by Jayne Blue
“You told me you pinned everything on somebody else. You said she had some lowlife biker gang client. That was your idea, wasn’t it? That was so smart of you.”
Seth’s eyes snapped to mine and a slow smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “Did I tell you that? I suppose I did. Yeah. We just had to transfer the money.”
“How?” My throat was dry and I was afraid I sounded too eager. But Seth seemed somewhere else. Something strange was happening in his mind. There was no rage, no swagger. Just cold, calculating facts.
“I think it actually took him like ten minutes after her finally got into the system. Maybe I’m exaggerating but it was so fast. We told him what we needed. We asked if there was a way to do it ... could it be done? And then he did it.”
Something was wrong. It was like the Earth started to tilt wrong on its axis. I’d crossed into bizarro world. The truth hovered there, bobbing above the water like some sinister buoy.
“You needed someone who was good with computers. Someone who wrote code. He hacked too, didn’t he? I never even thought of that.”
Seth laughed. “No one would. That’s why he was perfect for it.”
“Are you saying your father hacked into the bank’s computers? Is that how it worked?”
“A little deposit here. A little shift there. A bigger deposit there. Like I said, I think it took Dad less than an hour.”
Dad. Dad. Oh my God. I asked the question never really believing the answer. Seth was saying it was Jackson ... Jack’s father who altered my father’s bank accounts. It was Seth and Miranda, yes ... but Jackson Manning was responsible for framing my father into a life sentence.
I wanted to be sick. I wanted to run from the room. I wanted to hit Seth.
“Why?” I said. “Why would Jackson do that?”
“My mother had her ways with him,” Seth said. “And that was none of my business, anyway, what went on between them.”
“And George Pagano knows all of this?” I said. “He knows that you fixed it so he wouldn’t have to answer to those charges. You framed someone else to take the fall for him?”
“Yes, Tora,” Seth said. “I think it’s time for you to wake up. I told you not to worry about George Pagano.”
“Who?” I said. I wanted to hear him say it. “Who was the biker lowlife, Seth? What was his name?”
Seth shrugged. “McLain, something. Dexter? Decker? I forget. I just remember McLain.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have believed you. I was just scared. George Pagano scares me.” My mouth made words but I swear I don’t think my brain was connected to them.
“You don’t have to be afraid of him,” he said. “I’m not. Pagano knows with a simple phone call, I can reopen the case against him and put him away for life.”
Logic still swirled somewhere in the recesses of my brain. That’s exactly why you should be afraid of him, idiot. It would incriminate you as much as him.
“You’re right,” I said. “Maybe you do deserve to go down and have a drink. It’s okay. I’ll wait for you.”
It caught Seth’s attention. He pursed his lips together and nodded. He moved around the edge of the bed and came toward me. He still had menace in his eyes. My heart stopped for a second but all he did was brush roughly against my shoulder as he walked past me and out the door.
Chapter Eighteen
I shook. Something buzzed in my brain, some white noise like a fluorescent light. I walked around the bed and picked up my phone. My heart stopped for an instant as I swiped my finger across the screen. What if it hadn’t worked? What if nothing recorded? How could I prove any of this then?
But the counter on the recording was still going. I could listen to the playback later, but the tape was made. I hit save and backed it up to the cloud. I walked out of the room and went across the hall to the other bedroom. I closed the door behind me and locked it.
I rubbed my forehead hard right above my eyebrows.
Jackson. Jackson did this. Jack’s father destroyed my father.
Did he know? This whole time could Jack have known what was going on? No. That didn’t make sense. He never would have let me go through with any of this. He would have shut me down the minute he found out who I was.
I stared at my phone again. I had to call him. We had to talk it through. How could I tell him? How would I even start? It was almost midnight and that surprised me. I hadn’t realized how late Seth had been getting home. I needed to figure out a way to get out of the house. If past history could be my guide, Seth would stay downstairs and overdrink. He’d either pass out on the couch downstairs or stagger up to the bedroom and do it. I’d call a cab while he slept. My bags were already packed against the door.
My bags.
My hand went to my mouth. My fingers felt cold and clammy against my lips. Jackson Manning was a meticulous note taker. More than ten years of his journals sat in my leather messenger bag. Had he chronicled this too?
I went to the bag and sank to my knees. I unhooked the straps and pulled out the journals. It was the last one, the newest one that bore the dates that mattered: 2000 to 2003. I thought back. I couldn’t remember when they took my dad to jail. It wasn’t on drug charges anyway. He’d gotten into a fight. I didn’t remember much about that. I knew from Miranda’s files he was charged with racketeering just before Christmas of 2002. I’d been just ten years old. I remembered the trial. I never went to it but Uncle Charlie did and he would come home even more haggard and sad those days. That was in the summer of 2003.
So whatever Jackson did, it was probably sometime in the fall or maybe summer of 2002. I flipped to those pages in the journal. At first, there didn’t look like anything unusual. He jotted meeting dates related to his company. He made notes on expenditures. What looked like a list of things Miranda maybe wanted for her birthday. They took a vacation in the summer. A cruise. He listed the itinerary.
