The McKays Box Set - To Kill For, Blood Sport, Hard Time & Gang Land

by A. J. Carella

  “Listen to me, Drake. None of those things are your fault and besides, you didn’t kill anyone. You didn’t choose the life you’ve led. What choice did you have? You are my son. I’ve loved you since the instant I found out about you and nothing you can tell me will change that.”

  “So when are you going to tell her? My mother?”

  Finn had explained on the trip home that Kat didn’t know that he’d been looking for Drake, let alone found him. “Tomorrow. I’ll go and tell her tomorrow.”

  “And what if she wants nothing to do with me? What then?”

  Finn hadn’t allowed himself to consider the possibility that Kat would turn him away and he didn’t think she would, but it was a fair question. “It won’t change anything for me. You are home and this is where you are going to stay. If that means that she and I can’t be together anymore, then that’s the way it will have to be.” He felt sick even saying it. After all this time, he was finally with the love of his life. But if it came to a choice, then he could never turn his back on his son.

  Thirty-Three

  His heart was like a lead weight in his chest as he turned up the driveway to the house. He’d hardly slept, tossing and turning all night, until finally, he’d given up on sleep and had gone outside and sat on the deck, watching the sky until the inky darkness gave way to the lightness of dawn. Their relationship had been through so much, he truly didn’t know if it would survive this time. He knew now that he’d had no right to do this behind her back and that he should have told her the truth from the start. He had some understanding now of how Kat must have felt when she first found out she was pregnant. He’d never understood when she’d told him that she kept it from him to protect him, but now he did.

  The door to the house was thrown wide before he’d even stopped the car and Kat ran out to meet him, throwing her arms round him as soon as he got out. He held her tight, knowing this might be the last time he would get to hold her so close.

  “I’ve got something to tell you.” Her excitement was palpable.

  “Me, too. Can we go inside?” Her face fell at his tone and he felt like an ass for bringing her down.

  Pulling away from him, she turned and walked back into the house, leaving him to follow and close the door. He found her in the kitchen, standing with her back to him making coffee. Going up to her, he slipped his arms around her waist. “I’m sorry, honey. What is it that’s got you so excited?”

  She turned in his arms and looked up at him. “Can’t you guess?”

  Oh, shit. The adoption. He’d forgotten all about it. “They said yes?”

  She nodded but didn’t smile. “Yes, they did. But you’d forgotten all about it, hadn’t you?” She pushed him away and turned her back to him again. “What’s going on, Finn?” She handed him a cup and took her own and went to sit at the kitchen counter. “You’ve been different the last few days. First you stay longer than you were supposed to in LA, you don’t call me for days, and now this.”

  He let out a long breath. “You’re right. I’ve not been myself at all and for that I’m sorry, truly sorry.” He went and sat at the kitchen table. “Can you come and sit over here for a minute? There’s something important I need to talk to you about.”

  “Finn, you’re scaring me now. What is it?”

  “Do you ever think about our son?”

  It was clear from the expression on Kat’s face that she was completely thrown by the question. “Of course I do. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about him.” She frowned. “What is this, Finn? We’re not going to go over this again, are we?”

  “Do you ever wish you knew where he was? What he was like?” Finn pushed.

  Kat stood up from the table, scraping her chair across the floor. “Why are you doing this? I thought we’d gotten past this.”

  “Please, sit down, Kat.” It was now or never. “I’m not trying to hurt you. When you first told me about him, I was angry. You know that. But I got past it and I don’t blame you anymore.”

  “Then why are you dragging it all up again?” Kat pleaded. “Can’t you just leave it alone?”

  Finn shook his head. “I can’t, Kat. I tried, I really did, but it’s been eating away at me knowing I have a son out there somewhere. I couldn’t go through the rest of my life not knowing.”

  “What are you trying to tell me, Finn? You want to find him?”

  “Would it be so terrible?”

  “I gave him away so he could have a better life. I gave up my rights to have anything to do with his life the day I signed those papers. What right have we got to go and turn his life upside down now?” Kat started to cry. “Don’t you think I want to know that he’s happy? But that’s just selfishness, wanting to make myself feel better.”

  “But if you found him, you’d be happy?”

  Tears were streaming down her face now. “I don’t understand why you’re saying these things, Finn. Don’t you see? I can’t let myself think like that. I can’t. It would crush me.”

  “He wasn’t happy, Kat.” There, it was out. Now all he could do was hope.

  There was a stunned silence and the ticking of the kitchen clock suddenly seemed very loud.

  “What are you talking about? He wasn’t?”

  “He wasn’t happy, Kat.”

  Kat stared at him, realization dawning behind her eyes. “Oh, my God. You found him, didn’t you?”

  The slap was loud in the silence of the kitchen and left the side of his face stinging. “How could you,” Kat hissed furiously. “How could you do that without telling me?”

  He let the slap go; he deserved it. “I started looking before we got together, Kat, and once I’d started, I couldn’t stop.”

  “Before we got together? Do you really think that makes a difference? It doesn’t matter when it was. You should have told me.”

