When the Man Comes Around

by Bradley Wright

  Lawson tried his best to speak in a soft tone. “I guess you’re just going to have to trust me.”

  “Trust you? You just said you loved me more than anything in the world. But you never even tried to write to me. If you’ll lie about that, why wouldn’t you lie about hurting me?”

  She was smart beyond her years.

  “I did write, Lexi. I wrote you a letter every month for ten years. But your mother’s sister—Erin—would never have let you get them. I can only imagine the terrible things she’s told you about me.”

  Lexi’s demeanor turned defiant, her chin held high in the air. “You clearly don’t know Erin then. Because she’s never had anything but great things to say about you, and my mom.”

  “Lexi, she kept me from seeing or even speaking to you all these years.”

  “No she didn’t.”

  “Lexi—”

  “She didn’t! It was her asshole husband, Dan!” Lexi began to walk toward Lawson. “He is the one who said all the bad things about you, and my mom.” She walked around the desk and straight for Lawson. “Erin had to do what he said, but she used to tell me stories about you and my mom when Dan wasn’t around. Good stories. Like, movie-love kind of stories, about how you and mom were.” She was standing right in front of him now. Lawson was doing everything he could to hold it together. “But then Dan would come home and beat her. And then he would beat me! And it’s all your fault!” Lexi started swinging at Lawson. Furiously punching him in the stomach. Lawson just stood there and let her swing. He thought he was a broken man before, but hearing Lexi say that she was abused growing up demolished him entirely. “You did this!” Lexi continued to hit him. “If you hadn’t let the bad men get Mom, then we all could have lived together! She would still be here!”

  Lawson dropped to his knees. Lexi continued to swing away, now punching tirelessly at his chest.

  “I could have had a mom and dad like everyone else!”

  She pounded some more.

  “I’m sorry Lexi.” It was all he could manage. Even if he could explain, it wouldn’t have been enough. Lexi was right. Even though Lawson would have done anything to protect Lauren, he hadn’t. She died because of his work, and that was his fault.

  “I hate you!” she screamed. Tears were flooding from her clinched eyelids. “I hate you!”

  “I love you, Lexi. I never stopped loving you, or your mom.”

  “I hate you.” This time she said it through sobs and with a little less shout. She began to cry, and the punches were slowing down. “I . . .”

  After a couple more halfhearted blows, the punches stopped and the full sobbing began. And finally, she fell against him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her body was convulsing she was crying so hard. There was no recoil in Lawson from this hug. The exact opposite. Having his little girl’s arms around him pulled at a part of his soul that he thought had been lost forever. Lawson let his daughter cry. And slowly he wrapped his arms around her and picked her up as he rose to his feet. That was when he felt Lauren there with them. It was so unmistakable that he could smell her perfume as if she were standing right behind him. He could feel her eyes lovingly watching on as this long-overdue embrace finally melded father and daughter together. Where they belonged.

  Echoing up the stairs and down the hallway, Lawson heard the door he had locked on the first floor swing open and slam against the concrete wall at the bottom of the stairs. They were coming for him.

  They were coming for his daughter.

  Lexi pulled her head back, but she held on with her arms. She had heard the door as well. Her face was flush and soaked with tears. “Are they coming for us?”

  Us.

  Lawson stared into his daughter’s aqua-blue eyes. “They are. But I won’t let them hurt you.”

  “We have to save Erin. Those guys with guns took her. Dan is the one that brought us to him. I’m afraid they are going to kill her.”

  Lawson knew that “him” was Nero De Luca. What he didn’t get was where Lauren’s sister, and her husband, Dan, figured into all of this. Erin clearly wasn’t the woman Lawson thought she was. Lexi made it sound like she was as much a victim in all of this as Lexi had been. And Dan? Was he just giving up Lexi so that De Luca could use her against Lawson? Or did it go much deeper than that? Lawson could hear footsteps coming up the stairs. These questions would have to wait.

