Unforgiven: A Conspiracy Thriller

by Stacey Fields

  Clinging to the door handle, Michael turned around again to see the SUV turning off the street they had just come from to continue chasing them. The man in the passenger seat rolled down his window and hung his torso out, aiming a large gun in their direction.

  “He has an assault rifle!” Lindsey observed, eyeing him in the rear view mirror.

  “Do you have a gun?” Michael asked, pulling open the glove compartment in front of him and sifting through her things.

  “In the center console,” she said just as a rain of bullets pelted the back of the car, breaking through the glass of the rear window and buzzing around them.

  Michael quickly pulled open the compartment as Lindsey turned the car sharply down another side street. “An M1911,” Michael said, pulling back the slide of the gun and chambering the bullet, “nice.”

  “It’s my baby,” Lindsey said looking over at him quickly. “Be careful with it.”

  “Noted,” Michael said, climbing over the center console and positioning himself in the back seat just as the SUV appeared at the entrance to the street they were speeding down. The man with the assault rifle let another stream of bullets fly in their direction. Ducking back down, he heard them ping against the bumper of the car. “Brakes!” he yelled at Lindsey.

  “What?”

  “Slam on the brakes!” he ordered her again.

  She reacted quickly, and the car came squealing to a quick stop. Michael popped his head back up above the seat to see the surprised look on the faces of both the driver and the shooter in the SUV. The car came barreling at them, the breaks screaming and a cloud of smoke pouring out from around the tires. Seeing the man with rifle lean forward violently as the car came screeching to a halt, almost falling out, Michael took advantage of his momentary loss of control. Raising the M1911 swiftly, he inhaled as he squeezed the trigger. He hit his target, causing the man to fall completely out of the vehicle and hit the hard pavement with a thud.

  “Go! Go! Go!” he ordered Lindsey to once again lay into the gas and propel the car forward.

  “Did you get him?” she asked as the car sped down the street.

  “Yeah,” Michael replied as he watched the SUV turn off, and the driver jump out of the car and run around to check on his partner. “I got him.” Michael climbed back into the passenger seat, his heart racing. “You can slow down now,” he said resting his hand on Lindsey’s shoulder.

  Her hands were clenched tightly on the wheel; her face was white and her eyes wide. “You sure?” she asked not turning to look at him.

  Michael looked over his shoulder one more time to make sure they were no longer being followed. “I’m sure.”

  The car slowed down, but just slightly. Lindsey didn’t take her foot off the gas for even a second until they were miles away from the place they had left the SUV behind. When they reached the city limits, she pulled into the parking lot of a hotel, and parked the car between two others on the far end of the lot. “What the hell am I going to do with this?” she said walking around the back of her car and examining the damage.

  “We almost just died, and you’re worried about your car?” Michael asked, standing next to her staring down at the bullet-speckled bumper.

  She turned to look at him, clearly not amused by his observation. “I can’t drive this in to work in the morning!” she said throwing her hands in the air.

  “I can take you to work,” Michael offered.

  “Thanks,” she said turning to face him. “That solves all my problems.”

  “Hey,” he said holding out his hands defensively, “I’m just trying to help.”

  “I knew we shouldn’t have gone out there,” she muttered under her breath. “And we didn’t even get any useful information!”

  “The black Impala,” Michael replied quickly.

  “What about it?”

  “The first day I went to see Joy’s mom, I saw it. It was parked down the street, and as soon as I turned on my car, it just sped off. I thought they were following me or something. And it’s clear that whoever they were, they are linked back to the Lords.”

  “But we didn’t see who the men were,” Lindsey pointed out. “Did you get a license plate number?”

  “Just a partial.”

  “Like the phone number,” Lindsey said with a sigh.

  “But you get it now, right?” Michael asked as they reentered the car. “You see that there is something more going on, don’t you?”

  “I will admit that there is something fishy about the phones, the gang involvement, and the men we saw leaving the laundromat with Ronny and his guys.” She turned on the car but left it sitting in park. “But all you really have now are questions, Michael. You don’t have any answers.”

  “You might be able to get me one, though,” Michael replied raising an eyebrow.

  “The phone records,” she said knowing what he was talking about. “I don’t know Michael…”

  “What if I told you I could get your car fixed up in only a few days, and no one will ever know about it?”

  “Are you trying to barter with me, Mr. Kent?”

  “You want your car fixed, but on the down low, don’t you?” he asked.

  She let out a frustrated sigh. “You can really get it fixed, no questions asked?”

  “I can,” he nodded confidently.

  “And what do I do in the mean time?”

  “I’ll drive you to work in the morning, then I’ll pick you up in loaner—a loaner you can use, free of charge, in exchange for the phone records.”

  She squinted at him and bit her bottom lip, contemplating his offer. “Fine,” she said extending her hand to him.

  He shook it happily, and sat back in his seat as she pulled the car out of the lot. “It’s a little chilly in here,” he said looking over at her with a large grin spread across his face. “Maybe we should roll up the windows.” She glared at him over her shoulder. “Oh,” he added with a laugh. “Right.”

