“We just… we were just…” Patsy stammers. “We weren’t…”
I put my arm back around her and pull her back in, ignoring her reluctance. “Patsy and I are getting to know each other,” I tell her son, using my serious tone. “Don’t know where it’s going, even if it’s going anywhere, but I like your mom, and I hope she reciprocates.”
Dan kicks out a chair and sits on it. He looks from Patsy to me, then back again. “Mom, I’m happy as fuck if you’ve found someone. Hell,” this time both hands brush back his hair, “it just took me by surprise. I’m happy for you. Just do me one favour, limit the public displays of affection when I’m around.”
Patsy is still feeling uncomfortable. “Dan, I, there’s a lot going on. I—”
“Mom, I mean it,” her son interrupts. “Honestly. I don’t mind. Just be sure Lost is what you want, and Lost?”
I cock my eyebrow.
“You ever hurt her…” he leaves the rest unsaid.
“I’ll try not to.” It’s all I can promise.
Dan gives me a sharp nod. “What’s new?” he asks.
Patsy looks at me for confirmation. “It’s alright,” I tell her. “Dan, listen to what your mom has got to say. If you’ve any thoughts or it triggers any memories, let me know?” I release Patsy, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze one last time. “I need to talk to Dart. I’ll catch up with you as soon as we have any news.”
She gives me a weak smile, then turns to her son. As I push up and away from the table, I hear her quietly starting to update him. I don’t have any real hopes he can shed light on things that happened when he was a babe in arms, but he spent four years close to his father, and something may come to his mind.
Dart’s on the phone as I pass him, so I wave with my hand and indicate my office. He holds up one hand with his fingers splayed which I interpret as he’ll be there in five.
In fact it’s four, I realise, checking my old-fashioned clock on the wall as he enters and pulls out the chair in front of the desk.
“What do you reckon to this tunnel idea?” he asks.
“Token’s spoken to you?” At his nod, I continue, “It’s information that’s over twenty years old.” Picking up a pen out of habit, I use it, not to write, but to tap at my lips. “We know there are tunnels. They tend to be dug, used for a few months, then discovered and shut down.”
“There’s a tunnelling task force, isn’t there? Working on tip-offs. I think they’re kept busy.”
It’s my turn to move my head up and down. “What are the chances that Alder’s got a tunnel that’s been undiscovered all this time?”
Instead of answering me, Dart asks a question of his own. “I’ve been thinking about Alder coming after Patsy. If he thinks she’s been moved under WitSec, it’s possible the reason he wants to catch up with her is to see what they know.”
I press my lips together as I think. “What would she be able to tell them? If she’d found Phil’s insurance, how would she be able to discover what was on those floppy disc drives? Unless she had a very old computer at home.” Patsy might be many things, but I don’t get the impression she’s up on technology. “As for the code, how could she read it?”
Dart’s brow furrows as he thinks. “But he wants her found. Why?”
“Maybe he thinks Dan told her something before he ‘died.’” I use air quotes. “He did go to her house a couple of times.”
“True.” I nod. My pen still taps at my lips. “I still think there’s something we’re missing.”
“Okay.” Dart leans back in his chair and kicks out his legs, resting his feet on my desk, crossing them at the ankles.
I glare at him, but he smirks and leaves his boots where they are. Really, I don’t give a damn. The desk is old and already marked, and if it helps with his thought process, I’m not going to argue.
“Let’s think about this. The information is over twenty years old. But what if it was a pipe dream back then, and the tunnel was only constructed recently?”
“For a start, we don’t know if there is a tunnel.” I play devil’s advocate. “And in twenty years he might have changed his plans or location.”
“Maybe he had the perfect site in mind, one that’s remained hidden all these years. Or,” Dart swings his legs back down and sits forward again, “maybe it’s a backup location. What if the information Dan gave him fucked up his current routes, so he’s had to use something else? Maybe he’s resurrected an old way of getting drugs in and out.”
