Wrong then Right (A Love Happens Novel Book 2)

by Jodi Watters

  The entertaining show over, Beck looked at his watch and moved toward the closed door, not caring that Hope still had three minutes on the clock. It opened before he reached it and she walked out, eyes red but dry. Nodding at his questioning look, she marched to the front door with a spring in her step that said she was not only fine, but downright chipper, stopping to give Rosa a hug.

  “So grown up,” Rosa said, clasping Hope’s hands as she inspected her. “My girl is not so little anymore, is she? Your mama would be proud, mija. Your Daddy is. He talks about you all the time.” She winked at Beck. “And with your own young man, too.”

  Ash scoffed, throwing up his hands to protest Beck’s assumed status, but Hope stopped his rant by promising to visit soon, placing a smacking kiss on Rosa’s cheek, and stepping out into the bright sunshine. She was fibbing about the visit. The way she’d bit her bottom lip when she’d said it was a dead giveaway.

  Following her, he snagged the hem of her sweatshirt. “Hey, wait up. Let’s talk.”

  “Can’t,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m late for work. I’ve got a double shift scheduled today. I need to make up time for last night, remember?” She held up her phone. “Bubba’s already called me twice.”

  Like she’d been shot out of a cannon, he watched her peel away in an orange flash.

  “What was last night?” Ash growled suspiciously, like a pit bull ready to attack.

  “A reality check,” he answered honestly, heading for the Jeep. “And I’m late for work, too.”

  He’d gotten too close to the situation and lost his objectivity. Hope was a hook-up. She wasn’t his problem. Her problems weren’t his problem. The only thing he was concerned with was how quickly he could get her naked and horizontal. Or vertical. He wasn’t picky. In the shower, maybe. Or against his front door.

  When Beck stopped in the act of hopping into the Jeep and gestured toward the four car garage, he told himself it was with the interest of a casual observer. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Jogging around to the side of the garage, he saw a staircase leading to the room above. With a scrolling iron handrail draped in green ivy, it met a windowless door painted the same color as the house. The metal security door looked innocent enough—when you were standing on the free side of it.

  “What did she tell you about that?” Ash asked, leaning against the Jeep’s sturdy bumper, turning his vibrating phone off and pocketing it.

  Beck shrugged, sliding his sunglasses on. His lips were sealed.

  Ash sighed, looking out over the vineyard. “Hope was Inez’s bargaining chip. Her leverage. Nothing more, nothing less. We all knew she was heavy handed with her. None of us knew just how much. Or that she was locking her up.”

  Settling down next to him, Beck stretched his legs out, preparing to stay awhile. Preparing himself for what Ash had to say. The big man never turned his phone off.

  “The long and short of it is, Marshall and Inez had a thing going since the day my old man hired her. They kept it on the down low, because my mother wasn’t exactly of sound mind. Liked her white powder in the morning, her booze in the afternoon, and her pills at night. Then Hope happened. Claudia, my mom,” he clarified, because apparently the Coleson hierarchy stood on first name formality, “pretty much lost her shit over that. Not because his illegitimate kid was a reminder that her husband cheated. But because people would talk. And see that all of this,” he motioned around him, “wasn’t real. It was a business. Their marriage was a business. She threatened to take Marshall for everything he had and go public with the affair. Make the divorce front page news for months. She wanted the house, the cars, the bank accounts, the whole fucking winery.” He paused, shuffling his booted feet as he looked at his watch and waited.

  For what—or who—Beck wasn’t clear on, but he did have a feeling the only thing Claudia hadn’t included on her wish list was her son.

  “Marshall couldn’t lose his empire, of course,” Ash finally continued. “But he couldn’t quite let go of his convenient piece of ass, either. Inez wasn’t much for morals, but she was exotic and beautiful, and good in the sack apparently, ‘cause the old man was just plain blinded by her pussy. He pumped the brakes on their affair and she threatened to take Hope and leave. Go back to Nicaragua, hide in some corrupt village and sell Hope into the sex industry. Marshall was willing to do anything to keep that from happening. Except give up his wine.”

  When a group of workers crossed from the barn toward the fields, they slowed their steps, acknowledging Ash with surprise and obvious respect before continuing on.

