by Caroline Lee
Tristan glanced at Charley, then picked up a pencil. “These slashes are the road, right? So three slashes is 95—we used that one the most. Four slashes is Highway 1 way up near the border, and five slashes is Route 2 after it breaks off from 95 and heads east.”
Saunders and a few others around the table were nodding. “Do the choice of numbers—three, four, five rather than one, two, three—mean anything?”
Tristan met his eyes boldly, and shrugged. “I dunno. My father was the one who made up the code, not me.”
The FBI agent stared at him for a long moment, then slowly nodded. “You were only a child. Thank you for the reminder.” He raised his voice and glanced around at his colleagues. “We would all do well to remember that.”
Charley exhaled softly in relief, and that was when she realized she must’ve been holding her breath, hoping they’d forget she was there, and continue discussing the case around her. But now she saw Saunders was supporting Tristan—even if he didn’t quite believe him yet—and saw Shane nodding in agreement, she could relax a little.
These men would accept Tristan’s help.
It was incredible to realize he’d overcome his fear to even show up here today…and even more, was willing to help solve this case. She wondered if he had any idea who was running this scheme now, who the mastermind was. Because she, at least, knew it wasn’t Tristan. Soon the rest of the officers and agents in the room would believe that too. They had to.
As Tristan pulled the paper closer and began to point out different numbers from the ones Shane had written, Charley had to hide a smile. She was so darn proud of him.
But when she looked up from the pad of paper, she met her brother’s eyes across the table. To her surprise, he was wearing a little lip-curl of disgust as his eyes flicked back and forth between her and Tristan.
Self-consciously, she straightened and shifted away from Tristan’s side, and felt a stab of guilt for doing so. Why did Bradley’s opinion matter? Just because he had everything she’d ever thought she wanted—a prestigious job, a great career record, and their father’s approval? Did it really matter if he thought she was a glorified mall cop? Or if he didn’t approve of her friendship with Tristan?
Friendship? Yeah, that’s what this was. A friendship. She was friends with Tristan—an ex-con and a good man. She lifted her chin and stared mulishly back at Bradley. Yeah, she was friends with Tristan, and Bradley could just stick that in his pipe and smoke it.
Because she wasn’t going to abandon her friend when he needed her. Not for Bradley or an FBI Agent or even her father. Not ever.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Well, this wasn’t as horrible as he’d always imagined.
Sure, he was in a police station, surrounded by a dozen cops who all thought that he was a crook…but Charley was standing beside him, and counted far more than he would’ve thought. Having her support made the whole thing less…well, less scary. He wouldn’t ever forget the way she held his hand—or let him hold her hand—in a sort of silent approval.
Jaclyn must’ve been right. Charley really did believe in him and needed his help.
Still, it had been a long night, driving around in the darkness and thinking about loyalty. It was probably three a.m. when he made camp and came to the realization that, in the short amount of time he’d known her, Charley had made him feel better about himself than Pop ever had. Maybe he’d been loyal to the wrong person all these years.
So he’d decided to go to the cops to tell them what he knew. Not because he was still angry at Pop—although he was, in a way—and not because he particularly cared about this new meth ring. But he did care about Charley, and she cared about shutting this down, so he wanted to help. He might not understand her loyalty to the law, but he could be loyal to her.
Huh. Apparently that crazy old lady hadn’t been as crazy as she’d seemed. And—all things considered—standing in the middle of the road with a statue, she’d seemed pretty crazy.
It was kinda funny, that he was finally explaining this code to the cops. Sure, they’d asked before, but he’d refused to explain, and when he found out Pop had too, then he’d known he’d made the right decision. Or, he was coming to see now…the wrong decision. So now, to be surrounded by all these guys, hanging on his every word, seemed weird.
Of course, he’d known they hadn’t cracked Pop’s code, but it was interesting to see they’d at least intercepted it. Who would’ve thought cops made a habit of hanging out in the bathrooms of truck stops?
