by Lane, Terri
Spencer shook his head.
“No. We’re still missing a big part of the puzzle and Jerry was only able to get one hit off the facial recognition system. It’s blurry and it’s from another crime scene. The man was never identified and he’s wanted for more than just a few crimes.”
“Can I look at him?”
“The picture is blurry, and the video is not much better,” Spencer said.
“It couldn’t hurt to look, right?”
“I suppose not,” Spencer said, turning his laptop so she could see it and pulling up the video. “I’ll put it on a loop, since it’s only about ten seconds. It’s alright if you can’t figure out who it is.”
Lara watched the screen, waiting for the video to play, then paying close attention to every minute detail; the way the man walked, his face, and even how he held his hands at his sides.
The video was on its fifteenth loop when she suddenly gasped.
“Do you know this man?” Trevor asked while every agent at the table waited for her to answer.
“I do. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.” She closed her eyes and visualized the man that she had known only as juror number six. “How could I have missed it? He was across the table from me the entire time and I didn’t recognize him.”
“Seeing people out of context often throws us,” Spencer said. “That’s why you’ll see someone that you’ve met in a library at the grocery store and not know why you know them. That’s what that nagging feeling was you were talking about yesterday. Who is he?”
“Remember the box plant I worked at? He’s the boss.”
“You’re boss?”
“No, not my direct boss. He’s the guy in the office overlooking the assembly line floor. I know it’s him. He worked at Haley’s Corrugated for twenty years before his promotion and he holds his hand that way when he walks because he didn’t treat his carpal tunnel syndrome. And he always makes the same expression when he’s walking onto the floor and he’s about to fire someone. His name is Joe Belcher.”
“Are you sure it’s him?” Spencer pressed.
“Completely sure. And now, it all makes sense. There were a few times where he just acted odd around me. Maybe he was afraid I would recognize him. But how did anyone know about me, or any of the other jurors? I was one of over thirty people taken into that room. How could they know that I was going to get picked for the twelve? And how did they know about Gerald Thompson?”
Trevor chuckled, shaking his head.
“You went to federal court. It’s a little bit different than your average jury selection. When you respond to a federal summons, it might seem random, but they have already done background checks on everyone that shows up, and they have decided who they are going to have on the jury. Especially in cases like these.”
“No way,” she said, incredulous. “That’s so dishonest.”
Trevor shrugged.
“It’s been that way for a long time.”
“But, why?”
“It helps the outcome of the case. The lawyers can argue to dismiss a juror, but the judge makes the final decision. If the juror was already not in the final running, then it’s allowed and the lawyer is left feeling victorious. It keeps people from noticing what’s going on.”
“How did the mob get that information, then?”
“It’s very easy,” Spencer said. “Easier than it should be, anyway.”
Lara shook her head, “I can’t believe how easily something like this can happen. Now what?”
“Now, you stay put,” Trevor said. “You gave us the information we need to connect the dots with our informant’s information. That’s more than we had and you unlocked a piece of the puzzle.”
“I can’t leave and go back to my life?”
Spencer shook his head.
“You’re actually in more danger now,” he said.
“How is that possible?”
“Because you know the man who the mob sent to make sure that the jury didn’t reach a guilty verdict. The chances of you knowing more, even if you don’t realize it, are pretty significant.”
“You’ll have to go into the permanent protection program,” one of the agents said. “You won’t ever be safe as Lara Fox again. You have to walk away from your life, move somewhere new and live under a new name. You can’t have any contact with anyone you know, and you can’t tell anyone who you used to be. We’ll take care of faking your death, and you might get a choice of states, but that depends on what’s open when you’re done with the trial.”
Lara closed her eyes against the wave of tears that threatened. She stood up, then, taking a deep breath and turning to walk out of the room. She heard Trevor call out to her, but Spencer stepped in, thankfully.
“Let her go,” she heard Spencer say. “She needs her space.”
That’s an understatement, she thought angrily, taking the stairs two at a time and fleeing down the long hall and through Trevor’s room to her own room. She closed the door, sitting down hard on the bed and letting herself fall back on the pillows. She had been a fool, thinking that this would be over in a few weeks and she could just go back to her life. But that was never going to happen. Her home was gone, her old life ruined except for her business. There was nothing left that was hers; not her life, not her name, and not her freedom. Somehow, she’d thought when she found the answers they needed, things would magically go back to the way that they once were.
Boy, was she wrong.
***
Eric sat in his car, watching the warehouse as the last of the workers left for the night. Haley’s Corrugated was open from six in the morning until six at night, the workers doing three days of twelve hour shifts a week. The factory was only open six days a week, and they ran the same teams each week. Joe Belcher worked every day, sitting in his office six days a week, half asleep most days.
Eric sighed, looking at the picture of his wife and their kids, then closing his eyes. He didn’t want to do this.
Yes, you do, he admonished himself. You made a promise to Andrea.