  “So, an agreement was made,” he said, when they were alone again. “Claudia kept quiet. Marshall and Inez kept fucking. And Hope was kept hidden. Out of sight, out of mind. And it was no sweat until she was about five or so.” A rare grin graced his lips. “Hope’s got an iron will, in case you haven’t come up against it, yet. Nobody pushes her around or tells her what to do. She’d pop up in places she wasn’t supposed to be, at any time of the day or night. Sitting on the kitchen floor eating butter straight out of the container. Rolling empty barrels twice her size through the barn during harvest. Sneaking under the dining room table while Marshall hosted a business dinner. He’d cover for her with barely a scolding, but once Claudia caught on, she put her foot down and went to see a lawyer. Inez was warned again and it must have stuck, because from that point on, Hope wasn’t seen. It was a raw fucking deal for a little kid.”

  Ash’s words trailed off and he looked at his watch, again. Then toward the blacktop road snaking through the vineyard’s valley, scowling to find it free of incoming traffic.

  “I didn’t know she was being locked up. For a year and a half, Inez locked her in that room for fucking days at a time. Once I found out, it never happened again.” Clearing his throat, he looked at Beck without a hint of guilt or remorse. “Inez was dead the same day. And so was Claudia.”

  Beck didn’t ask the question foremost in his mind. If Ash wanted to divulge who’d killed Inez, he’d do it in his own good time.

  “The Union Tribune ran several front page articles on what they coined, The Coleson Crime,” he said, referring to the city’s daily newspaper. “The story they told was that Claudia came home one day, found Marshall and Inez in a compromising position, and in her drugged out state of mind, grabbed his hunting rifle and put a hollow point in the center of Inez’s chest. Lucidity returned long enough for her to realize that a prison sentence would hamper her plans to summer on Coronado, and she took off in her Lincoln before the cops showed up. Ran that big boat right off the Coast Highway and onto the jagged cliffs below, just north of Santa Barbara. County medical examiner said she’d died on impact. A clear cut case of a scorned wife, the police said, and closed the investigation within days. They overlooked Hope’s abuse as motive for the killing and thanks to our well paid team of attorneys, the media referred to her only as Inez’s minor child. Nobody suspected she was Marshall’s until the funeral. The eyes,” he said, gesturing toward his own in explanation. “Both women were buried the following week, Hope moved into the house and ate her butter on the kitchen floor without punishment, and Marshall got to keep his wine.” He raised his hands, encompassing the valley spread out before them. “And we all lived happily ever after.”

  “Sounds like a made for TV movie,” Beck said, nodding as another group of farm workers came over to greet Ash and shake his hand. It was like sitting next to a superhero. People noticed and approached with awe. Once the men walked away, he added, “And it makes me wonder how much of it’s fiction.”

  Ash’s lips quirked. “I don’t know which came first,” he said quietly, in deference to the attention he was drawing. “Claudia’s crazy or Marshall’s cheating. Hell, maybe one had nothing to do with the other.” He stood and stretched, pulling his phone out of his back pocket and turning it on, the device ringing within seconds. “What I do know is, I heard Hope screaming from the wrong side of a padlocked door late one afternoon.
I used the first shell to shoot the lock off and found her covered in burn blisters from a spilled pot of boiling water. She wanted mac and cheese, she said. Because it had been three wake up’s since dinner, she said. She was filthy, skinny as fuck, and black and blue with bruises. Inez didn’t understand the big deal. She hadn’t starved her on purpose, she’d just been busy with Marshall. I used the second shell because to me, it was a big deal.”

  Glancing at his watch again, he swore under his breath, looking toward the empty road.

  “Rosa whisked Hope into the bathroom to treat her burns, so she heard it, but didn’t see it. Claudia saw the whole thing. And it was the first time she ever put me before herself. Wiping down the rifle, she gripped it firmly in her own hands before dropping it down next to Inez’s body. Then she yanked on the front of my shirt and with eyes clearer than they’d been in years, said, ‘When the cops show up, tell them I did this. And when you get married, be a faithful husband.’ And then she took off in her Lincoln and was dead by sundown.”