“What else could it be, Dart?” True to my name, I’m totally lost for any explanation. Does it all hinge on data that’s been gathering dust for two decades, or is it something Patsy knows now? Until we’ve got more information, I’m stumped as to how to progress. Am I right to keep Patsy close by, or should we create a new identity and move her? Is she safe here? Or am I putting her at greater risk?
Dart sweeps his long hair back as though preparing to fasten it in a ponytail but just holds it there. “All this started with an anonymous message. If we hadn’t gotten that, we’d have never known Patsy was in danger.”
I shudder at Dart’s reminder. If we hadn’t known, Alder would already have his hands on her. With that network of his, she wouldn’t have evaded him for long. I owe whoever it was that messaged us. I make a mental note to check with Token whether he’s been able to find out any more. Maybe there’s more information to come our way if we only knew who the fucker was who sent it.
“Then there’s Shark.”
My eyes widen. “You think he’s got a part to play in this?”
Dart’s shoulders rise and fall. “No fuckin’ idea. It seems unlikely. But why rear his head after three years? Coincidence? Probably. But it can’t be dismissed.”
It’s easier to list what we don’t know than what we do. We know Patsy is in danger, but we don’t know why. We know we got a message, but not who from, and we’ve seen Shark who shouldn’t be anywhere near San Diego, so what the hell was he doing being spotted close by?
“Fuck.”
“Yeah,” Dart says. “That about sums it up.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Patsy
“So, you and Lost?” Dan raises a quizzical eyebrow at me.
“There’s nothing much to tell,” I begin, trying to get my own thoughts together. “I like him, Dan.” When he’s not being an ass. Though after he’d explained about his ex, I could see why my comments had caused the reaction they had. But if Lost has deep trust issues about women, then there’ll be no future for us. I’ve lived too long to force a man into the person I want him to be, or for me to change to become the woman he wants. I’d tried enough with Phil to know that doesn’t work. There’s no point in having a picture of an ideal man in your mind and pretending the one you’re with can be moulded into that. I like Lost, as I’ve told Dan, but the jury’s still out on whether we can make anything between us work. And, of course, Alder could come between us, upsetting any plans we might make.
“Well, I didn’t expect you to be eating the face of a man you didn’t like.”
“Dan!” I flick my hand in his direction, seeing him grinning widely. I sigh. “It’s early days. At your age, you’d see a girl you like, and your focus is getting her into bed—”
“That’s an age thing?” Dan interrupts with a snort. “With you being my mom, the thought might turn my stomach, but I reckon Lost wants to do just that.”
“Dan!” Once again, he shocks me.
“And you don’t? Want him like that?”
Perhaps I wouldn’t be as embarrassed if I were speaking to my daughter rather than my son, or maybe I would. Are moms even supposed to have sex lives? “Dan, whether he does or not, or whether I do, the thing is, I don’t want something that’s only a fling. If I want a man, I’d like to know it could lead somewhere.”
“I didn’t see you push him away.”
I’m not explaining myself well. “What I’m saying, Dan, is that I need time to understand who L
ost is before acting on any attraction. So, it’s far too early to say if there’s anything between us.”
He tilts his head to one side, regarding me carefully for a moment, then barks a laugh. “You’re right. I’m not looking for a relationship, but if a girl showed she was willing to put out, I’d take her up on it. But Lost? I get a different vibe from him, Mom. I don’t reckon he’d use you.”
I’m certain he wouldn’t, but I’ve been wrong before. “It’s hardly a good time to start a relationship, Dan.” Taking a breath, I dismiss the subject of what’s going on with me and the MC prez, and instead, resume the update which Dan had interrupted as soon as Lost was out of earshot. When I finish, his jaw is tight.
He shakes his head. “This shit that was found is over twenty years old?”
I nod.
“You really think this is Phil’s insurance I heard him talking about?”
Resting my elbows on the table, I stare at him. “Truthfully, I think everyone is clutching at straws. It all seems so farfetched. Can you remember anything that might shed light on this at all?”
