by Aiden Bates
“You find your marker, Lissa?” Rusty dropped down to her level, helping her gather up everything she’d just pulled out of her bag.
“No. I can’t find it. Someone must’ve stolen it.” Lissa wouldn’t even look him in the eye.
“Gremlins, probably.” Rusty shook his head forlornly. “They’re always stealing my favorite pens, too?”
Lissa’s eyes narrowed for a moment as she sussed that idea out. But then, slowly, a giggle escaped her lips.
“Gremlins? You think so?”
“Aww, sure. Little furry green gremlins. They steal all sorts of things in the night”
Lissa sucked on her lower lip, trying not to smile, but the concept of little green thieves in the night had already put a sparkle in her eyes.
“Maybe we can catch one,” she said slowly. “With a gremlin trap.”
“Careful now. We’ll need bait.”
Rusty pulled a pen out of his pocket along with a length of string. Why he had either of those things in his pockets was beyond me—that was southern Alphas for you, I guessed. Lissa watched, entranced, as Rusty fashioned a little lasso out of the string and arranged it on the kitchen table with the pen in it’s center.
“There,” he said, brushing his hands off and nodding with pride. “Now, when the gremlin comes, we’ll just pull the string and—gotcha!”
“Perfect! Yes! And then when we do catch one, we’ll say, ‘Take us to your leader!’” Lissa grinned sinisterly. “Then we’ll make him walk the plank.”
“Good plan.” I patted her on the head and pushed her gently toward the door. “Now come on. Scoot. We’ve gotta get you to school. There’ll be time for gremlin hunting when you get home.”
As I pulled out of the driveway, I caught a glimpse of Rusty in the window. At first, I thought maybe he was waving goodbye—but no. In fact, he didn’t seem to be looking at us at all.
His gaze was scanning the street in front of the house, completely pre-occupied with something else instead.
Once we’d left the house, getting Lissa to school was clockwork. As far as she was concerned, it was just another day. As far as I was concerned, it’d be best to keep it that way. As much as she seemed to like Rusty, I didn’t want his presence in our lives to feel like a disruption. She had a hard enough time paying attention to what was going on in class already. The last thing she needed was another distraction for her mind to wander to.
But when I got back home after dropping Lissa off, it was Rusty’s own distractedness that I had to attend to. One way or another, I intended to find out what had taken hold of his attention so completely that morning. Unfortunately, something told me gremlins were probably at the bottom of Rusty’s priority list.
“Okay. I need to know what’s up.” I tossed my keys down on the table and crossed my arms over my chest. “What was bothering you earlier?”
“Aww, nothin’. Or, not nothin’, but…I just didn’t want you to be up all night worried, is all.”
“Well, I’m worried now. Just tell me? I promise, I can take it.”
Rusty sighed and put away the final plate from breakfast. “There was someone outside the house last night. Another of those black SUVs. You’re being watched.”
Okay, maybe I couldn’t take it. My stomach turned at the very thought of being spied on, and a shiver ran down my spine, cool and sharp.
“Okay. So, that’s definitely something you should’ve told me as soon as you realized. Keeping things from me about my own house…Rusty, that wasn’t really your call to make.”
“Well, I made another call and had one of Ernesto’s guys follow our watchful little friend. At about four this morning, the SUV took off. Ernesto’s man followed him to your father’s estate.”
“Fuck.” Another shiver—that was exactly what I didn’t want to hear.
“Yeah.”
“Well…I’ll just call Dad and ask him, then. He has no business spying on me. It’s not like I’m doing anything wrong.”
“I…don’t know if that’s a good idea, darlin’.”
“Well, that’s not your call to make either.” I liked being bossed around my own house about as much as I liked being watched in it. “This isn’t your life, Rusty. It’s mine.”
Rusty opened his mouth like he was getting ready to argue. But whatever he had to say, he let it die before he gave it air time.