  Beck wasn’t surprised by Ash’s actions. He’d seen him do the same thing to people who’d committed lesser offenses, in order to protect those they might harm.

  “Hope knows only what the papers reported.” His icy eyes and fierce voice told Beck it better stay that way. And with one last look at his watch, then at the upstairs windows of the house, he headed for the driver’s side of the Jeep. “Fuck it. Let’s go.”

  End of discussion.

  Riding in silence, they flew down the blacktop road toward the country highway, leaving the picturesque vineyard behind. Ash was back to his normal non-verbal self, while Beck assimilated what he’d said without really saying it.

  Rounding a bend, the reflection off a shiny chrome bumper appeared in the distance, a powder blue convertible speeding down the blacktop, heading toward the vineyard. In seconds, the luxury Mercedes passed by, a flash of dark sunglasses and ultra long, blonde hair blowing like kite streamers in the wind.

  The Jeep bucked suddenly, skidding sideways as Ash laid on the brakes, and Beck grabbed the rubber roll bar in front of him. The seatbelt snapped against his chest as the screeching brakes locked up and the Jeep slid to a sudden stop. Ash white knuckled the steering wheel, staring hard into the rearview mirror, and when Beck turned to look behind them, the dust was settling. White smoke cleared, illuminating the brake lights of the blue convertible stopped in the middle of the road, forty yards away. The blonde driver looked straight ahead, sunglasses tilted toward her own rearview mirror, the loud beat of a Katy Perry song coming from the Benz’s state of the art audio system.

  This was who Ash had been waiting for.

  Long seconds passed, the tension rolling off him in waves, and Beck waited in the crackling silence for one of two things to happen. Either there was going to be a soap opera-like slow run into each others open arms, or somebody was going to draw their weapon, firing off a kill shot before the other could.

  Beck wasn’t a betting man, but if he had to lay odds, he was going with the gunfire.

  But just as Ash moved his hand to the door handle, intending to prove Beck right or wrong on one or the other, the glowing brake lights of the convertible flickered off and the car rolled forward, continuing on its way toward the vineyard.

  It all happened in less than two minutes, Teenage Dream still playing on the radio when the car drove away.

  Ash’s eyes stayed glued to the rearview and the Jeep didn’t budge until the taillights disappeared completely. Once they were on their way again, it was as if the incident had never occurred.

  “Brakes work,” Beck finally said, cutting the awkward silence. “Seat belts, too.” Adjusting the damn thing so he could breathe properly again, he added, “Safety first, right?”

  Beck chuckled at his own joke and reached for his phone, returning multiple urgent texts from Sam. He was perfectly happy to let Ash work through whatever the hell that was on his own, because it was a long way back to San Diego when you were sitting next to a man on the brink. The brink of what exactly, Beck wasn’t entirely sure, but based on the emotion Ash was displaying—meaning something beyond his standard poker face—it was best to keep quiet or something was liable to get broken.

  Rush hour traffic had come and gone hours ago, so the drive to the office downtown was a quick forty-five minutes, Beck checking for any Be High grand jury updates and coordinating with Grady on the Karachi detail, the very last place he wanted to be. He’d done his time there.

  “She looked happy. She looked motherfucking happy.”

  He glanced up from his phone, not sure who Ash was talking to. “What? Who?”

  Tapping his thumb against the steering wheel a few times, Ash loosened his jaw and glanced over at him. “Hope. She looks happy.”

  Beck shrugged, not sure where he was going with this.

  Exiting off the interstate, Ash turned toward the high rise building where the Scorpio offices were located. “Keep it that way.”

  “Will do,” Beck replied, as if it were that easy. As if he had that power.

  Then he thought about her beautiful face and joyous smile. The way she looked at him with complete trust. With unabashed love. And he thought about his bottle of Crown Royal and his sudden, urgent, and allconsuming need to drink it. All of it. At once. And he would. On the fast approaching day when he told her to get out of his house and out of his life.

  And then he thought about how good he’d gotten at lying to Ash.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Memory was a funny thing. You could recall the lyrics to every single Jimmy Buffett song without even trying, but you couldn’t remember what you ate for dinner last night.

