Chapter 12
Akker
I followed a few steps behind her, trying not to rub my shoulder as pain ached from deep inside, burning as it reached the surface. She glanced back once or twice, making sure I was following, just like she’d done when she was a toddler and I was chasing her through the supermarket.
“Daddy, you have to keep up!” Josie called to me.
“I’m coming as quick as I can. You have to slow down for the old man.”
“You’re not old! You’re barely thirty!”
I moved into a slow jog, regretting the pain the jarring movement caused my shoulder, but eager to earn my child’s approval. When I caught up, I slid my arm around her shoulders and she quickly slipped an arm around my waist, giggling a little as she pressed her head briefly to my shoulder.
“Can we get ice cream?” she asked after a moment as we turned a corner in the mall and found ourselves coming up to the food court.
“Do you want real food first?”
“Nope, just ice cream.”
She pulled away and ran over to the ice cream counter, already ordering her triple-decker waffle cone by the time I caught up. With our ice creams in hand, we picked a table off to one side of the busy court, sitting across from each other as we enjoyed the treat. I found myself watching her, still just as amazed by her existence as I was when she was a newborn baby.
She had dark hair like mine, thick and curly like her mother’s. Her eyes were blue, a trait she’d taken from her mom, but she had a narrow jaw and long nose like me. Genetics was an amazing thing, the way it had picked and chosen all the best qualities from her mother and me to make this perfectly beautiful creature. At fifteen, she was so close to becoming a woman that it frightened me a little. It didn’t help when I recalled that she was now the same age her mother and I had been when we made her.
“Mom says you’ve been hanging out with some older kids from school.”
“Mom worries too much.”
“She says there’s boys.”
Josie blushed. “There’s a boy. And he’s super nice.”
“Don’t you think you’re a little young for boyfriends?”
Josie’s big eyes grew wider as she stared at me. “All my friends have had half a dozen boyfriends already and I haven’t had a single one! I’m such a nerd! I’m never going to find a nice guy to go out with me.”
“Sure, you will. When you’re forty.”
“That’s not funny, Daddy.”
“What’s this boy like?” I asked, stopping a drip from my ice cream with my forefinger and sucking it off. “Is he from a good family?”
“I go to private school. They’re all good families.”
“You’re not in school right now.”
She sighed. “I met him here at the mall, but he goes to my school. He’s a year ahead of me.”
That didn’t make me feel any better. A year ahead of her meant he was sixteen and probably had a fancy car his parents had bought for him. And boys with cars were more dangerous than boys without cars. I knew. I was once one of them.
“You remember the rules, right? I get to meet him before you go anywhere alone with him.”
“I know, I know. But he’d have to ask me out first.”
“He will.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I was him once, and I would definitely ask you out.” I reached over and brushed a piece of hair out of her face. “You’re gorgeous, Jos. Even a fool can see that.”
She blushed, becoming very occupied with her ice cream for a few minutes. But then her eyes moved over my face. “What about you? Any girls in your life right now?”
Eva immediately jumped to the forefront of my thoughts, but talking about her would not be appropriate. Eva was a client. A target. Nothing more.
“There is, isn’t there?” Josie grew excited, giggling a little. “Who is she? Where did you meet her?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to. It’s written all over your face!”
I shook my head, taking one last bite of my ice cream before tossing it into a nearby trashcan. “I haven’t met anyone.”
“Sure, you have. Who is she?”
She wasn’t going to let it go. Even as I hesitated to answer, she made a gesture with her hand, urging me on. Finally, I sighed.
“She’s a client who just happens to have once known your uncle.”
“Uncle Brock? Really?”
“Yeah. Apparently, they were seeing each other before the accident.”
Josie’s eyes clouded over a little. She had no memories of Brock from before the accident because he wasn’t a part of my life then, and therefore wasn’t a part of hers. To Josie, Brock was always… well, Brock.
“He never talks about that part of his life.”
“No, he doesn’t. And this woman thought I was him when she first saw me.”
“That must have been weird. Did you tell her?”
“It’s not my story to tell.”
She nodded, sitting back heavily in her chair. “I’ve never thought about his life before. It’s weird thinking of Uncle Brock with a girlfriend, doing something so… well, normal.”
She blushed at her choice of words, but I understood what she meant. Brock had been in something of a tailspin since he came back into our lives. The moment I got the phone call from the hospital, I knew it was going to be a long recovery. But his recovery had hit a stalemate some five years ago and he’d just been in this sort of stasis ever since. He couldn’t go forward, and he couldn’t go backward. He just stood still. I’d thought convincing him to hire on with Caballo would change things for him, but it just seemed to give him an outlet for his suicidal tendencies.
“I think your Uncle Brock was a very different person back before. Going through something like that can really change a person.”
“I suppose so.” She worked at her ice cream for a second. “Sometimes I wish I’d known him then.”
“I wish you had, too. I think you would have really liked him.”
“I like him now. He just… he seems so sad all the time.”