“Sorry,” he told me instead. “I’ll, um. I’ll stick around town today anyway. If that’s okay with you. You can call me if you need anything.”
I glanced down at my watch. Already, I was feeling bad about how I’d reacted. Snapping at Rusty like that…it wasn’t right. But we didn’t exactly have time to work this out right now. I needed to drop Rusty off so I could get to work.
“Are you ready to go?” I cocked my head toward the door. “We should head out so I’m not late.”
“Don’t sweat it. You get to work. I’ll call a cab.” Rusty grabbed his phone off the kitchen counter and headed for the door. “Take care of yourself, Daniel. And if you need anything…yeah. Let me know, I guess.”
I wanted to stop him. Take him in my arms, tell him I was sorry and kiss him until things were okay between us again. We’d left things on such a pleasant note last night…it hurt, this feeling that we were off-kilter all over again.
But he was already gone.
I called Dad on the way to work. At first, I didn’t think he was going to pick up at all. But on the final ring, he answered.
“Daniel? Look, I’m pretty busy right now. About to go into a meeting. Everything okay?”
“No, actually.” I wasn’t letting him pull the I’m too busy to talk thing again. Not now. “Someone was watching me outside my house yesterday. I’m assuming that’s your doing.”
“And why do you think that?”
“Dad. Come on.”
A long pause. “I understand that Russel King is back in the area, Daniel. Just sent one of my security boys to watch over you and Lissa. Didn’t want you being harassed by that thick-necked no good son of a bitch again.”
For what felt like the hundredth time just that morning, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end again. But just because Dad’s little revelation that he knew Rusty was in town gave me the shivers didn’t mean I could lose my cool.
“He is? How…how do you know that?”
“Look, son, I’m always happy to hear from you, but I’m already late enough as is. Now, if you want, I could come over for dinner and we could talk. Next week sometime, maybe?”
Oh, hell no. By next week, he’d have an entire pantomime planned around this whole thing.
I decided to take a gamble instead.
“Why don’t you call off your people and come for dinner tonight? I’m an adult, Dad. You don’t get to dictate the terms of this relationship like I’m a little kid anymore.”
Another pause, then a pleased hum. “Sure, son. That sounds swell. See you tonight, then. Six okay?”
I blinked. I knew I’d been taking a risk there—which was why I hadn’t expected it to work.
“Sure, Dad. Good luck at your meeting.”
“We’re Rasners, son. We don’t need luck.”
After the line went dead, I was left with more mixed feelings than I was used to. Especially when it came to dealing with my dad, that had gone better than I’d ever dreamed. I’d put my foot down, and he’d responded by respecting my boundaries.
It was completely new for us, anyway. Was that all I’d needed to do all this time?
But in the wake of the phone call to my father, I also had a new problem on my hands. My father was coming over tonight. He almost certainly knew that I’d seen Rusty—but he hadn’t called me on it.
Which meant he was playing some kind of game. A game that I didn’t know the rules for. I wasn’t playing with all the pieces. And I certainly didn’t know how to win.
But winning was all my father had ever known how to do.
And as for how far he’d go to
make sure he kept winning…
If these allegations Rusty and I had turned up against him were true, I wasn’t sure I wanted to find that out.
17
Rusty
I got the call from Ernesto not long after I made it back to my car.
“Bennet Godfrey.”
“Who? What?”
“Your man in the picture, niño. The one that you were supposedly tangling tongues with?” The sound of Latin music playing in the background added rhythm to Erneto’s voice. He must’ve called dibs on the KPS speaker system again. “We’ve got the facial ID back. He doesn’t have much on record, but we dug a little deeper and discovered he’s registered for government clearance. Looks like he was a political aid when the picture was taken.”
“Or doctored.” I clenched my jaw. It was one thing to destroy my life by creating the image to begin with, but did they really have to rip off my tattoos, too? “Let me guess—he’s worked for Rasner.”
“Correct. But if it’s a fake—”
“It is.”