  It failed you when you hit the grocery store after working all day, needing only a can of Spagettio’s, diet Coke, Midol, and pimple cream. Yet you left the parking lot with four plastic bags full of everything but your precious zit zapper, including a noisy cellophane package of Nutter Butters, an impulse purchase that you’d dug into before putting the car in reverse.

  But the memories stemming from childhood were different. They seemed to remain, both good and bad, as bits of sharp, technicolor snippets coming to you during the oddest times of your life. Warm, welcoming memories inspired by the pungent scent of burning leaves. Or the sight of a wooden porch swing. Or the sound of a baseball game, playing not on television, but a fuzzy transistor radio. But as with any good, eventually the bad had to show its ugly face, balancing out the scale of life. Hope knew she wasn’t special. Just like they did for many, the bad memories usually came to her mind rarely, and quite innocuously. With the trilling melody of a Canyon Wren, singing plaintively for its mate. The sight of a frazzled parent, grabbing the hand of their unruly child just a little too hard. The acrid smell of water when heated to scalding.

  And as memory was prone to do, it altered your perspective of the here and now. It changed the way you thought. It made you throw away the whole loaf of bread when only one piece grew mold, sacrificing the taste of buttery delicious toast, simply because the heel turned on you.

  The vineyard, while nestled on a little over one hundred acres in total, was smaller than her memory of it. The rows of vines weren’t as endless and the oak trees not as tall. The house wasn’t as imposing and the rooms inside not as large. And Marshall, the father she remembered as being a dark haired, larger than life man of great power and presence, was smaller, too.

  But what was most surprising to Hope upon entering her father’s study, was not his beloved collection of hardcover books stacked haphazardly on dusty shelves, rather than their normal alphabetical placement, splines neatly upright. Or the paper-strewn desk sitting in the center of the room, an ancient computer dominating the surface, huge cords running every which way and sucking up an inordinate amount of electricity. Nor was it the blown up photograph hanging lopsidedly on the wall behind the desk, a gap-toothed Hope posing for the camera next to a brooding teenage Ash, taken so long ago Hope barely recognized them.

>   What shocked her, what sent a ribbon of guilty panic through her, was the narrow hospital bed tucked tightly against the wall, near the windows overlooking the western hillside, the Pacific Ocean a distant gray mass beyond the rolling rows of vines.

  “Don’t worry, my sweet girl.” The hushed sound of his concerned voice came from behind, startling her. “I’ve still got a lot of living left to do.”

  She didn’t turn around, too afraid to look. Not ready to see her father for what he was. What he’d become in the seven years she’d been gone. An old man.

  “And a lot of sinning, too,” he continued, with a wry chuckle. “I can do all my repenting when I’m dead. Hell doesn’t want me and heaven won’t let me in, so it seems I’m in the clear, either direction.”

  Spinning toward his voice, she saw him sitting in a wing back chair, wearing crisply pressed khaki’s, a starched golf shirt, and loafers with tassels. He looked ready and willing to play a round on the links course nearby, if you overlooked the puffy, pale complexion and hesitant movements as he stood. His hair was a trendy silvery gray, shot through with strands of coal black, and as thick as it had been the day she was born.

  “Daddy...” Swallowing, she took a step toward him, feeling like a child again. Wanting love, seeking acceptance. But she stopped short, reminding herself why she was here. “Your plan got my attention, but I’m sorry to tell you it won’t work.”

  Not expecting a warm and fuzzy greeting, he moved slowly toward the desk, but with more coordination than the walker near the hospital bed suggested. “You’re here, aren’t you? It’s where you belong. And I see you’ve brought some fine young men with you,” he said, his attention on the boxy computer monitor. “It’s good to know you’re being looked after.”

  Hope glanced at the screen, seeing a crystal clear view of the foyer from a security camera set obscurely in a corner near the ceiling. She smiled when Beck noticed it immediately, his jaw hardening before he turned his back to it. Ash stopped prowling long enough to flash the camera his middle finger, somehow knowing he was being watched at that exact moment. It was such a petulant, adolescent boy thing to do, that it made her smile.