  Chapter 12: Old Cars and New Enemies

  “Come on, George,” Michael pleaded with his former boss. “If anyone can fix it up, it’s you.”

  Michael had called George and asked him to meet him back at his house. He had parked Lindsey’s car in his garage, and didn’t want to risk driving it to the shop in broad daylight.

  “I don’t know, Michael,” George said stroking his beard thoughtfully as he walked around Lindsey’s car, inspecting the damage. “This is one of those things I’m pretty sure I should report to the cops.”

  “Georgey, Georgey, Georgey!” Michael said rushing around to stand next to him. “Let’s not be too hasty here,” he said stepping in front of him, blocking his view of the car. “Everyone has been telling me that I need to do something to keep myself busy, get my mind off things, right? Maybe I come around to help you?”

  “Maybe,” George replied.

  “Think of it that way. As a favor for a friend! You don’t even have to pay me for the time.”

  “I sure as hell would think not,” George added.

  “It’s easy money and free labor. I’ll even work a few days next week after we’re done with this to make it up to you,” Michael added trying to convince him.

  George shifted his weight to get a view of the car again. “Shit, Michael. I don’t know.”

  “Come on, you’ve known me forever, George! Please, do this for me. I promise it’s nothing more than a quick fix-‘er-up.”

  “That’s not what it looks like,” he said stepping towards the car and leaning in to inspect the bullet holes.

  “Between the two of us we can have this baby fixed up and out of the shop in no time. I’d say a day, maybe two.”

  George laughed heartily and mockingly. “A day or two? Damn, Michael. You planning on working fifteen hour days?”

  “Alright, maybe three or four days,” Michael conceded. “But still, it won’t be too long.”

  “Fine,” George said shooting Michael a fatherly look of disapproval.

&
nbsp; “Oh, and I’m going to need one of the rental cars you give to people,” Michael added quickly, turning away before George’s expression could shift from one of disapproval to one of disbelief.

  “You got to be shitting me,” George said. “And is your friend going to pay for that, too?”

  “No,” Michael said shifting his weight around. “That was going to be part of the me working for free deal. I’ll add on another day or two if that makes any difference.”

  After a little more bartering and begging, Michael had convinced George to give him a loaner car in exchange for one week free labor, not including the time it took to repair Lindsey’s car. The beater he let him borrow was easily the oldest car in the small lot behind the shop. He didn’t complain though, although Lindsey did have a thing or two to say about it when he picked her up at the station later that day.

  “Seriously?” she asked as she ducked into the passenger seat. “This is the car you got me ‘free of charge’? Did you find it on the side of the road? Or just rummage through the dump for a while until you stumbled on in?”

  “Hey,” Michael said as he drove them back to his house, “if you don’t like it I can return it and you can walk your pretty little ass to work in the morning.”

  “I’m going to let that comment slide because you said I was pretty,” she replied leaning over to pull a file from her bag.

  “I figured you’d let it go because I got you a free rental car.”

  “You’re also the reason I need said rental car,” she retorted quickly, not missing a beat.

  “Touché,” Michael said, nodding his head and smiling to himself. “Those the phone records?” he asked motioning towards the file in her lap.

  She opened the file and stared down at the sheets of paper inside. “Yeah.”

  “Anything noteworthy?”

  “I didn’t really get a chance to look through them too well,” she said turning the page and continuing to study the numbers.

  “Do you see anything that could be the number Rachel wrote down?”

  “I’d have to see the sheet of paper again to be sure, but there is a number that repeats more than the others. It could be it.”

  “What is it?” Michael asked, turning to look at the papers.

  “Hey!” Lindsey said pulling the file to her. “Eyes on the road. You already got me almost killed one time too many.”

  “You’re never going to let that go are you.”

  “It was last night!” she exclaimed. “I think I still have the right to be a little upset about it.”

  “You women and your grudges.”

  “Do you want to hear the number or no?”

  “Alright, alright. I’ll be good. What’s the number?”

  “(815) 336-9853” Lindsey said as she peered down at the paper.

  “That’s it!” Michael said loudly, reaching to grab the papers from Lindsey’s lap. She tried to pull them back but she wasn’t fast enough. He pressed the sheet against the steering wheel and examined it closely, looking up every few seconds to make sure he was still driving in a straight line.

  “You can look at it when we’re not going 45mph,” Lindsey said taking the sheet back quickly and snapping the file shut. Michael drove a little faster, wanting to get back to his house as soon as possible. “You do know I’m a cop, right?” she said, leaning over and eyeing the speedometer.

  “Off duty cop,” Michael corrected her. “And if I’m not mistaken, my accomplice in all of this.”

  “Just don’t go over 50,” she warned, leaning back and looking out the window to her right. She sighed as she watched the trees fly by. “I’ve wanted to bring down the Lords for years,” she started. “And since my partner’s death I’ve dreamt of the day I would get them off the streets for good.”

  “This may be your chance,” Michael said as he turned into his subdivision.

  “I just don’t understand how they’re connected to Hamilton & Lewis, if they really are.”