“Then it’s a good one.” Ernesto chuckled. “But he’s a cute boy, Rusty. At least they picked a good looking one for you. You could’ve done worse, anyway.”
“I didn’t sleep with him!”
“Hmm.” Ernesto turned up the volume of the music and lowered his voice. “If you don’t mind me saying, Rusty, I have a feeling that this has little to do with the case at hand.”
“Only in the sense that my personal life is now tied up in this shit show along with everything else.” I felt a little on the defensive—I didn’t want Ernesto to think I was taking up company time for my own personal matters. Even though, I supposed, I kind of had. “Rasner gave these photos to Daniel. Told me I’d cheated on him.”
“But you did not.”
“Not on my fuckin’ life.” I paused for a second. “I’m sorry I had you do the dirty work for my personal life, Ernesto. I just…ugh. I had to know.”
“Don’t apologize just yet, niño.” There was a grim sort of delight in Ernesto’s voice. He had something juicy to tell me—but something dark, too. “Ask me where Godfrey is now.”
“If you say Spartanburg, Ernesto, I swear to god—”
“Dead, Rusty. Killed in a car accident shortly after the pictures came out, if my timeline is right.”
“Define accident.”
“Accident with, ah… quotation marks around it. Drunk driving—but when I dug into his files, he’d never been registered with a license.”
“You think Benny boy got so plastered he got behind the wheel of a car he didn’t know how to drive?”
“Or someone put him there and made him look like he did.”
I let out a sigh of relief. It felt wrong, feeling relieved over someone’s not-so-accidental death, but every break we made in this case put us one step closer to being at the end of it. And whether I wanted to admit it or not, at least this helped take my mind over the perfect night I’d had last night. The disaster I’d created at breakfast this morning.
Until Ernesto asked his next question, anyway.
“Where are you right now, Rusty?”
“Spartanburg.” I glanced at the McDonald’s drive-thru lane, considering another coffee.
“But you were in Spartanburg with Daniel last night…”
“I’m, ah. Following up on this Rasner thing. Watching over Daniel and Lissa while I’m at it.”
“Watching over close enough that you spent the night?”
“I’m not gonna kiss and tell.” If this morning hadn’t been such a mess, I might’ve at least been able to feel smug saying so. “Daniel was just nervous about his place being watched. I slept on the couch.”
“And before that?”
“Keep it in your pants, Ernesto.”
“Mm-hmm. Well, that’s your business, then. Just keep in mind that when Harper and Kaleb have had run-ins with those men in the black SUVs, the danger has spilled over into the lives of their Omegas, too. I doubt that Rasner would have his own son or granddaughter shot, but—”
“Right.” Even hearing that but made me want to drive over to Lissa’s school and watch over it all fucking day. “I’ve thought about it, Ernesto. Worried about that more than I like. Rasner’s ruthless. I don’t know where he draws the line, and I don’t think I want to find out. But that’s why we need to wrap this up as quickly as possible. And for right now—”
My phone buzzed against my cheek. A call from Daniel.
“Right now, that means I need to keep nosing around here in Spartanburg. I’ve gotta go, though. You all okay over there?”
“We’ll be better when you’re back home, niño. Take care of yourself—and Daniel and that little girl of yours, too.”
I switched over to answer Daniel’s call only to find him in a panic.
“Dinner. He’s coming to dinner, Rusty.”
I blinked. Yeah, I definitely hadn’t had enough coffee yet today. Didn’t anyone open with hello, how are you anymore?
“Your dad?” Brent Rasner was the only person I could imagine an ivy league boy like Daniel would forget his manners over. “When?”
“Tonight. He’s up to something, Rusty. At first, I thought—but now, ugh. He never does this. As much as I’d love to believe he’s suddenly up for playing father of the year…”
“Never trust a leopard when he’s changed his spots.”
“Exactly. So what the fuck do I do? He’s going to expect aperitifs, hors d'oeuvres—I’m going to have to find the nice china, and I can’t remember where the hell that would even be at, and—”
“Darlin’?”
