Chapter 37
Mia: What happens then?
Emily: That very much depends on how the next couple of days goes.
Mason: Perhaps it’s the best place for her right now.
Emily: Strapped to a bed and sedated??
Mason: No different to how she spends most of her days.
Emily: Thanks Mace. When we want someone to do absolutely fucking nothing to help, we’ll call you.
CHASE
Mia’s face doesn’t move, her eyes wide and mouth agape above her coffee mug.
“Say that again?” Mason asks dumbfounded a few feet behind her, holding a crystal tumbler of scotch.
“I’ve applied for guardianship of Sunny.”
Their large penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park falls as silent as it can with three young kids in it, Macey humming out of tune as she colors on the low coffee table and the boys babbling around on the floor together by Mia’s feet.
Mia recovers herself first. “That’s…a huge deal.”
The sun is still low enough in the sky that the floor-to-ceiling windows shine with deep golden sun, the early morning city wrapped around us.
I haven’t slept and still wear my tuxedo from the night before, and I take the scotch offered by Mason gratefully even though it’s technically far too early in the day to be drinking.
“I know.” I nod, taking a sip of the stringent liquid and hoping it stops my mind from racing. “If she wants me, that is.”
It’s like physical pain being away from Pepper. Just knowing she’s somewhere I can’t get to her, alone and probably terrified. The bridge of my nose prickles and I swipe a hand down my face.
“Look, Chase,” Mia starts, shifting in her seat on the couch opposite. “By all means, if you want to jump off this cliff, I am right behind you all the way, but before you jump…are you sure you’re ready for this?”
She fixes me with a well-meaning worry that doesn’t deserve the frustration I feel bubbling up, which has nothing to do with her and everything to do with how fucked up this situation is.
The best place for Sunny is with Pepper, but if there is a chance that can’t happen, there is no way I can abandon her.
I made a vow to help her no matter what, and shit…
the kid has burrowed her way into my heart and set up camp.
She’s quirky and funny, and so unlike what I imagined a fifteen-year-old to be.
“Kids are a big commitment. No less a teenager,” Mason adds, taking a seat beside me.
I know they mean well. I’d probably say all of these things if I were them, too. But it doesn’t stop the restless irritation.
I stare down at my drink, swirling it around the thick square ice in the middle.
This feels like a defining moment, one that I might look back on for years to come.
Because as I sit here, taking a quiet moment to ponder, I realize that my fear isn’t about taking responsibility for Sunny.
It’s about Pepper not being there with us.
“I’m ready.”
I look up and see Mia’s mouth twist and after a beat, break into a slow smile. “Then let’s go get you a teenager.”
I offer her a small smile that feels painfully hollow. “I have one thing to do first, but I’ll be back by this evening. There is an emergency hearing to decide where Sunny goes.”
“We’ll be there,” Mason and Mia both say in unison.
I nod my thanks, my throat feeling tight, and stand to walk toward the lobby. Pausing halfway, I hesitate and then turn to focus on Mia.
“There is something else I need your help with, actually.”
If there is even a glimmer of hope, even a slither…
“Anything you need.”
***
The small town of Northvale in Oregon is exactly how you might expect it to be.
Quaint wooden welcome signs stand under tall pines.
There’s a sharp divide between the large plantation-style pre-Civil War homes that outskirt the river, and the more humble community of single-story cedar bungalows packed tightly around the small town center.
You couldn’t get further from New York City living if you tried.
I rest the alloy baseball bat on my shoulder and boot in the door of the town watering hole. I may be running on what little broken sleep I could snatch on the five-hour plane ride, but there is no mistaking the blue-eyed, grey-haired guy slouched behind the bar.
A cigarette dangles forgotten in the corner of his mouth, and judging by the way he’s standing, he had been watching the hockey game playing on a TV screen mounted in one corner. Not anymore, though. He and every other patron in the dingy, stale, beer-scented wooden bar focus solely on me.
“Jeffrey Dale?” I step inside, clocking out of the corner of my eye that the bar extends to the left where an old pool table and various seats sit.
The older man stands upright, removing his paunch weight from the bar top. “Who’s asking?”
I swing the bat and smash the framed vinyl on the wall by the door, fury bubbling to the surface like thick tar as I turn back to face the man. “Never you fucking mind who.”
“What the fuck?!” Dale yells, whipping the cigarette from his mouth and chucking it to the floor, grinding it out with his boot. “I’m a fucking sheriff’s deputy, asshole.”
Chairs scrape, the sound of people rising from their seats filling the room, and for a moment, I believe I’m about to have a mass brawl on my hands. From what I know, small-town folk can be incredibly protective of each other.
What I don’t expect is the steady stream of patrons who head for the still open door, slipping past me while cramming hats onto their heads or tugging caps down lower.
The message is clear: even the townsfolk don’t like their sheriff deputy turned bar owner, who glares at me like he’s about to bust a vein in his head. The door behind me swings shut, leaving us alone at the same time as the man reaches for something under the bar.
