Chapter 13
HARLOW
"Boner and Jules arrived." I shot back a quick response before turning off my phone. "Sounds like they didn't kill each other."
"Jules said it was a near thing," Cass said, sending his own message back to his brother and putting his phone beside mine.
I laughed softly. "They're probably having the time of their lives."
By the time they got back to the city, they might even decide they liked each other. As team bonding went, I hoped it would be successful. The fact they weren't ambushed on arrival was an added bonus.
I glanced out the cafe window, over toward the courthouse. We'd been sitting there for about twenty minutes, sipping coffee and nibbling on chocolate chip muffins. Except Cass, who had a milkshake and a mini quiche. The milkshake was half gone but the quiche was barely touched.
"I know this is difficult," I said.
"I'm okay." He cleared his throat and tore his gaze from the window long enough to look back at me. "Really. He's only my father biologically. He hasn't been a real father for a long time."
"How old were you when he left?" I asked.
"About ten." He toyed with the straw in his milkshake. "My parents had a fight over something, I don't remember what. The next thing I knew he was packing his things and leaving. I kept thinking, 'Why is no one trying to stop him?'" His eyes glazed as he thought back, clearly still perplexed.
"You wanted him to stay?" I asked.
Cass' loyalty ran deep, but he was only a kid at the time. Too young to understand what was going on, and his own reaction to it.
He glanced down at the tabletop and swallowed, his throat bobbing.
"No," he said finally. "I wanted to help him pack up his stuff and go." He looked back up at me. "What sort of kid thinks like that?"
"One whose father is an asshole," I assured him. "We're not obligated to love people who are crappy to us because they're related to us."
"Harlow is right," Archer said. "I read a meme the other day that said, 'Stop insisting your kids let Uncle Fred kiss them at Christmas. Especially if Uncle Fred is a creeper.'"
"That," I said in agreement. "Family is what you make it. Not necessarily the people who are related to you by blood."
"Found family," Archer said. "Like us."
"Exactly like us," I agreed.
"Found family, I like that." Cass managed a smile. "Boner and Archer are like brothers to me. My brother almost qualifies." His smile widened a little.
I laughed. "Jules is a complicated man, that's for sure.
" A description he'd own wholeheartedly, no doubt.
There was nothing simple about Jules Titmus.
On the outside he was a blue collar guy, but he was multi-layered like an ogre.
The kind who wanted people to stay out of his swamp.
Only now I was imagining Boner as Donkey and trying not to laugh.
The analogy was accurate though, to some extent.
"He was twelve when your father left," I guessed.
Seventeen years ago. That was a long time to nurture a grudge. To let it grow and fester.
"Jules was the one who closed the door behind Forrest when he left," Cass said. "I think he tried to make it hit him on the way out."
"That sounds like Jules," I said. I could imagine him brushing dust off his hands and shouting out, 'Good riddance,' before going back to whatever twelve-year-old Jules liked to do.
He was three years younger than Boner was when he killed his own father.
What would have happened if Forrest hung around for a few more years?
Would he be long dead? Maybe everything that happened to my sister wouldn't have happened.
Would I be sitting here with these men right now, in a coffee shop opposite the courthouse, watching for Forrest to step outside? Probably not.
My father would have found someone else to offer my sister and I to. I'd be hunting down different men, that I was certain of. I would have bumped into my guys one way or another.
The universe put us together. Whatever the circumstances, we would have found each other.
"What about you?" I asked Archer. "You don't say anything about your family."
"There's not much to say," Archer said with a shrug. "I grew up in Vancouver. The Canadian one. Not the island. I have a cousin who's a country music singer."
"Wait a minute. Morgan Hardwick is your cousin?" Cass asked. His jaw dropped like it was on a hinge, eyes wide with excitement.
"Yeah, but we're not close," Archer said. "Right now he's put down roots in a place called Aurora Hollow, somewhere off in the Rocky Mountains."
He could have been talking about no one special, not one of the biggest country music stars in the world. I was surprised we hadn't put two and two together sooner. Hardwick wasn't the most common name. This was a big continent, though.
"My parents are still together," Archer continued. "Every Saturday morning they ride their bikes around the neighborhood. My mother bakes cookies for my nieces. They're all obsessed with ice hockey."
"Including you?" I asked. This was more than I'd learned about him in months. If he was going to open up now, I'd keep asking questions.
"I've been known to watch a game or two," he said. He gave the impression he'd seen a lot more than that. Knowing him, he'd be able to rattle out all the stats for every team, every player.
I couldn't imagine him shouting at the TV though, insisting the players shoot the puck, but I'd like to watch with him one time, just in case.