“Yes?”
“I think the menu is the last of your problems right now.”
“Oh.” Daniel cleared his throat. “Right.”
“But this could be an opportunity, too,” I pointed out as I pulled into the drive-thru lane. If Daniel was going to keep me on the line for menu planning, I’d definitely need that coffee. “We could bug the house. Get him drunk on, I don’t know, lemon charcoal martinis—”
“I’d never pair lemon with charcoal. The citrus of the lemon would only amp up the bitterness of the charcoal. You’d completely lose the taste of the gin, and the color—”
“Darlin’.”
“Right. Sorry. Okay.” There was a pause, and then, “Wouldn’t that be a little dangerous, though?”
Fuck. He was right. And after Ernesto had warned me about Daniel and Lissa being put in harm’s way, too.
“If you don’t want to, it’s okay. The last thing we need right now is getting your dad fixated on you in a bad way.” But on the other hand… “He wouldn’t know that the house was bugged, though. And if you could keep your cool…”
“Rusty, I just started losing my mind over a hypothetical mixed drink. But…okay. Yeah. I think I could manage.” Another pause. “Do you think I can manage?”
“I’ll help you plan the menu later, if it would help.”
Daniel laughed. A good sign.
“Okay. Then, yeah. Let’s do it. There’s a key at the house, in the flower bed under one of the rocks. You can do whatever you need to do to get the place set up, just, ah…don’t tell me where you’re planting the bugs. It’s best if I don’t know where they are anyway, or else I’ll be glancing at them all night.”
“I’ll handle it. Don’t worry about any of that. And Daniel…” I didn’t want to overstep any boundaries again. I’d already bungled things enough with the pancakes this morning, then the little spat that had followed. “Look, I’m really sorry about this morning.”
“Yeah. Me too. It was…weird, having breakfast the morning after we…” Daniel lowered his voice to a whisper. “After we fucked, I mean.”
“It’ll be better next time, though. Promise.”
“Oh, so you’re already planning a next time, huh?”
That finally drew a smile out of me. A real one.
“Maybe so. But until then, be careful.”
“He wouldn
’t hurt me or Lissa, Rusty. I know we’re not really sure what he’s capable of yet, but…he’s my father. He may not care about me in a normal way, but our stellar public father-son relationship has been his meal ticket all these years. He’s not going to jeopardize that.”
I wanted to believe him. But until we knew for sure the extent to which Rasner was involved in all of this, nothing felt sure anymore. And with Bennet Godfrey’s suspicious death in the books now, too…
Did I tell Daniel about that? Or would that only make him more nervous about our plan for tonight?”
“Ernesto came back with a match on those photos your father gave you. The other man in it—the one who isn’t parading around as me—he’s dead, Daniel. Bennet Godfrey. Dead, and it looks fishy, too.”
“Bennet Godfrey…” There was recognition in Daniel’s voice. “Fuck. I know that name. I never met him, but…”
“He was one of your father’s aides.”
“I know. How did he…” Daniel’s voice dropped down to an even smaller whisper. “How did he die?”
“Car accident. Not long after those pictures ended up in that envelope, from the sounds of things.”
“A car accident? You’re sure?”
I rolled up my window to block out the garbled sound of the drive-thru speaker asking me may I take your order. There was a new tone of nerves in Daniel’s voice now. One that I didn’t like a single damn bit.
“I’m sure. Do you know something about this, Daniel? If you do—”
“No. I mean, I’m not sure, but… Shit. I’ve gotta go. At work. Need to process this.”
“Daniel—”
But he’d already hung up the phone.
“Welcome to McDonald’s, may I take your order?” The person on the other end of the drive-thru kiosk was practically screaming at me through the speaker when I rolled my window back down.
“Coffee. Black. In the biggest cup you’ve got.”
I had a bad feeling that today, I was going to need it even more than most.
18
Daniel