But then I saw September 12, 2002. He listed a group of numbers. To anyone else they wouldn’t have meant anything. They were dates and dollar figures. Ten of them. An exact match for the ones I knew they said came from deals my father supposedly made. And two account numbers. I had those memorized by heart as well. My father’s.
That’s all. Nothing more. No detailed diary of events. But that tiny list written in the margins of a page detailing a list of meetings Jackson wanted to take shattered my world once again.
I flipped through the rest of the year and there was no mention of anything else that seemed an obvious tie to my father. It was just that one entry. But as the months wore on, as Jackson journaled into 2003, another pattern started to emerge.
He stopped writing down dates and lists. He started writing more detailed, traditional diary entries. They became a dialogue to himself. I knew from Jack what had started to happen during this time. He’d said roughly five years before Jackson died, his mind started to go. After he died, Jack said they found out his father had a series of mini strokes that had gone undetected. From the pages of this journal, I could see the beginnings of the degradation.
His handwriting changed, became shakier. He misspelled words. Then I came to the last page of the journal and I felt gut shot.
He’d just written a date. October 15, 2003. Jammed into the crease of the binding was a folded piece of newspaper. I opened it. It was just a one-column, one-paragraph entry. The larger story would have been earlier that summer. Probably when the verdict was read. But I knew why Jackson kept this one instead. It was from the Courts section of the Tribune the day my father got his life sentence.
I carefully restored the article to Jackson’s journal and put everything back in my messenger bag. The white noise receded from my head by now and birds chirped outside the window.
It was past dawn. I’d spent the last six hours combing through Jackson’s journal and it felt like it could have been five minutes.
I had to call Jack. I had to get out of this house.
I stepped out into the hall. Th
e door to the master suite stood open. The bed had been slept in but Seth wasn’t there now. If he was, I needed to wait until he left for the office. It seemed strange that he hadn’t come to find me later in the night. Maybe he had and I just hadn’t heard him.
I went downstairs but the kitchen was empty too. Seth’s Lexus was missing from the garage. It was a little past seven. I took my phone out of my back jeans pocket and texted him. He answered almost immediately.
Didn’t want to wake you. Have an appointment downtown I’ll tell you about later. Be home after six.
Another incoming text flashed across the screen as I read it.
Jack.
Taking a breath, I clicked on it.
I’m on my way there to get you.
I couldn’t help but smile a little. He’d promised me last night he wanted me out this morning no matter what. He was one of the few people in my life that always seemed to come through. And I was about to shatter so much for him.
Ok. I texted back. Afterwards, I went upstairs to get my suitcase and messenger bag. I set them by the front door and waited.
It only took fifteen more minutes and he pulled up the driveway in a rented maroon town car. I stepped outside with my bags. Jack pulled up alongside me and got out. He looked so good and strong in his gray t-shirt and Dockers. He popped the trunk and put my bags inside.
“Are you ready?” he said, pulling me into an embrace. “God, I didn’t sleep last night.”
I hugged him back.
“I need to tell you what happened,” I said.
He must have sensed something in my voice because he held me away from him; a line of worry furrowed his brow.
“Seth’s gone,” I said. “He’s gone until at least six so we have some time. Will you come inside for a little bit?”
“Tora?”
I took his hand and led him into the house. I don’t know why it occurred to me to go there, but I led him back to Miranda’s study. In a sense, we started there. We’d had sex the first time on Miranda’s desk. R.J. Burnett had taken him back here to tell him half-truths about me.
“Sit down, Jack,” I said. The room had two Victorian-style love seats facing each other in the center of it. I sat on one and motioned for Jack to take the opposite. He did, sinking slowly in front of me.
“What happened,” he said. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. I took out my phone and set it on the small coffee table between us. “He didn’t hurt me. I’m safe,” I said. “I think I got what I needed to help my dad.”
Jack’s face lit up and he came to me. He pulled me into another embrace, peppering kisses across my temple. “Thank God,” he whispered. “I can’t believe you did it. You’re amazing.”
“Jack,” I stiffened in his arms. “You need to know the whole story. It’s very complicated and I don’t understand all of it myself. And I need you to hear me out before you say anything, okay?”
Jack sat back on the couch across from me. He leaned forward and rested his hands across his knees. “Okay, tell me.”
I started talking but fumbled over my words. I tried three times then finally gave up. “Maybe you’d better just listen,” I finally said. I reached down and swiped open my phone. I pressed play on the voice memo and sat back as we listened.
I watched Jack’s range of emotions as the tape played. He balled his hands into fists at the part where Seth and I talked about Pagano’s demand to fuck me. He mouthed obscenities at the part where Seth asked me if I’d be willing.
Then it came to the part about the bank accounts. I had experienced the world shifting when Seth said it in person. Hearing it on tape, it was as though Jack’s body wasn’t physically able to contain the words. He stiffened and rose, his back rod straight. He put his hands on his hips and back down again. Color drained from his face and he looked at me with red-rimmed eyes.
Then the tape stopped.
He said nothing. Jack just stood over me, still as stone until his shoulders began to quake.
“Jack,” I said. My voice had gone dry.