  “Lexi, I know you don’t trust me right now, but I need you to do everything I say if I’m going to get you out of here. Can you do that?”

  He set Lexi on her feet. She wiped the tears from her face with the sleeve of her purple long-sleeved T-shirt, and the wise-beyond-her-years Lexi reappeared. “Erin told me that you had always been good at getting the bad guys, now would be a good time to use that.”

  Lawson smiled. “Yes it would.” He wiped the last of the tears away from her chin with his thumb. “I’m going to have to do some bad things to get us out of here. Promise you won’t hold it against me?”

  “Only if you get us out of here.”

  “Right.” Lawson pulled his gun from the back of his waistline. Lexi’s eyes were wide at the sight of it. He ushered Lexi over to the far wall, farthest from the door. “No matter what you hear, don’t move. I’ll be right back. I promise.”

  Lexi nodded.

  Lawson moved back toward the door and took a quick look. Two men began shooting immediately, and he just snapped his head back behind the wall when bullets began tearing the books to pieces on the shelf behind the desk. Lexi screamed and held her hands to her ears. If these two guys didn’t stand a chance against Lawson before, they sure as hell were walking dead men if they thought they were going to get to his daughter.

  Lawson grabbed the rolling chair from beside the desk and pushed it out of the way. Then he took the end of the cherrywood desk and flipped it up on its side like it was nothing. He glanced at Lexi to make sure she was okay, and her eyes widened as she watched him so easily maneuver such a heavy desk. He got behind the desk, which was now only a little shorter than he as it stood on its end, and began scooting it forward toward the door.

  Bullets continued his way and were now crashing into the top of the desk that Lawson was crouched behind. As soon as he managed the desk through the doorway, he stopped, reached his gun hand around its side, and fired until the two men firing at him were no longer shooting. He glanced around the desk and both men were on their backs. He listened for a moment to hear if anyone else was coming, but all he heard were sirens off in the distance.

  For a brief moment, he had forgotten his situation and felt happy that the police could help him get Lexi to safety. But when he walked back in the office to get Lexi, it once again dawned on him that he couldn’t trust them either. Not with the chief of police on De Luca’s payroll.

  Lawson had to get Lexi out of there, and he had to do it fast.

  36

  Lawson pictured the route out of there in his mind. Because of the commotion he had caused earlier, the club would most likely be void of patrons, but security might have stuck around. And though they weren’t armed on his way in, the bouncers certainly could have strapped up by then. He did remember watching the girls walk around the back when he was sitting in his car earlier. He didn’t remember seeing a door, but his entry to the back stairs was rushed, so he must have missed it.

  “Sounds like the police are coming,” Lexi said. “Looks like we’re gonna be okay. But what about Erin? Will they save her?”

  Lawson took a step toward her. “It’s complicated, sweetheart. We can’t really trust the police right now. Not all policemen are good guys.”

  “Tell me about it. I watched this one movie, Training Day. That cop was really bad. Are the cops coming here like Denzel in that movie?”

  “You’ve seen Training Day?” Lawson couldn’t believe how grown-up she was. “Anyway, no, the cops coming here aren’t like him, but their boss is.”

  “So he may tell them to do something bad, and they do
n’t know it’s bad?”

  “Exactly.”

  Lawson reached for her hand. Lexi was reluctant to take it.

  “There are more bad guys downstairs,” Lawson told her. Then he turned his back to her. “We have to go. Just grab my belt and stay behind me. Got it?”

  Lexi nodded. “How will we ever find Aunt Erin? Is she going to die?”

  “She’s not going to die. And I think I know exactly where she is. Come on, let’s go!”

  Lawson moved toward the door, and he felt Lexi’s hand tug at his belt behind him. They moved around the desk that was still standing in the middle of the hallway, and as they approached the dead men that lay in their path, Lawson knew he had already lost father-of-the-year honors. Lexi had been in his care for all of five minutes and she was already seeing dead bodies.