But Dan doesn’t get the chance to answer. Before he can even open his mouth, two women come back into the kitchen. One, with reddened cheeks who makes me blush. I find I can’t quite look Eva in the eye, knowing exactly why her lips look swollen. The second goes straight to the oven, clearly to check if her meal is cooked. I wave my hand and Dan picks up my signal.
We move the conversation outside.
When we’re sat on a picnic bench shaded by a tree, Dan stares out at the magnificent view, before he says, “I’m wracking my brains trying to think of anything that would help. I can’t.”
“What were you able to tell the feds, Dan?”
“I knew where the drugs entered the country, how they got to Colorado.” He pauses, and his eyes close. “Certainly nothing about a tunnel. I told them about his modified trucks, and which crossing points they used, and the routes he would take across the country. Enough so he wasn’t able to smuggle them in that way anymore. The main thing was, I could finger him as the man behind it.”
“Where is Alder now?” I muse. “He’s gone underground, otherwise the feds would already have run him down.”
“Agent Caruso told me they’d confiscated his assets. He’s lost his house, and the damage I’ve done to his business, well, he’ll have to be building that back up from scratch.”
I do some thinking myself. “When I saw him at the funeral, he didn’t ask me anything.”
“Perhaps,” Dan muses, “he didn’t think he’d needed to at the time.”
“But Phil was already dead,” I remind him.
“At that point, the feds hadn’t made their move, though. Alder was making sure I was dead. That was the reason he turned up.”
Something isn’t right. Something that no one has mentioned before. I think we were just stunned to find out it was me Alder was searching for and not my son. “If he thinks you’re dead, how does he think the feds got the information to close him down?”
Dan looks like a light bulb’s just gone off in his head. “What if Phil’s insurance policy was something else? What if Alder thinks Phil left details of his operation with you, to be used at the time of his untimely death?”
I just stare at him, realising we’ve all been looking at this upside down. If Alder truly believes my son is dead, then who spoke to the feds? “But why me? I’m the last person who Phil would have shared anything with. Anything given to me, I’d just hand to the cops.”
“Exactly.” Dan grins widely. “Phil could have left a letter or something with his lawyer. Phil dies, the letter comes to you, you hand it over and the feds close in. Then you pack up and run.” His face falls. “If you hadn’t have moved with me, then maybe Alder wouldn’t have become suspicious.”
I cover his hand with mine. “Or it’s the best thing I could have done. If those are Alder’s suspicions, then if I’d stayed, he could have taken me at any time.” I wait for that to sink in. “Jesus, Dan. You’re right. It all makes sense. Alder wants revenge—”
“Or he wants to find out how much damage was done. If I were Alder, I’d want to know exactly what the feds were told. What if he’s got more routes that Phil knew about but not me? He’d have to know whether they were safe to use, or whether they were being staked out to catch him red-fuckin’-handed.”
I breathe in deeply. That’s the only thing that makes sense. I regard my son almost with fresh eyes. It’s been years, if ever, since I’ve sat and brainstormed ideas with him. Maybe he’s not so academic as Beth, but he’s far from stupid.
“Hey. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Lost comes over and joins us. When he sits on the bench alongside me, Dan raises an eyebrow and grins.
I ignore him, turning instead to Lost. “We’ve come up with an idea of why Alder is so desperate to find me.”
Dan takes over. “Phil told Alder he had insurance. What you found on the floppy discs may or may not have been part of it, but all Alder knows is that after Phil was killed, the feds swooped in and destroyed his drug running organisation.” Lost nods his head. “By then, I was already dead.” Dan proceeds to fill him in on the thoughts we’ve just been having.
When he’s finished, Lost’s eyes have gone wide as he looks at each of us in turn, digesting what we’ve told him. After a moment, he raises his chin. “Makes more sense than anything else we’ve come up with.” He taps on the picnic bench. Once, twice, then he seems to come to a decision. “I’ll take this back to Token. If you’re right, those floppies don’t hold anything that’s going to move this forward. Alder’s chasing fictional information that he thinks resides in your head.” He rests his hand against my cheek, his eyes full of compassion.