  “You still have your doubts?”

  “I just don’t understand how we could have missed it. You would think that after your fiancée’s shooting something would have come up. The Lords have been on our radar for as long as I’ve been at the department. If there was anything concrete that linked the two, I just don’t know how we didn’t find it.”

  “Because there is nothing concrete,” Michael replied as he pulled the car into the driveway. “At least there wasn’t, until Rachel and Joy stumbled across something they shouldn’t have.”

  “So you think that’s why they did it? That Hamilton & Lewis needed to cover their tracks or something?”

  Michael turned off the engine and leaned his head back against the headrest. “Rachel was good at her job. She loved it. If there were anything going on that was the least bit out of the norm, she would have found it. That is what I know for sure. If it’s what led to her death, I don’t know. But the more and more I find out, the more and more it seems to be the case.”

  “But what could it be that was so important that they would kill to keep it secret? They’re a law firm! I mean, maybe some funny business here, a few cooked booked there, but to kill someone because of that?”

  “That’s what we need to figure out. It’s obviously something more than that.”

  “How do you think they figured it out?” Lindsey asked, turning to face Michael. He shifted his weight around so that he was looking at her. Her deep blue eyes were focused, and her mouth was pursed. “We can’t even figure it out—you and me, the cops, my partner. If it involves the gangs, how did two paralegals piece it together so well and so quickly that their bosses resorted to homicide to keep them quiet?”

  Michael let a sad, weak smile spread across his face as he answered. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “But I do know that if anyone could do it, Rachel was that person.”

  Lindsey reached out and placed her hand gently on his arm. “You really thought the world of her, didn’t you?”

  “She was my everything. Not just the woman I loved, but the person I wanted to be. She was smart, witty, worldly. But she was also so down to earth and completely unaware of how truly amazing she really was.”

  “Well, let’s get to work then,” Lindsey said taking her hand from his arm and patting the file in her lap. “We owe it to her to figure this out, don’t we?”

  When they got into the house, they both walked directly to the kitchen table. Lindsey quickly got to spreading out the sheets of paper while Michael retrieved the phones he had left on the counter.

  “These aren’t the originals,” Lindsey explained as she reached into her purse and pulled out a highlighter. “So we don’t have to worry about marking them.” She quickly got to work highlighting the number Michael identified as the one Rachel had written down.

  As she did, Michael scrolled through Joy’s phone, reading back through her messages with Rachel. “Look at January 3rd,” he said reading the coded texts. “Here Rachel says something about eating 2 grams of fat. That’s not normal for her. She wouldn’t have ever cared about something like that.”

  Leaning over the table, Lindsey ran her finger along the list of numbers. “January 3rd,” she said quietly. “It looks like there are six calls exchanged between Hamilton & Lewis’ office and the number we’re looking at.”

  “That makes sense,” Michael said holding the phone out for Lindsey to see. “Rachel said two, and Joy said four.”

  “So they were each keeping tabs on how many calls they fielded that came from that number.”

  “Rachel worked for Hamilton. She was like his personal secretary. Joy worked for Lewis.”

  “So this person was calling both of them. And a lot,” Lindsey said leaning down and looking at the papers again. “Some days there are as many as ten calls between them. But then there are days when nothing appears.”

  “What about for the 8th?”

  “Only one,” Lindsey said sitting up and looking at him. “And that’s the last one.
After that the number disappears.”

  Michael walked over to the counter and pulled open the top drawer. Retrieving the phone book, he returned to the table. “Let’s see if we can find the number,” he said opening it up.

  “Seriously?” Lindsey laughed. “A phone book?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t have a computer or something we can use to make this go a little faster?”

  “I have a computer, but I don’t have Internet,” Michael admitted. “I never got it installed.”

  Lindsey shook her head in disbelief. “After all of this is done, our next project will be getting this place actually set up,” she said looking around his house.

  “Hey!” Michael said grabbing the fake flowers in the center of the table. “I have a plant now! What more do you want?”

  She laughed a little as she collected the papers and placed them back in the file. “You can be exhausting sometimes, you know that?”

  “I can’t be that bad, you keep coming back for more, don’t you?”

  “I guess I’m just a masochist,” she laughed as she reached for her bag and slid the file inside. “Let’s go to my place.”

  Lindsey’s apartment was small, but reflected her personality perfectly. It was on the ground floor, and the sliding glass doors in the family room opened up to a small communal pond with a walking path surrounding it. She had planted a small garden, which was still in bloom despite the slowly cooling weather. Inside, everything was in its place, down to the books on the shelves, all arranged in alphabetical order. But it had a warm air to it. The colors were soft, mainly reds and pinks, and the flowers arranged randomly around the room added an inviting touch. The walls were lined with pictures and the candle in the middle of the coffee table gave off a floral scent that matched the feel of the room.

  “Trying to set the mood?” Michael asked jokingly as she leaned over to light it.

  “You wish,” she replied rolling her eyes as she sat on the couch and patted the cushion next to her for him to sit down. When he had taken his seat she reached under the table and pulled out her laptop.