“He’s lying,” Jack said quietly.
“I don’t ...”
“He’s lying!” Jack shouted. “That shit. He played you, Tora. He probably knew what you were doing the whole time. He knows I’ve been with you and he’s figured out a way to hurt me through you. It’s cleverer than I would have given him credit for.”
“Jack,” I said again. “I’m sorry, but I think it’s true.”
“You don’t know him like I do,” Jack said. His tone was odd, he was almost laughing. He said words I don’t think he really believed and I knew he was tearing up from the inside out. The truth was, I now knew Seth better than Jack did.
“Maybe,” I said. “But I found some other things that fit with what Seth says.”
“What things?” Jack spat the words out.
“Remember I told you how I found your mom and dad’s things in the attic? I went back there. I found journals your dad wrote. I was going to surprise you with them. I have them out in my bags. Jack, there are things in those journals that make it pretty clear he was involved.”
“Fuck you, Tora,” Jack said and it slammed into me like a punch. “So then it’s you who played me. It was my father’s stuff you were after this whole time, huh? Not Miranda’s? You figured you’d get close to me just like you did with Seth?”
“Don’t,” I said, rising to my feet. “I never thought any of this would lead here. Not for a second.”
“Your dad’s the criminal, Tora,” he said. “Not mine.”
“Jack, I swear to you ... on everything, on my life ... until last night I never suspected for a second this had anything to do with your father. Please don’t bail out on me now. We can figure out what to do. Together.”
I went to him. I moved to put my arms around his shoulders. Jack raised his arms and pushed mine away. The love in his eyes hardened to hatred. Cold acid seemed to burn in my chest.
“I’m done,” he said. “You’re on your own. And I’m sure as hell not going to let you drag my dad’s name through this crap.”
He turned and made his way to the hallway in four great strides. I ran after him. I wouldn’t beg. I wouldn’t throw myself at his feet. But he had to listen to me. He knew me. He loved me.
“Jack, I love you,” I said and Jack stopped. He stiffened, squaring his shoulders before he turned back to face me.
His eyes were so cold, his jaw set hard. He said two words that gutted me as much as anything else in the last twelve hours.
“We’re done.”
***
Jack
She stood before me with the light gone out of her eyes. They were filled with pain and it seemed real. I felt sick. Physically sick. It was her, this house, Seth’s lies. All of them worked on me like poison through my veins.
“Jack,” she said. “Don’t shut me out. Not now. I still need you.”
“Get over it,” I said and the words didn’t feel like they came from my mouth. I wanted to hurt her with them but I got no satisfaction out of knowing they did. I wanted to say more, but just the act of taking in another breath of air in this twisted place sickened me. I turned and walked down the hall toward the foyer.
Tora followed me. She didn’t run. She didn’t block my path, but she was there, right behind me.
None of this made sense. Except that it did. Of course Seth had figured out about Tora and me. Everyone with eyes and brain cells had suspected it. Ed Jeffries did. George Pagano did. If it didn’t involve my family, I could almost appreciate the perfection of his little game with her. He told her the one thing he knew might have a chance at hurting me back. He knew I went after Tora at first to screw him over.
He checkmated me and at some point I might be able to laugh about it. Today though, I just wanted to get far away from him, Tora and Lake Bliss.
“Don’t call me again,” I said to Tora as I put my hand on the door knob. “And I’d better not see that crap in the paper. Seth’s
your only golden ticket now, Tora. Unless maybe Pagano makes you a better offer.”
When I saw her face, I knew I’d hit the tipping point. Tears welled in Tora’s eyes and part of me felt bad for it. But she’d been playing me the whole time. Or Seth had played her. Both, probably.
I heard a car pull up. “There’s your husband, Mrs. Manning,” I said. “Enjoy your life together. He’s a great liar. He’ll probably make a great senator, after all.”
She stared at me, frozen. Someone knocked at the door and I turned toward it. When I opened the door, my eyes almost didn’t register what I saw. For an instant, I was sixteen years old again. Two uniformed policemen stood before me with grim expressions. I knew that look ... or thought I did. And the words that came out of their mouths sounded the same as the others all those years ago.
“Is Mrs. Manning at home?”
I opened the door wider. It wasn’t me they wanted. I didn’t live here. This wasn’t twenty-one years ago. Everyone I loved had already been taken from me. I was safe.
“Sir,” one of the officers said. “Could you step outside, please?”
I shrugged and did so. Tora stood behind me in the foyer. I looked back. She seemed tiny and scared. Was it she who had lost someone? I wanted to go to her. God, I knew that look in her eyes. The knowledge that the rest of your life would now be defined as before and after.
“Victoria Manning?” the other officer said.
She stammered and nodded then shook her head.
“Ma’am, we’d like you to step outside, please.”
She did. I took my keys out and opened the driver’s side door. Neither of the officers stopped me. I could leave now. Let her handle her tragedy all on her own.
And then, one of the officers had handcuffs and he was touching Tora. A jumble of emotions slammed into my brain. I hated her. I loved her. White rage filled me. Get your hands off her!
I stood frozen. “Mrs. Manning, we have a warrant for your arrest.”