  She wasn’t telling him anything he hadn’t already told himself a hundred times. “I know, and I’m sorry. I was wrong. Please try and understand.” He tried to take her hand in his but she snatched it away. “He’s all I’ve been able to think about since the day you told me about him. I woke up and he was the first thing on my mind. And he was the last thing on my mind when I went to sleep at night. It was torture.”

  “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t understand that pain?” she snapped.

  “Of course you do, but you’ve had twenty years to get used to living with it. I haven’t.” It came out harsher than he’d planned it but it was true.

  “But why didn’t you talk to me about it?”

  “I didn’t want to hurt you by dragging it all up again,” he said simply.

  She laughed, a short laugh with no humor. “And you’re not hurting me now?”

  “I know I am, but I don’t think I ever really expected to find him.”

  “But now you have.”

  “Yes. I have.”

  “Well, I hope you’ll both be very happy together.” She went over to the sink and leaned on it, looking out of the window with her back to him. “Now please get out of my house.”

  Finn was stunned. “What? You’re kicking me out?”

  “Did I not make that clear? Here it is again for you. Get out.”

  There was a hard edge to her voice that he’d never heard before. “Kat, by all means, be angry with me, I understand. But this is your son we’re talking about, our son. Don’t you want to meet him?”

  She rounded on him, her eyes flashing angrily. “I didn’t ask for you to bring him here, into my life. That’s a choice you made for me. So don’t you dare judge me.” She lifted her arm and pointed to the door. “Now, for the last time, get out of my house.”

  Finn’s mouth hardened into a tight line. Fine. “I hope your bitterness doesn’t eat you up, Kat,” he flung at her before storming out of the kitchen and through the front door, slamming it behind him.

  Drake was a part of his life now, and if she couldn’t accept him, he wouldn’t be coming back. Ever.


  ***

  As soon as she heard the front door close, Kat slid down the kitchen cabinets until she reached the floor, her legs unable to support her. At first she was still, not uttering a sound, but then the heartbreak and pain started to bubble up out of her. The moaning was low at first, hardly more than a low rumble in her throat, but it quickly grew until it felt like all the trauma she had kept locked up inside for the past twenty years was trying to claw its way out and she started keening like a wounded animal.

  Her son hadn’t had a happy childhood. The one thing that had kept her going through the years, that had kept her sane, was the thought that he’d been better off without her and it wasn’t true. She thought the pain of that would break her in half as she lay down on the kitchen floor and curled into a ball, trying to stop the hurt.

  She was still there hours later when Jamie got home from work. The house was in complete darkness, the sun having already set, and the floor was cold but Kat hadn’t noticed.

  “Kat, what on earth are you doing?” Jamie rushed to her after switching on the kitchen light and seeing her there. “Kat? What’s wrong?” she asked again but she couldn’t answer, couldn’t bring herself to speak.

  Jamie gently helped her to her feet and walked her over to the kitchen table, sitting her down on a chair. “Do you need a doctor?”

  Kat shook her head.

  “Is it Daniel? Has something happened to Daniel? No, he’s at a sleepover.” She answered her own question. “Kat, please, talk to me.”

  “Bed.” she managed to croak, her throat sore from screaming. “Just bed.”

  “Okay, let’s get you to bed.”

  Jamie helped her up the stairs and into bed. “Do you want me to call Finn?”

  “No!” she spat forcefully, causing Jamie to raise her eyebrows.

  “Okay, no Finn. What can I do, Kat? What on earth is wrong?” Jamie pleaded.

  “Just leave me alone, please.” She rolled onto her side, turning her back to her. “Please.”

  “Okay, if that’s what you want.”

  She knew Jamie was worried sick, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything. She just wanted to go to sleep and never wake up.

  Thirty-Four

  The flight this time was very different. For a start, it wasn’t his first time, but mainly because then he’d been flying to a place he’d never been, with a man he barely knew, to a home he’d never known he’d had. This time, he knew exactly what was happening. Angel was going on trial for Shelby’s murder and the murder of all the other women he had killed, and the DA wanted to go over his statement with him.

  He hadn’t been gone that long, but the streets of LA looked completely alien. Perhaps it was because they were no longer threatening and he knew that he would be leaving again soon. Whatever it was, he was seeing them for the first time as a tourist might see them, and it felt strange.

  He didn’t have to wait long in the waiting room at the DA’s office before a secretary ushered him in.

  “Hi, I’m John Allen. Pleased to meet you.” A portly man with not a lot of hair stood up from behind a desk and held out his hand.

  “Hi. Drake.”

  John waved him to a seat on the other side of the desk. Drake looked around, taking in the small room filled with mismatched bookcases groaning under the weight of heavy law books. Public sector work must not pay that well, he thought, surprised that a man in his position didn’t have a bigger, more impressive office.

  “I appreciate you coming all this way.” John sat back down and opened a file on the desk in front of him. “As you know, Angel Romero’s trial is coming up and I just wanted to go through a few things with you so there aren’t any surprises, and you know what to expect.”

  Just the mention of Angel’s name made his fists clench. “Whatever you need.”