“How’d you get all of these?” he asked as he gestured to the numbers the sheriff—what was his name? Clap? Clapper?—was transcribing into the notebook from his laptop.
It was the FBI Agent who answered. “Right before you were busted, we discovered graffiti in a particular stall in a particular restroom in a particular truck stop. It followed the same pattern, and only appeared on days when a drop was being made.” His grin turned wry. “Of course, a patrolman stumbled on you and the runner by accident two days later, and we never needed to actually break the code. Until now.”
Remembering the fear the sixteen-year-old him had felt when that cop car had flashed its lights and screeched to block the runner’s car, Tristan acknowledged that maybe it hadn’t been the best idea to fake a disabled car. With the hood up and both of them—him and the Canadian—leaning inside while they made the hand-off, he couldn’t reach his bike before the cop was there, waving a gun around and ordering them on the ground.
But wait. The agent’s words caught up with Tristan’s brain. “What do you mean,‘until now?’ ”
The man—Saunders—cocked his head to one side. “I mean that whoever is running this scheme again is using the exact same notification system. Graffiti in the same stall. We’ve got a man undercover, hired to clean the restrooms.”
Someone else on the other side of the table grunted. “Cleanest dang restrooms I’ve ever seen in a truck stop.” There were some chuckles from the gathered men.
But Tristan ignored them. As soon as Saunders had said the same system was being used, Tristan had understood what that meant. Knew who was in charge.
“So, uh…” He shifted slightly, not looking at Charley, but glad for her presence as he swallowed tentatively. “You don’t know who’s behind it yet?”
“Oh, we know,” came the snapped answer, but not from the sheriff or the FBI agent. It was that clean-cut, pressed-trousers-wearing, snooty-looking jerk who’d been sneering at Charley all along.
Her brother. What kind of jerk looked at his own little sister like that? Tristan’s hand clenched by his side and he swallowed down a snarl. She’d told him all about how badly she wanted her father’s approval, and how her brother always got it. And now that he’d seen this guy, Tristan knew for a fact she needed to stop bothering. Any man who gave Bradley approval over her wasn’t worth worrying about.
But then, he knew all about being desperate for a father’s approval, didn’t he?
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he growled at Charley’s brother.
The other man lifted his chin and glared at Tristan like he was something stuck to the bottom of an expensive shoe. “You think you’re going to come in here and just” —he waved his hand through the air— “claim that you’re not the criminal mastermind, and we’re supposed to believe you? Just because you’ve got a security guard to vouch for you?” His nose wrinkled as he glanced at his sister. “You’re the one who knows all about this scheme, Quarles. You’re the one with the motive, the means, and the record.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m the one who’s doing it.” They really hadn’t looked at all the possibilities, had they?
The FBI agent cleared his throat, taking control of the conversation again. “I have to admit, it does make you look pretty bad, Quarles.”
Tristan grunted at the man’s easy condemnation. “Yeah, but it’s not like I’m the only one.”
Bradley stepped forward once more. “Like who? No one else could p
ossibly have the knowledge to replicate this whole scheme so precisely.”
His mouth dropping open at the bold claim, Tristan just stared at Charley’s brother. Did the little twit really think that? He turned his head to catch Charley’s eye, but she was too busy glaring daggers at her brother. Huh. Apparently they really did believe that…
Tristan decided he wasn’t going to give Bradley the satisfaction of answering him. Instead, he turned his attention to Saunders. “Really? You don’t think there’s anyone else who could be doing this?” How could they be so blind?
But the agent just shrugged. “Like who?” he repeated Bradley’s words blandly. “If you have any information you’d like to share…”
“Like who?” Tristan burst out incredulously. “How about Uncle Jim?”
Unfortunately, he didn’t get the reaction he’d hoped. Instead of slapping their foreheads and saying “Of course! How could we be so stupid?” the cops around the table just exchanged vaguely amused glances.