“Bad idea,” I warn, using my bat to crash a table of half-empty glasses to the floor.
The man freezes, sweat glistening on his forehead.
“You see those dead cameras in the corners?” I point my bat to the three small white security cameras set up in each corner to cover the whole bar. “Notice anything different about them?”
I swing the bat back onto my shoulder and prowl a few feet closer, old wooden boards shifting beneath my sneakers. His eyes reluctantly dart in the direction of one camera, and his lip curls when he sees that the small green function light is on.
“It turns out you haven’t been paying your security provider bill, Jeffrey.” I tut in reprimand and take another step. “They were all too eager to accept the back pay you owed before they cut you off—all too happy to change your relay address for the footage, too.
“Who are you?” the man asks again, the red mottle on his insect-like face becoming more pronounced.
I ignore his question. “So if you shoot me, my attorney will have a nice shiny copy of the footage to play at my murder trial.” The man still doesn’t move, and I draw closer yet, giving him a slight angle so that if he does start shooting, I’m not giving him a bullseye target of my chest. “Put it on top of the bar. Slowly.”
I watch the man calculate in his brain, shadows rolling over blue eyes as he slowly starts to oblige, placing a shotgun onto the chipped and scratched bar. I reach forward and give it a shove so that it slides all the way to the other end of the bar and clatters onto the floor.
“On the couch.” I point the bat in the direction of a sunken black leather couch near a dart board.
He grumbles something unintelligible and walks around the bar, dragging the waist of his slipping jeans up below a rounded belly.
He sits on the couch and I bring a wooden chair over and place it directly in front of him, flipping it around.
When I take a seat and lean one forearm along the chair back, I keep the bat wedged above my head.
“Does the name Pepper Quinn mean anything to you?”
The way he rolls his lips and hesitates says it all. This piece of shit barely remembers the young girl he turned away when she needed him most.
“Let me refresh your memory.” I stand and swing my bat at an old tabletop jukebox, smashing apart the glass cover.
When I look back at the man, he finally has the decency to look more scared than annoyed.
“Young girl gets assaulted at a party, and instead of protecting her, you call her abuser’s father. ”
His eyes go wide and that dark something that lives inside me growls, pacified by his obvious fear.
“Now look here, you don’t understand—”
“Let me be very clear that I’m not here for excuses,” I hiss, wedging the tip of the bat beneath his pudgy jaw and pressing his head back. He clutches the couch tighter, whiting around his knuckles. “There is no grey area with this, and nothing you can say to fix it.”
“Then what do you want?” he yells, his eyes bloodshot.
“I’m so glad you asked.” I shove a little, pinning his head to the wall behind the couch and making him wince. “I want you to break the rules for good this time.”
His scruffy whiskered lip curls, hands leaping up to try and temper some of the bat’s pressure, but I don’t let them succeed.
“You’re going to do what you should have done years ago, and arrest the Rénirs for their crimes.”
The old man scoffs, his face turning purple. “What crimes?”
“You know what crimes!” I roar, releasing the bat and smashing a row of antique bottles off the shelf above him.
They smash to the floor, some leaping up to bite at my feet, but a cut or two isn’t enough to drown out the thumping fury rip-roaring around my system.
“The ones that paid for you to buy this shit hole.”
The anonymous file that had arrived in my inbox this morning was simply titled, “Read me.” And within it, twenty years of financial records that linked the Rénirs with corruption and fraud—bribing judges, tampering with election votes, money laundering.
You name it, they’ve done it. And the hyperventilating old man in front of me has been on their payroll since the beginning.
“And not only that.” I reach down and grab him by the collar, dragging him up against the wall and wedging the bat across his throat lengthways. “You’re going to find a way to frame them for a list of crimes that I give you.”
“Are you mad?” The old man gasps, scrambling at the bat. “The Rénirs run this town. I can’t do that!”
“You will do that, and do you wanna know why?” I bare my teeth, grinding them so hard they hurt.
Only ragged breathing and beer-scented breath reaches me.
“Because the Rénirs might run this town, but I run New York City, and I know people so powerful that they make the Rénirs look like fucking amateurs.”
I lift him from the wall and slam him back into it. “And if you don’t, I’m going to take all of that money you’ve hidden in an offshore account in your daughter’s name because you thought you were so clever, and use it to pay people to make your life a living hell every day until you die.”
A high-pitched groan sounds from the back of his throat and the scent of ammonia cuts the air. “Okay, okay!”
I let go of him, allowing his heavy body to slump to the couch like a sack of shit, noting the dark stain spreading across the front of his jeans.
“I’ll do it, fuck!” He clutches at his throat, scrambling to one corner of the couch.
I take a step back, my whole body trembling as I try to wrestle my anger back into its cage.
“And if I find out you’ve harmed one hair on another person’s head ever again—emotionally or otherwise—I’m going to hunt you back down and finish the job I started.”
The parting words come out as a granite-rough growl, barely loud enough to register. And with that, I force my shaking body to turn and walk out of the bar before I indulge the thing clawing to escape my chest and do something I can never take back.