundred thousand dollars. Cash. No purchase record. No trace of where it went.”
Brooke jerked as if she’d taken a bullet.
And I came apart.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just the last thread finally snapping.
Marty had known. He had been carrying this for a year without telling me. He had pulled a hundred thousand dollars out of his own pocket and paid Jason himself.
And now he was gone, the money was gone, and Zoey was gone, and all that quiet, stubborn, Marty-shaped love hadn’t been enough to stop any of it.
“He didn’t tell me,” I cried.
“No,” Devon said, pressing his lips into the top of my hair. “He was protecting you the only way he knew how.”
My heart shattered, all the broken pieces slicing through me.
But Brooke shot out of her seat so fast the chair nearly fell over behind her. Every man in the room moved instinctively, hands reaching, bodies turning, before they realized that they didn’t need to catch her.
“He’s gonna want more money.” She was almost breathless, staring at me with wild, bright hope. “That’s why he took her. Not because he wants her. He just wants another payday.” She grabbed my hand across the table. “He won’t hurt her if he thinks there’s still money coming.”
Devon slanted his head, agreeing but really not liking it.
“So we give him the money.” She looked back to me. “Whatever he wants. We give him the money and he gives us Zoey, right?”
“Absolutely,” I replied. “Anything. Whatever he wants.”
Devon’s hand covered mine. “It might not be that easy, babe.”
“Then we make it that easy.” It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t even remotely close to the same ballpark as fair. But desperation never was. “You promised me you’d get her back.”
His eyes flashed dark, not with anger or doubt. It was the pure determination of a man who had made a promise he had no intention of breaking.
“I will,” he vowed. “But we gotta do this right, and rarely does right equal easy.” He glanced at Leo.
“We bring the cops in. Tell them everything. I don’t trust them to handle this on their own, but they’re gonna be drowning in warrants and wiretap authorizations and bureaucratic tape for a while.
Keeps them busy. Keeps us clean. And there’s no way Jason’s going to sit on this long enough for any of that to matter anyway. ”
Leo’s lips gave the tiniest twitch. “Finally, he learns something.”