"Who's your team?" I asked.
His gaze slid from side to side, just a little, making him look shifty. "Don't tell my parents, but the New York Rooks," he said. "They'd be ashamed I don't follow a Canadian team." He didn't look especially repentant.
"Your secret's safe with me," I assured him.
I was always more inclined to follow the local teams, so I understood their perspective and his. Besides, what I knew of the Rooks, they came close to taking the cup last season.
"They're no Kraken," Cass said. Spoken like a true West Coaster.
Archer gave him the side eye, like that was just as well.
"I didn't realize we had such a hot rivalry on our hands," I teased. "Am I going to have to take sides?"
"Only when they play against each other," Cass said with a grin.
"I won't watch those games then." I pulled apart the last of my muffin and popped a piece into my mouth. The last thing I was going to do was get involved in a difference of opinion over sporting teams. We had enough on our plates as it was.
Although, if the only thing we had to worry about was whose team was winning, that wouldn't be such a bad thing.
Which reminded me why we were here in the first place. I looked back out the window, watching the crowd hurry past this way and that.
A goth girl wandered by, talking into her phone. An older man walked in the opposite direction, supporting himself on a cane. A couple of kids laughed about something as they hurried past, hand in hand. The regular hustle and bustle of the city.
I caught sight of a tall man in a dark tailored suit, making his way toward the courthouse like he owned the place.
"Cass," I started.
"That's him." Cass was watching too. His lips twisted to the side. He jerked his head to flick his hair off his eyes, but it firmly stayed put.
My breath caught in my throat.
Forrest.
Full head of dark hair, with grey at the temples. A prominent nose under eyes that looked blue from a distance. Neatly trimmed beard. An air that somehow he owned the entire city. When he walked, people scurried to move out of his way. Several stared as he passed them.
He seemed relaxed the other night at my restaurant. Today he was aware of all the eyes on him, as if he was a movie star or a rock star. As if he deserved all the attention, and then some. He was basking in it, drinking it all up.
'He's a monster,' I wanted to shout at them all.
They wouldn't believe me. They'd seen him with their own eyes and decided he was some kind of god, a benevolent deity honoring them with his mere presence. Arrogance oozed from every pore. It went through his veins like blood. He was entitled to be here, to be admired, to judge all of us.
Asshole.
He nodded at someone before heading up the courthouse steps. He stopped before he went in, turned around and scanned the street as if aware he was being watched.
I looked away before he glanced in my direction. By the time I looked back he was gone.
"This is a really public place," I remarked. We couldn't have walked up to him on the street and stabbed him without a lot of witnesses seeing us do it.
"That's where my plan comes into play," Archer said. "We have a couple of hours."
Cass was staring out the window, his brow heavily creased, visible even under his mop of hair. He absently adjusted his glasses.
"Are you okay?" I asked. "It's not too late to opt out."
"I'm not opting out," he said firmly. "We need to do this."
I nodded. "Okay, but if you change your mind…" There was always a choice. Anytime he wanted to back out, he could. We'd adjust the plan accordingly.
"I know I'm not as much of a badass as you two," he said. "But I know what he did. I know he didn't stop what happened to Auggie. He didn't do anything. He has no right to call himself my father. Or Jules' father. He's a stranger."
"That doesn't mean you have to take part," I said. "But if you're in, we have your back."
"I know you do." He reached across the table to lace his fingers in mine. "I don't regret getting involved in this. The things we've done were necessary."
"Unfortunately, yes," I said.
Except perhaps using Detective Getzoff for bait. In retrospect, we should have come up with something else. But we didn't. That regret would hang around, in the back of my brain for the rest of my life. Along with a list of things we could have done differently but didn't.
If it made us the bad guys, then so be it. In spite of the name of my restaurants, I was no angel. I was just a woman doing the best she could.
"I'm also in," Archer said.
"Of course you are." I smiled. "It's your plan."
If it went off the way we hoped, this would all be over before the sun rose tomorrow morning. Archer gone through everything carefully. We'd talked through options and possibilities, trying to factor in every possible scenario.
There was always room for something to go south. If it did, we'd deal with it. We had no choice. This had to work the first time. If it didn't, we'd be the ones floating in the Hudson River, drifting out to sea, eaten by the fish.
I didn't relish that possibility.
Should I try to find a way to give Archer and Cass the slip and go after Forrest by myself? If only because I'd promised not to, I wouldn't. If I happened to get him alone, I'd take advantage of it. If not, we'd stick to the original plan.
In a few hours, Forrest would be the one feeding the fish.
Or the customers.