Breaking Hearts

by Melissa Shirley

  “I still want to check the notebook and see if anyone associated with some of those names has turned up here.”

  “I need to see Simon.” Maybe I wasn’t the only one who had a few secrets in the metaphorical back pocket.

  “I thought he was mad at you.”

  “Well, he’s gonna have to get over it.” I blew out a breath. “We have some things we need to discuss.” So many things, I couldn’t even formulate an entire list without losing track.

  Instead of speaking, she pulled the car back onto the road and, before I knew it, we’d arrived at my house. I rushed up the walk and burst through the front door to silence. Mom must have taken Kieran out for the day.

  I walked into the kitchen, dialing my cell. A moment later, I dropped the cell onto the floor and watched the battery slide across the tile. “Joey?”

  He held up both hands.

  “How did you get in here?” I looked around for a weapon, anything I could use if Joey turned out not to be the person I’d believed.

  “We need to talk.” His voice was the gentle, but no-nonsense one he’d used when he gave me the notebook and told me to only use it if an absolute need presented itself and my life was in danger. “Sit down.” His black hair gleamed under the light at the counter. He stared at me, then motioned to the chair at the table.

  I crossed to the coffee maker, close to the knife set in the butcher block. “How about a drink, Joe?”

  “Sure.” He stood and leaned against my mother’s counter, for all the world looking comfortable and happy in his chosen profession as break-and-enterer with his legs crossed at the ankles. He braced his hands at his sides on the cool granite. “Danielle.”

  His voice caused me to flinch, and I inched a hand closer to the blades.

  “I’m not here to hurt you.”

  I spun around and moved a step to the left. If I needed to grab a weapon, I wanted to have an easy reach. “Then why are you here?”

  “I’m not who you think I am.”

  I rolled my eyes, somewhat tired of being wrong about people. “Join the club. No one is ever who I think they are.”

  He reached into the pocket of his jacket, and I yanked a knife forward. “If that’s a gun, I swear to God, Joey…” I had nothing to swear. I wasn’t Superman and I had no way to beat a speeding bullet.

  “How did you manage to keep yourself alive all this time?” He shook his head and smiled. “It’s a badge.” Wow--shiny gold, FBI, alongside a picture ID. “Now, can we talk or are you planning to carve a turkey?” He nodded toward my left hand.

  I put the knife in the sink and stepped close enough to snatch his credentials out of his hand. “How do I know it’s real? How do I know you didn’t get it at a hobby store or something to trick me?” It looked real, was heavy in my hand, and laminated in all the right places. I glanced from Joey to the picture and back again.

  “For what? What purpose would I have to trick you?”

  “I don’t know. What purpose do you have for being in my house?” What did the FBI want with a girl from Storybook Lake, Illinois with an ankle bracelet as her only jewelry, who’d at worst only ever gotten a single speeding ticket? Not counting this murder thing.

  “I’m here to help you stay out of jail.”

  “I have a lawyer for that.”

  “Well, the way I see it, you’re about five witnesses from kissing your freedom good-bye.” He shrugged and took his little black wallet back. “Your lawyer’s probably one of the best I’ve ever seen, but the prosecutor is about to get a forensic report that puts your prints on the gun.”

  “What?”

  He reached down and picked up my cell, took his time reassembling it and powering it on while I stood gaping at him.

  “Dani, some very powerful people need to make sure you go to jail for Sean’s murder. I can’t explain it all, but the notebook I gave you when you left California has the names of senators and judges, corporate people who have a lot to lose if the investigation stays open, and they have the right people on their payroll. You have one lawyer who, no matter how good she is, is in over her head.” He spoke with such conviction that even though the story sounded ludicrous to me, I had no choice but to believe his words.

  The words “make sure you go to jail” rang over and over in my mind. “So what do I do?”

  “Call your boyfriend.”

  Chapter 34

  Simon didn’t answer, so I left a message detailing Joey’s plan. I prayed being bait wouldn’t get me killed. Before I walked out of the house behind Joey, I left a note for my mom with everything she’d always wanted to know written inside.