  “Don’t look at the men on the floor, Lexi. Just pretend they’re sleeping.”

  “I’m not six, Lawson. I know they’re not sleeping.”

  Hearing the word Dad come out of Lexi’s mouth again might take a while.

  They stepped over the bodies, and Lawson heard Lexi gasp.

  “I told you not to look.”

  Lexi quipped, “Oh, right. So if I say elephant, you’re telling me you aren’t picturing an elephant right now?”

  She had a point.

  Lawson still didn’t hear anything but sirens. And they would be pulling into the parking lot any second now. Security must have had enough from earlier. Hearing gunshots above them probably made it easier for them to call it a night. They made their way down the stairs, and sure enough, there was a back door under those stairs. Lawson walked over, opened it, and there was zero movement outside. Everyone had cleared out entirely.

  “All right, we’re going to make a run for it. You ready?”

  “Ready,” Lexi said.

  Lawson pushed the door open, grabbed Lexi’s hand, and ran for the stolen Toyota Prius. Halfway there, Lawson was frustrated with himself. He should have ditched that car before he went into the club. He should have had a car ready to go that the cops didn’t already know he was driving. He had left the car in a rage, and this is exactly the kind of mistakes you make when you let emotion enter into your decision making. There was nothing he could do about it now because his phone was in that car and he had to talk to Cassie. And the four cop cars that had just rounded the corner only solidified that.

  Lawson rushed to the driver’s side door and opened it, maintaining his crouched posture.

  “Crawl across,” he told Lexi.

  The police cruisers screeched into the parking lot of the Pink Kitten just as Lawson shut the car door. He dropped as low as he could in his seat, gesturing for Lexi to do the same. Lawson’s only hope was that the policemen would be focused on the club and what was reportedly going on inside, not on the cars in the parking lot. The squealing tires all came to a stop along with the sirens. The red and blue lights that were all facing the club were bouncing around the interior of the car.

  Lexi whispered, “You want me to take a look?”

  Lawson nodded. “Go slow.”

  Lexi slowly raised her head.

  “Tell me what you see.”

  “Four cop cars. Each one of them has two cops standing with their doors open. Two of them are moving toward the entrance now.”

  “Any of them looking this way?”

  “No.” She lowered her head. “But do you hear that?”

  Lawson nodded. “More police are coming. Probably a lot of them.”

  “We should leave.”

  “I agree.”

  One of the benefits of stealing an electric car was that they make zero sound when you start them up and almost zero sound when you pull away. When he first took it, he thought the lack of power might be a hindrance. Now, it just might be the thing that would save them.

  He started it up. “How we looking?”

  Lexi raised her head again, then ducked it down immediately. “Don’t move yet,” she whispered.

  “What is it?”

  “I just saw one of the cops start looking around. Want me to check again?”

  “Carefully.”

  Lexi raised up again. “He’s moving toward the club. I think you should go now.”

  Lawson inched his way up the back of the seat. Just high enough to look for himself. He put the car in reverse and eased off the brake.

  “We good?” he said.

  “All good.”

  The sirens from the backup drew closer. It was now or never. Lawson took his foot off the brake and the Prius rolled backward, silently, as if it had no engine at all. In a quick move to minimize the brake lights coming on, he tapped the brake and threw the shifter into drive. The Prius moved toward the side exit of the parking lot, just as more police cars sped into the main entrance on the other side. Lawson turned onto the side road without applying the brakes and rolled down an alley with his lights off, seemingly floating away from the fray.

  “I’ve gotta say,” Lexi said, breaking the silence. “When I first saw the Prius, I thought it was a really bad car to try to get away in. But you proved me wrong.”

  Lawson smiled. “Yeah? Well, we’re not out of the woods yet.” No way he was going to tell her the Prius was just a happy accident.

  Lawson hit the lights and turned out onto the main road, heading back toward the Strip. He picked up his phone from the console. The screen was filled with missed calls and texts from Cassie. He called her back.