“Jim Quarles was thoroughly investigated and cleared twelve years ago,” Saunders answered confidently. “He’s been living a quiet life since then.”
Well, that was news. But in Tristan’s defense, he hadn’t exactly kept up with any of his family since his release. “Cleared?” he repeated. Surely they were mistaken.
Saunders nodded. “Both your father and their younger brother Gus testified that Jim knew nothing of the scheme, which corroborated his own claims of innocence.”
“Wait, what?” Tristan’s brows rose. He’d wondered why the cops hadn’t pressured him to testify against Jim, but it honestly hadn’t occurred to him that it was because his oldest uncle hadn’t been arrested at all. “They said that? They said that he didn’t have anything to do with it?” What had Pop been up to?
The sheriff was nodding, even while some of the others looked at Tristan speculatively. “Yes. They all—every single one of them, even your cousin Billy, Jim’s own son—testified that Jim didn’t even know what they were doing. He was completely innocent.”
That did it. Tristan burst out laughing and stumbled away from the table a few steps. “Are you kidding?” he managed to choke out. “The entire thing was Jim’s idea.”
Well, that got the reaction he’d been expecting. A buzz of conversation started around the table. Bradley’s lips curled in disgust, Saunders cocked his head thoughtfully, and the sheriff began to scroll quickly through something on his computer. But it was Charley who confronted him directly.
She turned away from the table to face him head-on and reached out. Her hand rested on his upper arm—not as if she wanted to keep him from leaving, but as if she wanted to make sure he was alright.
“Tristan?” she asked softly. “Yesterday you mentioned your father and your ‘uncles’ when you were talking about who was in charge. Was Jim one of them?”
He nodded, answering her and ignoring everyone else. “Jim was the oldest, then Pop and Gus. Pop and Uncle Jim came up with this whole scheme after Jim read some articles online and got hold of some basic chemistry equipment second-hand. It was his idea to use the handicapped stall in a busy truck stop to send messages, and he was the one who knew the Canadian guy who brought the medicine across the border.”
Tristan could remember how proud his uncle had been, claiming the cops could monitor their phones so they had to do things “old school,” and directing Pop to come up with the code. It made sense he’d want to use the same method again, if he didn’t realize the cops had intercepted the messages.
Her fingers tightened on his arm. “So why hadn’t that come out in the investigation? If it really was his idea the whole time?”
He shrugged, but not so hard that he’d loosen her grip. “I guess they set it all up. If Jim was free, then he could do whatever they wanted, I guess. Which is what happened. Pop had told me to keep my mouth shut and they wouldn’t be able to pin anything on me” —not that it had worked; in fact, Tristan had missed out on the reduced sentence because he’d kept his mouth shut— “so I didn’t say anything about any of them. Including Uncle Jim.”
“Let me get this straight.” Agent Saunders stepped forward. “You’re saying that Jim Quarles is not only just as guilty as the rest of your family, but that he’s the one who’s resurrected this meth ring?”
Tristan began to nod, but hesitated and shrugged instead. “As I understood it—and, I mean, they didn’t tell me everything, I was just a kid—Uncle Jim was really proud of coming up with a way to stand up to the law, the government.” He saw Charley’s grimace at the idea, and it was echoed by some others in the room, including Sheriff Clapper. Bradley, on the other hand, didn’t change from his apparently habitual scowl.
Saunders’ expression, however, remained neutral. “So you’re claiming that, since Jim was the mastermind twelve years ago—despite the results of our extensive investigation, mind you—he’s the mastermind now?”
“Yes.” Tristan met the agent’s eyes. “Unless there’s someone out there who’s copycatting him, Uncle Jim is the only possible choice.”
“Except you,” Saunders pointed out blandly.
Tristan’s jaw tightened. “Yeah,” he ground out. “Except I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve been living my life clean, trying to get by, since I got out. You can ask Mr. Pulaski.”