There’s no easy escape from Alder. If there’s no tunnel to find, Lost loses a bargaining chip. I hadn’t really hoped that anything would come from twenty-year-old information.
“We’ll sort it, Patsy. Somehow we’ll draw Alder out.”
“How?”
Instead of answering my question, a shuttered look comes over Lost’s face.
“You promised, Lost,” I remind him, my voice a low growl. If I don’t say anything, he’s likely to start labelling everything club business.
“Fuck, woman.” He turns his head, one side of his mouth turned up. “You’re going to be a pain in my ass, aren’t you?”
Dan chuckles. “You bet she is.” He winks at me.
Lost shakes his head, then starts to speak. “Okay. It doesn’t hurt us if Token keeps doing what he’s doing, even if he doesn’t turn up anything useful. We can’t discount the information that we did find in that box, nor that Alder knew of its existence. That could still be what he wants. There are hundreds of what-ifs and assumptions here. But, and here’s the first one, what if Alder had a tunnel dug years back like his wife suggested to you Patsy? He might have stopped using it, or I don’t know, part fell in? It was close to being discovered? Hell, could have been discovered and blocked off. But what if he needs to find a new route into the country? If he’s desperate, he might go back to revisit one he originally used.”
“But where would a tunnel be?” I ask. “We know border control is always looking for tunnels. Surely they would have come across something that old?”
“If it’s stayed hidden that long, maybe Alder thinks it’s a safe route?” Dan raises an eyebrow.
“But something that safe would have been used before and not abandoned.” Lost taps the wood again, a gesture that seems to help him think.
“What if the feds did find it?” I suggest. “What if they watched it for years, then gave up?”
“It would have been destroyed.” Lost dismisses my suggestion, then stills. “Unless they didn’t find it, but they got too close. Alder moved operations because it was too risky. Now, with no other choice, maybe he’s opening it back up.”
“He wasn’t using a tunnel when I knew him,” Dan puts in. “He had couriers crossing the border.”
“But his network has been broken up?” Lost questions Dan who raises his chin.
“I don’t know what the feds actually did, but I gave them enough information.”
Lost rakes his fingers through his hair. “Going back to your other point. Alder wants to know what Patsy knows. It is possible he thinks that there was some ‘in case of my death’ message left somewhere that Phil would have gotten to you, Patsy.”
“That makes sense,” I tell him, though it is worrying. “More so than a fictional tunnel he might have dug.”
Lost fills his lungs and looks at my son before turning back to me. “Any thought of you leaving has got to be put out of your head, Patsy. We didn’t have a clue why Alder had you in his sights, now we’ve come up with something that gives us a clearer picture and it’s one I don’t like. You’re fuckin’ important to Alder, and he won’t stop if he thinks it was you who spoke to the feds, and he’ll want to know exactly what was said. You’re staying here, with me. So I can protect you.”
I’ve never thought of myself as weak, but I’ve never been challenged before and the thought of leaning on Lost is comforting. But the more important I am to Alder, the more desperate he’ll be to find me. If he does, anyone protecting me will be in danger. If I leave, Lost and Dan will be safe. I don’t give Lost a response; he won’t like the thoughts in my head.
“Hey, Dan!”
“Salem?” Dan swings around as he answers.
“Got something you might want to see.” The enforcer’s standing by the back door.
Dan grins. “I’ll be right there.” He waves a goodbye to me and Lost as he stands and leaves.
Lost smiles at me. “Salem seems to have taken your boy under his wing. Said he was impressed with him today.”
I return his expression. “He was excited about helping out in your shop.”
“As long as he stays out of sight, Salem will be happy with an extra pair of hands. He likes mechanical shit?”
“He seems to have taken to it. I don’t think he’s ever had a chance to work with his hands.” Except for beating people up, I remember.
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