  She answered, “I can’t do this anymore. You’re killing me. Are you all right?”

  “I am.”

  “You find what you were looking for?”

  Lawson glanced over at his daughter in the passenger seat. Before he could answer, Cassie cut back in.

  “I know you didn’t, because I’m staring at him right now on my computer screen.”

  “De Luca? How?” That took Lawson by surprise.

  “I told you we were running that reverse trace on the kill command for the flash drive.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, it worked. And, turns out, it gave us a back door into De Luca’s security system.”

  “So he’s at his house?”

  Cassie sighed.

  “What is it?” Lawson couldn’t take any more bad news.

  “I think I know what the bonus footage Johnny left for you on the flash drive must have been . . .”

  Lawson already knew what Cassie was about to say. Lexi’s Aunt Erin was going to be there. Just like Lexi said. “Are you going to make me guess?”

  “I don’t know how to say this . . .”

  “Lauren’s sister is there with De Luca,” Lawson beat her to it.

  “How in the hell did you know that, Lawson?” Cassie was floored.

  Lawson bypassed her question. “I’m on my way to De Luca’s, I need you to meet me there.”

  “This is a police matter now. We have to let them take care of it.”

  “Do we really have to keep doing this?”

  “No,” Cassie resigned. “I’m already on my way. No way we are letting this asshole get out of this.”

  “Now you’re talking. I’m assuming the proof that I didn’t kill Lauren was irretrievable?”

  Lawson glanced over at Lexi. She looked up at him briefly when she heard her mother’s name, but then refocused on something in her pocket.

  “Whatever Johnny uploaded to that flash drive is gone. And I know that is terrible, but we might have an even bigger problem.”

  “Bigger than a life in prison, problem?”

  “Unfortunately. I don’t want to, but we have to assume that since De Luca has Lauren’s sister, there is a possibility that . . .”

  Cassie trailed off. She didn’t want to say it. Lawson gave her a break.

  “That he could have Lexi too.”

  “I hope not, Lawson, but it would make sense to use her to get you to stop coming after him.”

  “Glad we don’t have to worry about that,” Lawson sai
d.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Because I have Lexi right here with me.”

  Lawson ended the call. He hoped Lexi hadn’t heard too much. It didn’t take but a second to learn that she had.

  Lexi cleared her throat. “So, you really didn’t kill my mom?”

  Lawson went to grab her hand, but Lexi pulled away.

  “I didn’t. But I’m having a hard time proving who did.” He wasn’t going to lie to her. Not now.

  “But you know who did?”

  “I know who is responsible for her being killed. We had proof, but we lost it.”

  “His name is De Luca?” Lexi asked.

  “Yeah. It’s not for you to worry about, sweetheart.” Lawson didn’t know what else to say.

  “But you just said we are going there now.”

  “I am. You are going to stay with Cassie where it’s safe.”

  Lexi shifted in her seat to face Lawson. The lights of the Strip were flashing behind her a street over. “Are you going to kill him?”

  “I told you, it’s not for you—”

  “To worry about,” Lexi cut in. “I heard you. But I do. She was my mom, for God’s sake, and someone took her from me before I can even remember her.”

  Lawson’s emotions swelled inside of him. He could see in Lexi’s eyes what she wanted to hear, and he didn’t care if it was the right or wrong thing to do, he wanted to give her what she wanted.

  “I’m going to kill him.”

  Lexi was quiet for a moment. She looked out the window at the passing lights. “If you do, does that mean you don’t need proof anymore. All of this will be over?”

  Lawson took a moment. He wasn’t sure what to say. But he figured sticking with the truth was the only thing he could do. “It will be over for you, Lexi. But I will go back to prison without being able to prove that I had nothing to do with any of this.”

  Lexi turned back toward him. “Then you need proof.”

  “I told you, we had it, now it’s gone for good.”

  “Then get more proof, Lawson. You can’t go back to prison for something you didn’t do.”