I nodded. There was nothing to be said to that because it was the simple truth. Brock was sad. But maybe seeing Eva again would bring back a spark of that man she once knew. The way she talked about him, the things she remembered about him, it was like she was constantly talking about a man I’d never met. And the funny thing was, that was exactly what it was. I didn’t know the Brock she had known. She knew the man who came out of the angry teenager I’d last known. She knew the man who grew and matured during a time when I wasn’t in his life. She knew the man Brock was meant to be. Maybe I was, too. But he wasn’t that man anymore, and never was.
Wasn’t it odd, the things that might have been and should have been? How easily life could be altered by the simplest things.
“Do you like her?”
“Who?” I asked, pulled out of my musings.
“Uncle Brock’s old girlfriend.”
I nodded without thinking. “She’s beautiful and kind and generous.”
Josie smiled. “Sounds like you have a crush.”
“No,” I said, reaching over to push that hair out of her face again. “She’s Brock’s. I’m not going down that road again.”
“But she was Uncle Brock’s years ago. She isn’t his anymore.”
I rolled my shoulders, pain flaring in my wound. “I’ve been down that road. I won’t go that way again.”
“You’ve punished yourself enough, Daddy.” She reached over and touched my hand. “Even Uncle Brock doesn’t hold anything against you anymore. He told me so.”
“Yeah, well…”
“You and Mom made a mistake all that time ago. You paid for it. You don’t have to keep paying for it.”
“When did you get to be so grown-up?”
She tossed the last of her ice cream into the trash. “I’ve always been grown-up. You’re just now beginning to recogn
ize it, that’s all.”
“Is that all?”
“Yeah. Now come buy me a new phone.” She jumped up and grabbed my hand. “I want an iPhone X!”
I laughed. “Just what I need: another demanding woman in my life!”
I stood and began to follow her, pausing only when my cell phone began to ring. “It’s work. I have to get this.”
Josie rolled her eyes. “I’ll meet you at the phone store.”
I watched her walk away, more amused by the attitude in her step than I probably should have been, before answering the call.
“Akker Mills.”
“Hey, Akker, it’s Ox. We’ve got a tentative plan in the works to finish the Eva Rae case and I was wondering if you’d mind coming in, giving us a little information.”
“What kind of information?”
“We need details on this party she’s supposed to attend tonight.”
“You’re not seriously thinking of letting her go, are you?”
“She’s insisting, and we figure if she wants to go anyway, why not use it to our advantage?”
I found myself nodding despite the questions running through my mind, my concern for Eva’s safety. “Does she know how dangerous something like that can be?”
“We haven’t talked to her yet. We want to have a firm plan in the works first.”
A group of noisy teenagers passed me, laughing as they glanced back at me a few times. I lowered my head, acknowledging them. One waved, and then dissolved in laughter as she ran off with her friends.
“I’m at the mall with Josie. It’ll take me a little while to take her home.”
“No problem. We’re up in the conference room. Get here as soon as you can.”
A plan. If we could get Eva out of trouble, that would be fantastic. But I couldn’t pretend the idea of seeing her again wasn’t the cause of my excitement.
***
“You’re early.”
Marnie glared at me from the doorway of her husband’s fancy house. It was a two-story stone monstrosity that stood too close to the houses on either side of it. I knew from past visits that there was no outside space, either, because the house took up every inch of the tiny lot on which it was positioned. I couldn’t imagine why someone would want a house with no yard. Wasn’t the whole point of purchasing a thirty-year mortgage the right to landscape and throw barbecues in a well-maintained yard? It simply made no sense to me.
Then again, for a man who spent no time at home, maybe it made perfect sense.
“He has to go to work,” Josie informed her as she burst past her mother with her iPhone still in the bag. “Something about a pretty girl.”
“A client,” I called after her.
“Yeah… sure,” she said, twisting around long enough to stick her tongue out at me before running up the stairs to go play with her new toy.
“There’s pictures of you on the Internet. Video.”
“Are there?”
“Yeah. One’s a video of you rescuing Eva Rae from some mob. And there’s another of you and that same woman kissing somewhere on the River Walk.”
I frowned, unaware that anything had hit the Internet. But I should have known better. People always had smartphones on hand whenever something happened, and no one seemed afraid to post their pics and videos to social media.
“Is that your client? Are you protecting Eva Rae?”
“Does it matter?”
Marnie made a face. “It does to my husband. You know her people contacted the hospital, suggesting she might make a donation to the oncology center—but she decided to fund this other one… the memorial fund over at Methodist instead of the county program, even though they do so much more for the people of this city than that stupid private hospital will ever do!”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“Noah does a lot of good things for people at the county hospital! You know he treated a little boy with leukemia for free because his family couldn’t afford all his bills? Who do you think compensates him in situations like that? No one! And the clinic where he spends most of his weekends? They barely have enough money for basic supplies, let alone all the tests and medications their patients need. Who do you think pays for that stuff?”
“Marnie, really, this has nothing to do with me!”