  We climbed in the non-descript sedan he’d hidden down the block. Instead of going over the details of what he wanted me to do, he turned to me and smiled. “Have you thought about what you are going to do with the club, yet?”

  “No, maybe close it down or”--I grasped his arm and he jerked away--“Maybe I’ll just give it to you.” I feigned excitement, forced a bubbliness into my voice not matching the gnawing in my stomach.

  He hung his head down to his chest. “Aw, Dani, how did you ever get messed up with that son-of-a-bitch?” He ran onto the shoulder as he looked over at me. With a quick jerk of his arm, he pulled the car back onto the road.

  I jumped and a slight squeal escaped my throat. “Joey?” Fear inched up my spine and my mind rolled in icy terror. Images of Sean killed by someone big enough to overpower him floated through my thoughts. Huge under-described Joey and puny over-described me. I’d be an easy kill for someone like him. I didn’t know the name of the emotion beyond terror, but I definitely trembled from it. How did I know Joey was telling the truth? Maybe the badge was fake.

  “I’m sorry, Dani.”

  My mouth went dry. My heart pounded and I turned my body to face him. “For what?”

  “Did you find the videos?”

  Videos? What videos? Then it dawned on me. There’d been a “V” next to some of the names in the notebook. God. How big an idiot could I be? “No.”

  “Did you read the notebook?”

  From his tone, the answer mattered. “No.”

  “Is there anywhere you know--a storage shed maybe, or another safe room--where he might have hidden them?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t think of anywhere else. Our house or the club, but I assume you’ve been all over those, right?”

  He chugged out a huffy breath and turned the car off onto a country road that hadn’t seen pavement in years. We bumped along, my head smacking against the roof with each pothole he plowed over. He pulled to a stop in front of an old farmer’s shack that should have met the wrecking ball several years earlier.

  “Joey?”

  He turned to me, grabbed my shoulders in a tight fist of bone and skin. “I need you to trust me. I won’t let anyone hurt you, but you have to follow my lead.” Another car pulled in behind us, and Joey curled his fingers tighter. I let out a little shriek of pain. He loosened his hold. “Wait until I let you out, and remember, I’ll keep you safe. I’m one of the good guys.”

  Before he stepped out, I grabbed his shirt. “Shouldn’t you have other good guys for back-up?”

  “Don’t worry. It’s under control.”

  I nodded as a basketball sized knot of undigested fear formed in my stomach. After a moment, he came around my side and yanked me out onto the dirt road. He hauled me around the back of the car where two men stood, obviously waiting for us.

  “Are they here?” Joey asked.

  One of the men in black wordlessly walked to the passenger rear door of a second car, and with a cool flip of his wrist, popped it open. California Judge, Dale McHuney, stepped out first, followed by the President of Waterworks Industries, H. Morgan Smiter, and finally, Ambassador Marco Wintani. I’d read articles about them in the newspaper in LA, seen them on TV, and remembered their names from the book.

  McHuney raised his glance from my shoes to m
y eyes, taking in all the space between. “Mrs. Turner.” He smiled and held out his hand as his cronies nodded their greetings in my direction.

  I crossed my arms, and he looked from me to Joey.

  “Does she have it?”

  “No, sir.” The captains of industry and government huddled up. McHuney, a whisper of a man with salt and pepper hair, had a frame that could have benefited from suits a size smaller. Smiter, a slightly younger man, putting him in his mid-fifties with a ring of brown hair around a shiny bald cap, stood next to Wintani, a mid-thirty-ish Italian with coal black hair and blacker eyes.

  Having studied the book enough to memorize their names and habits, and being this close to the trio of perverts, turned my stomach. Each had a “V” next to his name in the book that had always made me wonder.

  When they turned back to us, Smiter asked, “And the videos?”

  “She doesn’t have them.”

  McHuney turned away and began walking back to the car. Over his shoulder, he tossed, “Get rid of her.”