  “Great. Well, apart from the murder of your girlfriend, Shelby Simms, he is also on trial for five other murders. I know you’ve given a statement to the police about Shelby.” He shuffled some papers before finding what he was looking for. “And I have that here. But it doesn’t look like the police have spoken to you about the other murders.”

  Drake frowned. “But I don’t know anything about the other murders, so why would they need to talk to me about them?”

  “Oh, I’m sure you don’t, but what we don’t want is the defense questioning you about what you know about them—and they will—and we’ve not gone over it. It’s important that we cover absolutely everything. We don’t want to give them anything, anything at all that could jeopardize a conviction.”

  “I understand.”

  They spent the next half-hour going over the first and second murders and Drake felt sick. Although John wasn’t going into detail about the crime scenes, it didn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out that these women had suffered. I hope he gets the death penalty.

  “Okay, so number three. This was the murder of Tawnee Julien, sixteen, on the fourteenth of August this year.”

  That couldn’t be right. “Hang on. You said the fourteenth of August, is that right?”

  John checked the paperwork in front of him. “Yes, that’s right. She was found on the morning of the fifteenth of August and the ME confirmed that death had occurred and some point within the previous twelve hours.” He looked up at Drake. “Why?”

  A cold finger was traveling up Drake’s spine and he felt the room close in. For a brief moment, he considered not saying anything, keeping what he knew to himself, but it only lasted a few seconds. Much as he despised Angel, if he didn’t speak out he was no better than he was. “Angel didn’t kill her.”

  John looked at him as if he’d suddenly taken leave of his senses. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Angel didn’t kill that girl. He couldn’t have. He was with me all that night.”

  “What? What do you mean he was with you that night?”

  “Just what I said. That was Juan’s birthday and the three of us went out and got wasted.”

  “Are you sure of the date?”

  He hated to admit it, but he was. “Absolutely sure.”

  “Okay. That doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. He could have gone out later, during the night.”

  Drake shook his head. “I wish he could have, but he didn’t. Juan went too far and was really sick. We both stayed with him all night, taking turns to mop up after him. Angel wasn’t out of my sight for more than five minutes all night. I’m really sorry, but it wasn’t him.”

  “Fuck.” John threw himself back in his chair. “And no one asked you about this before?”

  Drake shook his head.

  “Dammit. Okay. Look, I’ve got to make some calls, get this figured out.” He checked his watch. “Can you come back here in a couple of hours? I need to speak to the police and see where we go from here.”

  “Sure, no problem.” It wasn’t as if he was in a strange town.

  “Okay. Thanks, Drake. See you then.”

  There were lots of places he could go to kill a couple of hours, but there was one place he’d really missed: Echo Park. It would actually be quite nice to go and spend a couple of hours there. He’d grab something to eat on the way and sit and watch the water. In fact, he couldn’t think of a nicer way to spend an afternoon.

  Thirty-Five

  Sam put the phone down in shock. “We’ve got a problem,” he mouthed to Steve, who was sitting at his desk making a phone call, before getting up and going and knocking on the boss’s door.

  “Boss, you got a minute?”

  Captain Fletcher waved him in and he was quickly joined by Steve. “I’ve just had the DA on the phone and it’s not good news.” He took a deep breath before delivering the bombshell. “Seems that Angel Romero has a concrete alibi for the third murder.”

  “But if he has an alibi for the third murder…”

  “He can’t have done the others.” Sam finished Steve’s sentence. “I know.”

  The silence in the room was
deafening as they all absorbed what had just been said.

  “How did we miss this?” The boss looked as if he was about to burst an aneurysm. “Seriously, how the fuck did we miss this?”

  “I don’t know, boss. Angel never gave us an alibi or we would have checked it out.”

  “Who interviewed him?”

  “I did, boss,” Sam acknowledged. “As soon as the doctors said it was okay, and I gave him every opportunity to provide one.”

  “He couldn’t have been confused from the gunshot wound?”

  “No, the doctors were adamant that it was basically not a lot more than a flesh wound. It looked a lot worse than it was because of all the blood, but the bullet didn’t do any real damage.”

  “Dammit. Is there any way that that murder was committed by someone else? That he’s good for the rest?”

  Sam shook his head. “No, no way at all. He definitely killed the last girl, but it looks like I was right. The others were all the work of someone else.”

  “I’m sorry, Sam. You were right.” The captain rubbed his face with his hands. “So, where does this leave us?”

  “With a killer still on the loose and back to square one,” Steve said miserably, echoing all their thoughts.

  Thirty-Six

  At this time of the year, it was quiet in Echo Park and Drake sat with his coat wrapped around him, enjoying the peace. He’d finished his sandwich and he still had an hour to kill before he needed to be back at the DA’s office. He’d probably have to make an official statement, but it was likely that would be the end of his involvement and he’d be able to fly back to Brecon Point in the morning. No matter how much he hated Angel, he was glad he’d spoken up—it was the right thing to do. He’d still go to prison for Shelby’s murder, in any case, and now the police could find the one who’d really killed those girls.

  Echo Park had always been one of his favorite places to come when he lived in LA and had been one of the first places he’d slept when he’d first arrived as a naïve fourteen-year-old kid.