Chapter 81
“SHE’S REGAINING CONSCIOUSNESS,” I hear a man say. Is he talking about me?
An ambulance siren is rattling through my head and it takes me a moment to realize I’m inside the vehicle, flat on my back. I open my eyes. Everything’s blurry. Two men are leaning over me.
“How’s the baby?” I ask.
“She’s fine,” one of them says.
Thank you, God.
“So’s the mom. And the older daughter.”
“And the others?” I ask.
“A bunch of ’em were carted off in cuffs,” the second man says. “It was an FBI raid. Don’t see many of those around here.” He seems proud to have been part of this, like he can’t wait to get home and share it with the missus.
I’ve heard the guy’s voice before. But where?
“Hey, I know you!” he says. I squint and blink a few times. He’s wearing an EMT uniform and a badge that says FRED.
“Aren’t you the lady who got rear-ended?”
Am I? My thinking is as blurry as my vision. Then I remember.
“Yes,” I say.
“Boy, are you lucky,” he says.
Really?
Last Thursday, I was almost killed in that car accident.
Tonight, my hair and body are covered in blood.
My arm is throbbing with pain—though Fred assures me the Percocet they’re about to give me will work its magic quickly.
I’m dizzy. My ears are ringing from the gunshot.
My vision is wonky. And my hip is killing me.
Despite all the foam and rubber padding, I must have bruised it when I fainted.
Plus, I’m out of a job. Two jobs, actually. If Alan Metcalf wasn’t working for the FBI, then I won’t be getting back on their payroll. And Amber Harrison will never forgive me for lying about—well, everything.
Even if she does, what good is a one-armed nanny?
“Define lucky,” I say to Fred as he takes my blood pressure.
“You’re alive,” he says. That’s true. “Because of the way you went at the shooter, the bullet hit your arm, not your heart.”
“Are we headed to the hospital?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says. “Your vitals are good. But we need to check for internal bleeding. Oh, and here.” He hands me my cell phone. “You dropped this when you passed out. Somebody has been trying really hard to reach you.”
It’s probably Spectrum.
But no. I look at the screen and see seven missed calls from Coveleigh Ravenstock. I press the button and call him back. He picks up within a second.
“Thank God,” he says. “Are you okay?”
“Not sure,” I say.
“I told you not to go back there. If you had waited—”
“I know. I wouldn’t have gotten shot,” I say, finishing his sentence. “But Amber and Lily might have.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll give you that. You’re quite the hero.”
“I don’t feel much like a hero,” I say. Everything hurts. Every time the ambulance goes over a bump, it hurts more. “And I still don’t understand what happened.”
So as I lie there waiting for the Percocet to kick in, Cove tells me.
“That guy with his family name plastered all over the place?” he says.
“You mean Ray Taggart?”
“Yup. Turns out he’s been working for the cartel for years.”
Wow. Even in my woozy state, that’s a shocker.
“Here’s the story. They got greedy. Or greedier.
Wanted to branch out, and cartels love art galleries—the perfect front.
Private, totally under-the-radar. Very little paperwork, so there’s no real paper trail.
They buy something, hold it for months, maybe years, then resell. Poof! Dirty money gets clean.”
“So they got Ben Harrison involved.”
“Well, they tried to. The cartel bought one of his paintings anonymously. But when Ben found out who’d bought it, he reneged on the deal. Wanted no part of it. Refused to give them the painting. He put their money in escrow just to make a point.”
“That’s like making a point to a herd of stampeding buffalo.”
“Exactly,” Cove says. “That’s why you never found anything linking Ben to the cartel. There was never anything to find.”
I don’t get it. “So Metcalf and Taggart sent me on a wild-goose chase?”
“No. They lied to you. They told you to look for evidence of money laundering. But they were really hoping you’d dig up something they could use to blackmail Ben into joining them.”
“Wow,” I say.
“And you did. That story about his baby brother. You told Metcalf, and from the chatter we picked up on a wiretap today, he and Taggart were ecstatic.”
“Huh,” I add. This is a lot to process. And I’m having trouble putting together a complete sentence.
“Sounds like those meds are starting to kick in,” Cove says. He’s right. At this moment, the opioid has begun to do some pleasant little cartwheels in my brain.
“Let’s talk again tomorrow,” he says. “Right now, you need to heal.”
Yes. We have to talk more. I still don’t know the full story. But one thing is remarkably clear.
Ben may be nasty, arrogant, unfriendly, rude, mean to his wife, indifferent to his kids, and basically a dick to everyone who’s ever loved him.
But he’s also innocent.