He had made a promise, but it didn’t make what was about to go down any easier. The wire taped to his chest pulled at his hair, pinching him uncomfortably and reminding him that he was here to try to get a confession out of another man that was just like himself. Joe Belcher was a man that had stumbled into working for the mob and hadn’t known how to walk away, because it was impossible. He could’ve have said no, but he would have died.
Instead, the mob used Haley Corrugated to launder money, and Belcher helped them do it, enjoying kickbacks that made his life a lot more comfortable than he could ever afford on his salary at the box plant.
“It’s now or never,” Eric said out loud in his car, opening the door and stepping out. “You can do this.”
He went up the stairs outside the factory that went straight to the office and avoided the floor altogether. Belcher met him at the door, letting him in, then locking it behind him.
“Were you followed?” Belcher asked, his eyes darting around nervously.
“Of course, not.”
“Did you find the girl?”
“I know where she is,” Eric lied.
“Good. Do you want to do it, or should I?” said Belcher.
“Do you want to?” said Eric.
“Yes.”
“Why?” Eric asked, arching his eyebrow and trying to remain cool.
Belcher was being vague, and he was going to need a lot more than that.
“You should have seen her in the jury room; looking at me like I was slime and turning away in disgust.”
“You were in disguise. Isn’t it a good thing that she didn’t recognize you?”
“It was, except I think she did on some level. It’s the same way she used to look at me when she worked here. It’s like you can’t even give a girl a compliment anymore. In my day, you could tell a woman her ass looked good and she would giggle when you slapped it. Not Lara. She tried to complain to upp
er management. If it weren’t for the Don, I would have been fired for harassment. She was just as much of a cow in the jury room. I want to look into her eyes as I squeeze the life out of her and tell her who I was. That I was that close and she had no idea.”
Belcher held his hands out in the air in front of him, squeezing his hands together as if he were actually strangling Lara Fox right then and there.
Belcher looked at Eric as if noticing her was still in the room. He looked visibly startled, and Eric wondered about his sanity. Maybe he wasn’t a victim of the mob, forced to work for them or die. Maybe he was a willing participant.
“Do you know where she is?” Belcher asked.
“I have a few leads,” Eric lied.
“Hand them over. I’ll check them out myself. Wouldn’t want anyone offing this woman before I get my chance with her, you know?”
“I need you to keep this just between us,” Eric said. “I don’t want my name associated with this information.”
“Come on, Eric,” Belcher said. “We’ve known each other for almost ten years. You know me. I get in, do the deed and get out. I won’t bring you into it. The Don ordered you to take care of it and you couldn’t. That's why he’s giving me a shot. I tell you, he was so impressed with my work on that guy Gerald that he said I could take over some of his wet work and-”
“Federal agents! Freeze!”
The widows crashed, the tiny pieces of glass spraying into the office showering over them and falling to the floor. Belcher froze, hands going up in the air, then stopping.
“I’m not going to prison,” Belcher muttered, lowering his hands to the waistband of his jeans and pulling out a gun.
There were a few loud pops, and Belcher fell to the ground, eyes wide and staring into eternity as he took his final breaths.
Eric looked up, locking eyes with the agent across from him.
“Don’t move,” the agent said.
“I’m unarmed,” Eric said, reaching to pull his shirt up to show them the wire, all along keeping his eyes locked on the one agent who was engaging him.
The agent squeezed the trigger. Eric grunted with each impact of the bullets, stumbling backwards until his back was to the wall and he was partially behind the desk. He slid down the wall, looking down at his shirt and marveling at the red spreading from each of the three points of impact.
The agent that fired at him rushed forward while the other agents held their ground and another went to check Belcher. Eric closed his eyes when the man knelt down in front of him and put his fingers against Eric’s neck.
“Clear!” the agent shouted.
Eric could hear the men shouting, orders being given by the senior agents. The body bag being zipped around him and just before everything went dark, he only had one last thought.
They said it wasn’t going to hurt, but it did.
***
Lara sat on the couch between the twins, watching the news with rapt attention as they pulled two body bags from the box plant, one of them the man who had tried to kill her, the other a man with whom she had worked for years and was happily planning on killing her, even though she’d never done a thing to him.
“I can’t believe this,” she said in awe. “Is it over now?”
“It won’t ever be,” Trevor said. “The mob is still the mob, and while we have a lot on the players, we still don’t have enough to bring down the Don, or even identify him. You have to cut the head off the snake to take it down, everything else just makes it mad.”
“You’re not being honest, Trevor. She can refuse witness protection if she wants. It’s a voluntary program.”
“It’s voluntary?” she said, surprised by that information. “So, I can walk out of here right now?”
“You can, because we no longer need you to testify with all the evidence that has been collected in the past month. The Feds got enough evidence today to shut down a good portion of the operation. We may not have cut off the head of the snake, but we disabled a good portion of the mob in this area, and the agency made over forty arrests just today.”
“That’s amazing,” she said.