  I didn’t care for the sound of that and thought quickly, pulling a lame-brained idea out of the air. “Wait!”

  McHuney and his posse stopped.

  “I’ll get you the videos.” I hadn’t even known they existed, but now I claimed to have them. My brain cells had sprung a leak, and the dumb ideas inside dripped out my mouth.

  Joey squeezed my arm and yanked me closer to his body.

  McHuney stepped away from the group and walked up to me. “You have them?”

  I shrugged. “Not me, exactly, but I gave them to someone to hold for me.”

  “It’s not the lawyer,” Wintani said. “Aaron tossed her place. All he found were copies of the notebook.”

  “Not at her folks house, either,” Smiter said, a real glimmer of evil in his eyes. Even his grin inspired a new bout of the shakes. “My guys clean up afterward.”

  A cold chill shot down my spine at the thought of someone rooting through our belongings.

  McHuney looked from Joey to me and back again. “She’s lying?”

  “I believe so, sir,” Joey said.

  “Seriously?” I turned to Joey, thinking how badly I wanted to stomp his foot. “Sean told me all about you guys and your crazy fetishes.” I jerked free of Joey’s meat-fisted grasp. “And I have videos of each naughty little escapade. Unless you want the whole world to know you are a trio of perverts, you leave me and my family alone. Go the hell away and the videos never see the light of day.”

  McHuney laughed a full-on guffaw, holding his stomach and grabbing on to Wintani for support to stay upright. “She thinks she is on an episode of The Sopranos.” He mimicked me in a high voice. “Just leave me alone and the videos will never see the light of day.” That set him off on a fresh bubble of laughter. Then in a quick as lightening kind of move, he grabbed a gun from one of the men in black and pointed it at me.

  Joey stepped in front of me. McHuney, without a second thought, shot him in the leg. “God dammit, Joseph. I really didn’t want to have to do that.” Joey went down in one motion to an automatic sitting position. I surveyed the wound as best I could. The blood trickled slowly without any indication of a big ooze or a spray of arterial damage, so I stood straighter, lifted my chin a notch higher. In my mind, after dragging me out here, putting me in harm’s way, he’d earned a little wound.

  “Leave her alone.” Joey pulled himself to a standing position, the injured leg an inch or so off the ground. “She doesn’t have them.”

  “Don’t listen to him.” The words just kept coming. “I’ll keep your secrets if you let me and Joey go.”

  “An hour ago”--McHuney advanced, a vicious curl to his lips and his finger on the trigger--“he was primed to kill you, and now you’re bargaining for his freedom. I find that curious.” His head tilted to the side as he considered my rather erratic behavior. He looked over at his employee, then up to his friends. “What is it with this broad?” He turned to look at Wintani and Smiter. “She had one crawling all over the country to find her, she’s screwing another one on the side, and now you too?”

  He curled his lip, obviously not seeing what all the fuss was about.

  “What can I say? I’m what all the boys are into this year.”

  McHuney rolled his eyes and leveled the gun at me. “I think the boys are going to have to find a new plaything.” He pulled back the hammer on a shiny, pearl handled revolver.

  “Just tell me this.” I had to keep them talking. “Which one of you killed Sean?”

  Wintani looked at me, an amused smile on his lips. “What makes you think one of us murdered him?” His thick accent accounted for his broken words. “I am hearing his angry wife killed him.”

  “We all know I didn’t do it.” I rolled my eyes. “So, it isn’t rocket science, is it?” I smiled, about to impress them with my brilliant powers of deduction to stall for time. “Sean blackmailed each one of you, didn’t he? How much did he get? Thousands? Hundreds of Thousands? Doesn’t matter.” I shook my head and started pacing back and forth, thinking of nothing more than moving targets and the chance to run.

  “But the money didn’t matter for you guys, right? This little piece of shit strip club owner had something on you that would ruin your sparkly little reputations as church-going, world-saving heroes. I mean, how would it look if the Honorable Judge McHuney showed up on TMZ licking cocaine off the toes of some blond bimbo he paid by the hour? Or philanthropist H. Morgan Smiter getting a whipped cream massage? And an ambassador to whatever country you”--I didn’t know the word, so I winged it--“ambass for--frolicking in your pink lace panties and bustier. You guys didn’t care about the money.”