“But you know this woman. Maybe you can convince her that she’s helping out all the wrong programs. Over at Methodist, they don’t even have an oncology clinic. All their donations go to serve their rich patients who can pay their own bills. They don’t even accept patients who don’t have insurance!”
“I’m sure Eva has her reasons for supporting the programs she does.”
“Talk to her, Akker. Convince her she’s making a fucking mistake!”
I glanced around the entryway into the big, fancy McMansion and shrugged my shoulders, the pain in my wound more than worth it. “Somehow it doesn’t look like you and Noah are suffering.”
“Go to hell, Akker!” She pushed my chest. “Leave it to you to be self-centered and miss the point completely. It’s not about Noah—it’s about his patients!”
“I’m sure it is.” I held up my hands, showing her I was washing my hands of the whole thing. “Tell Josie I’ll call her tomorrow.”
“One of these days you’ll think of someone other than yourself, Akker Mills!”
I nodded, strolling out to my car like it was just an ordinary conversation on an ordinary Saturday afternoon. And the sad thing was, it was exactly that. Every conversation with Marnie turned into this.
Chapter 13
Eva
I was bored. It had been a long time since I’d had so much time on my hands, but I couldn’t get my mind to wrap itself around a plot, whether it be in a book or on the television. All I wanted was to know what was happening outside these four walls, and no one was coming to tell me.
I paced for a while, walking all around the large living room, going back and forth between the pieces of furniture. Then I tried some lunges, some yoga poses, hoping that it might force me to focus and calm my anxiety a little. But nothing seemed to work.
There was a bottle of brandy in the cabinet where the mini fridge was hidden, and I was tempted, but I couldn’t justify drinking so early in the day to that little voice in the back of my head that I was pretty sure originated with my mother.
“People who drink before dinner are people who end up in rehab,” she once told me. She would know. Before she got married, she worked for a very well-respected, well-known daily paper. She used to tell me stories about all the reporters she worked with, some of whom I knew by name, and the drinking that got them through most days. And the mistakes that led to their ousting from the profession.
I’d asked my mom once if she ever regretted getting married and having me, if she wished she hadn’t left her work. She’d smiled almost wistfully, brushing her fingertips over my cheek.
“Not in a million years. Everything that happens in a person’s life happens for a reason. If I hadn’t met your father, I never would have met you. And you, my love, are the light of my life.”
Those words stayed with me for a long time after she died, soothing my broken heart at the same time they cracked open the wound with the depth of my sorrow.
I missed my mom. Still, after all this time, I missed her. And, today, I missed my dad. I really wished he could have made this trip with me.
This was why I hated being left alone with nothing to occupy me. My mind went to places I really didn’t want it to go! Imagine my relief when the door made those familiar clicking sounds, alerting me that someone had punched in their code on the other side.
When I saw who it was, I was as relieved as I was surprised.
“Akker!”
“Hey, darlin’,” he said, adjusting a tray from one hand to the other as he struggled with the heavy door. “Thought you could use a little lunch.”
“At least you people feed me well down here.”
“We try to be as hospitable as possible.”
He carried the tray to the coffee table, setting it down with exaggerated caution. I watched him, leaning forward a little with this deep need to run into his arms. But I held myself back, remembering his parting words last night. He glanced over at me, gesturing to the couch.
“It’s getting cold.”
I walked over, purposely taking the long way around the furniture so that I wouldn’t have to brush against him to get to the tray. I could feel him watching me as I uncovered the thin steak and lovely salad that was on the plate, making me nervous as the heavy plastic lid nearly slipped from my fingers.
“Looks good.”
“I hope so. It would hurt Skylar’s feelings if you didn’t like it.”
“Who is Skylar?”
“Ox’s… well, I guess the proper word for it is assistant. But she’s more like the den mother, you know? She keeps us all in line around here.”
“Sounds like the kind of woman I’d like to meet.”
Akker took a seat in the same armchair Ox had sat in earlier, crossing one leg over his knee as he watched me tuck into the food. I wasn’t terribly hungry, but I needed to do something or else I’d say something I shouldn’t, and neither of us wanted that.
“We’re trying to work out a plan to get you to your party tonight.”
I glanced at him. “Really?”
“Ox and Oliver have been working on it all morning.”
I nodded, poking at a piece of lettuce with the fork. “Oliver works here, too? You never really explained that dynamic.”
“He inherited an equal share of the company when Ox’s father died. They both ran it for a while, but then things happened, and Oliver had to go away for a while. He’s just recently come back, just helping out wherever he can. He doesn’t really have a job title at the moment.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“Isn’t everything?”
That brought my eyes back up to his face. I wondered if he was talking about the firm, or if he was really talking about us. I wanted to touch him, to continue some of the explorations we’d indulged in yesterday. I didn’t think it would be this hard to be close to him and not be free to touch him, not be allowed to crawl into his lap and experience a few more of his delicious kisses.
Caballo Security Box Set Page 27