The agent slowly nodded. “Oh, we will, don’t you worry. We’re going to check up on everything.” He cocked his head. “But you have to understand that you’ve been our only suspect. We’re not likely to let go of that suspicion so easily.”
Suspicion. It wasn’t the first time it had kept him back. He’d spent his life under suspicion, from Pop’s paranoia, to the prison guards’ steely looks, to his therapists’ pity, to the way his teachers treated him in the mechanic’s shops during his work-release. He was used to it.
But it didn’t have to be that way. He could prove he wasn’t the bad guy here.
Charley stepped up beside him, her arm dropping by her side but her presence showing that she supported him. “I believe him, sir.” When Saunders turned his attention to her, she lifted her small chin mulishly, and Tristan hid his smile. “If Tristan says that he’s innocent in this, and has given us the name of another suspect, I trust him.” She sure was a tiny firecracker, wasn’t she?
Saunders grunted speculatively, but Bradley snorted derisively.
“I sure as heck don’t. I’m not that naïve,” he muttered to a man beside him, who nodded. What a jerk, saying something like that about his sister.
Tristan took a deep breath, and resisted the urge to grab hold of Charley’s hand. It would look too needy if he did that. She was beside him, and that’s what mattered. That’s all that mattered, now that he was about to betray his family. To go against the loyalty he’d always promised his father.
Now he had a different loyalty. To Charley.
He couldn’t betray her trust in him.
“I’ll prove it.”
“How?” The sheriff asked hopefully.
Tristan straightened his shoulders. “I’ll help you nail him.”
Clapper nodded, exchanged a glance with the FBI agent that looked almost triumphant, and reached for the pad with the numbers written on it. “Show us.”
Taking a deep breath, Tristan knew he was ready. He had to prove that Charley’s trust in him wasn’t misplaced. He nodded, and stepped towards the table once more.
And as he did, she stepped with him. Her hand came to rest in between his shoulder blades, and man did it feel good. All of her support and strength seemed to flow into him, making him stand taller.
Her touch made him want to be a better man.
Picking up the pencil, he prepared to betray his family. “So these slashes are the road, yeah?” He underlined the part he’d explained before. “This part is which direction.” He circled the letter beside the slashes. “An A or B meant northbound, C or D meant southbound, E or F was eastbound, usually on Route 2—”
Clapper interr
upted him. “And G or H meant westbound?”
Tristan’s lip curved wryly as he nodded. “Yeah. It’s not that hard.”
But Clapper just chuckled. “If you’d chosen N, S, E, and W it would’ve been easy. Eight letters made it difficult. But I’ll admit that we didn’t have to put all that much effort into breaking the code, since we got lucky with you.”
Had the sheriff been one of the ones who’d arrested him twelve years ago? Tristan honestly couldn’t remember. And even if he had been, Tristan wasn’t going to hold a grudge. He couldn’t, not with the warmth that was spreading across his back from where Charley’s hand still rested.
So his only reaction was a shrug. “I didn’t come up with the code.” He underlined the next set of numbers. “These represent the mile marker.”
“Yeah, but according to your slash-marks, this is Route 2, right?” Saunders reached over Tristan’s shoulder and pointed to the numbers three and eight. “But mile marker thirty-eight would be part of Route 95. Why not use three slashes?”
Charley shifted behind him, and Tristan felt a surge of…well, it would be stupid to feel proud that Pop’s code was still mystifying law officers, but he couldn’t help his smirk. “I said it represents the mile marker, not that it was a mile marker. You gotta subtract from ten.”
“A base-ten subtraction cypher,” Charley breathed, and he felt it against his neck.
He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he shrugged. “Yeah.”
Saunders made a sound of disgust. “So we should’ve been looking at mile seventy-two.”
“Sixty-two,” Bradley corrected smugly. Tristan wanted to punch him.
“Seventy-two,” Charley said with no small hint of insult. “He said to subtract from ten. Each number subtracts from ten, not the whole thing from one hundred.”