“They’ll turn on each other,” Trevor said. “There’s no way that many people will keep their mouth shut during interrogation.”
Lara smiled.
“I can’t believe that I don’t have to be trapped anymore,” she said, standing up and twirling in a circle like a small child. “It’s finally over.”
She stopped, her wide smile fading suddenly when she looked at the two faces in front of her, looking a little sad, even though they were both trying to hide their feelings.
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling guilty for her exuberance. “It’s not that you both haven’t been amazing. And I love this house and your ranch. But, I can’t live the rest of my life having someone shadowing me everywhere, being trapped in the house all day and not being able to just go out for a drive in my car and...”
She stopped, shoulders slumping.
“Except, I have nothing left.”
“We have good news about that,” Trevor said, looking at Spencer excitedly.
“What?”
“There was a whistleblower reward,” Trevor continued. “You were the straw that broke the mob’s back and set all of this in motion. And without your facial reconstruction and the other information you gave us, we would have never gotten all the information we did.”
“That is good news,” she said. “Hopefully, it will cover the deductible on my insurance on the house and the car and I can replace them both.”
“It will more than cover your deductibles,” Spencer said, laughing though his eyes still held a definite sadness. “The reward is a million dollars.”
Lara looked at him, her mouth dropping open in shock. Her knees felt like they might buckle beneath her.
“A million?” she stammered.
“Well, roughly a million after taxes,” Spencer corrected. “It might be close to one point two million, but I haven’t looked into it lately.”
“I can’t believe it,” she said.
“Believe it,” Trevor said. “Our boss already told us you were eligible. The only thing left for you to decide is if you’re going into the witness protection program and changing your name, or are you going to wing it and hope for the best?”
“I’m not changing my name,” she said.
“I told him you wouldn’t change your name,” Spencer said.
“I guess that this is goodbye, then,” she said. She looked around, noticing for the first time since the news had started that it was late. “I guess I’ll stay until tomorrow. That is, if it’s alright for me to stay.”
“You don’t have to leave,” Trevor said.
“I know, but I can’t just live cooped up like this forever,” she said. “I’ll never forget you both for as long as I live. I’ve never felt so safe and so cherished.”
“Things don’t have to be as stringent as they were before,” Spencer said. “The immediate risk is gone. You can stay here and live freely without looking over your shoulder. We’re almost one hundred miles from where you lived before. It’s not like you’re in danger here the way you were at home.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to decide now,” Spencer said. “You can stay as long as you want and you can leave anytime.”
“Do you want me to leave?” she asked.
She knew Trevor’s answer, but Spencer was still so aloof at times that she wondered if he wanted her there at all. Then he would hold her, or smile at her with that lopsided, sultry smile and she would question everything she was thinking all over again.
“I would be happy if you never left,” Spencer said without hesitation. “But I don’t want you here if you’re not happy, or if you think that you have no choice.”
“And what about us?” Lara asked. “What about the three of us? If I leave, is that off the table?”
“No,” they said in unison.
La
ra laughed, then she stopped, her face serious.
“I enjoy being with you both, but I just don’t know what I want right now. I’m used to being alone, and doing my own thing. I never saw myself settling down; especially not with two were-dragons.”
“The most unexpected things are often the best,” Trevor said.
“I can’t argue with that,” Lara said. “Can we go to bed and enjoy each other tonight, and worry about the rest of this tomorrow?”
Both Spencer and Trevor nodded.
“Good. I don’t want to think about anything else tonight except the two of you.”
Her sweet smile was suggestive, and a moment later she was heading up the stairs with the pair of them right behind her. She was glad that they were okay with her plan. Tonight, she would forget the world and everything that had happened. Then, first thing tomorrow, she would leave and go back to the real world, where dragons didn’t exist and love like theirs only happened in the movies.
***
The sun was setting gently over the horizon when the last of Lara’s things were packed into the small moving truck she had rented for the month. It was just big enough to fit the things Spencer had brought from her home, with room enough for her to attempt to salvage what she could from the ruins of her house. From there, she would figure out her next move, but she had more than a few houses to look at, which she had found online while they were loading up the heavy stuff.
Someone had already contacted her about her reward, cutting her a check and sending it over via courier for her to take with her. Spencer drove her to the local branch of her bank to deposit the check, providing the necessary documentation to prove it was authentic, then driving Lara to the local rental place to rent a moving truck. When they’d returned, Trevor had packed all her things, bringing them into the foyer so that they were easier to load.
They were standing at the van now, both looking upset but hiding it behind stoic expressions. But she could see the pain in their eyes, and she ached for them. In a perfect world, she would live the rest of her days just being theirs, the three of them together, and she would love every minute of it. But being trapped and constantly being on guard was nerve-wracking and she didn’t want that life. They would never let their guard down, because they knew how dangerous that could be. But Lara just wanted to live a happy life, and she wasn’t going to spend it being overly paranoid. The danger was gone, and it was time to leave the fairy tale behind and go back to reality.