  “Again, Mrs. Turner, this isn’t an episode of The Sopranos. It has nothing to do with our egos.” McHuney chuckled again. He had a jovial kind of attitude for a guy who shot his henchman, then pointed his gun at me. “It’s all about the money.”

  “So, you killed Sean.”

  He nodded slightly. “You should have dialed 9-1-1 when you found him. Maybe the cops would have believed you.” He shrugged. “Then again, maybe not.” He waved his gun through the air before pointing it more directly at my chest. “A pretty little thing like you in jail? How long do you think you’d last? Your little fireman can’t save you there. Trust me. This is better.” He shrugged. “Joseph will clean this up, and you’ll be another missing person in a world full of them.”

  “You just shot him.” My mouth went dry and my heart hammered. I promised God I would leave all the hero business to Iron man and Thor if he got me out of this one. “Why would he clean up anything for you?”

  “You’re a stupid girl. He works for me. I pay him a lot of money and he’ll do it because I tell him to.”

  A car flew up from behind them, covering us all in a cloud of dust. Before it rolled to a complete stop, Simon jumped from the passenger seat and Luke came out the other side. Each had a gun aimed at the men in front of me.

  McHuney yanked me between him and the guns aimed his way.

  Simon stepped closer. “Let her go or this isn’t going to end well.”

  “You really are what all the boys want, aren’t you?” He looked at Simon. “Is she really worth it?”

  I wanted to turn around and tackle him as he dug his fingers into my shoulder and tightened his grip across my chest. The last thing I needed was this guy giving Simon any reason to doubt me further.

  “She lied to you about your kid.” He chuckled. “It’s his, right?”

  “That’s between me and her. Now let her go.”

  He shifted his body from side to side. “How’s your aim since your little accident?”

  Joey sat on the ground behind us. “I don’t know about his, but mine is great, and the chances of me missing at this distance aren’t in your favor.”

  The events of the next few seconds happened one on top of another in such rapid fashion I couldn’t focus on anything other than
being pulled into Simon’s arms, crushed against him as Joey fired (and missed) and McHuney took off running. Officers and agents had Wintani and Smiter in custody, and we all watched as a couple guys with guns took off after McHuney, tripping him as he almost made it to the small crossing at the creek bordering the tree line. He landed hard on his face before they pulled him up, slapped on the cuffs, and dragged him to the car.

  Another agent knelt next to Joey and told him to stay still until the ambulance arrived. The blood had drained from his face, but he looked up at me and smiled. “You had me worried there for a minute. I wasn’t so sure about you.”

  Simon walked over to talk with Luke, but every few seconds glanced over at me as though he was afraid I’d disappear.

  Joey grinned. “I didn’t think we’d be friends anymore after I put half of California on your tail.”

  I plopped down on the ground next to him. “I was rethinking it, but everything worked out.”

  He folded his hands in his lap. “I would never have let them hurt you.”

  I nodded. “So, just to get this straight, you knew all along I didn’t do it?”

  He nodded. “Of course I did. You’re not a killer.” He cracked his neck. “So, I suppose you’re going home with your boyfriend now?” His eyes remained glued to his hands, but his voice cracked with a moderate note of hope.

  “It’s up to him, but I hope so.” I spoke softly, with my own bit of optimism.

  “You gonna tell him about Kieran?”

  I nodded. It was time.

  Chapter 35

  Simon waited for me by the truck he and Luke had arrived in.

  “You saved my life.”

  “You saved mine first.” He reached out, pulled me close, and buried his head in my hair. After a few deeps breaths, he cupped my face with his palm. “After…” He pointed to the scar on his head. “I thought the way my heart beat was the way it would for the rest of my life--kind of shallow and just wrong. Then you came back and my heartbeat, my everything, was right again.”