Reckoning and Ruin

by Tina Whittle

  Shane made a noncommittal noise, but Jasper had the look of a man who’d tossed a live grenade and was waiting for it to blow. There was something else too, something I hadn’t noticed until I saw him staring at Shane—Jasper was unnerved. Most of what I’d been telling him had been old news, but something had tripped a switch. And I had an idea what it was.

  “You really didn’t know John was missing, did you?”

  “I told you that.”

  “Yeah, you did. You played it like it was nothing, but it bothered you. Why is that, Jasper? Your information supply line not as thorough as you’d hoped?”

  Jasper moved closer, filling the video frame. “Come on, now, this ain’t about John, or Hope, or the lawsuit. You’re here because you’re scared.”

  “What have I got to be scared of? You? Crippled up in a hospital bed behind bars?”

  He shook his head side to side, slowly. “No, not me. Whoever’s still out there. Like those men who took Trey the first time. Those men who hurt him so bad, and him SWAT-trained and everything.”

  “The men you sent, you mean. And they’re behind bars. Like you.”

  “Maybe. But they were the least of their kind. You’re desperate to find out what the real bad guys are planning, the ones who didn’t get caught. Desperate enough to come talk to me…even though I had nothing to do with any of it, of course.” He cocked his head, his voice soft. “Is that why Trey’s not here? You think he’s safe back in Atlanta? Like maybe the reach of those very bad men won’t stretch all the way up to Buckhead?”

  It came with a twinge first, a quiver deep in my gut, and my vision started collapsing at the edges. A panic attack. I tried to fight it down—no, no, no, not now—but I knew that wouldn’t work, that resistance was not just futile, it was fuel.

  Jasper saw. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re trying to protect Trey from the evil of this world.” He laughed, low and nasty. “That’s real sweet, but what makes you think Savannah is the most dangerous place in the South? Atlanta’s just as mean, maybe even meaner, especially the folks you hang out with at those reenactments. You never know what kind of criminal could be standing right in front of you up there, looking all innocent.”

  There was something in the way he said it, and my memory flashed on the process server, the insolence in his eye as he’d slapped me with the lawsuit papers, the dare-me glare. I was right—he’d been one of Jasper’s. And he’d been a warning.

  Jasper dropped his voice in mock concern. “If I were you, cuz, I’d go check on Trey right now. I’d go as fast as I could. Because you never know what might have happened up there while you were sitting here talking to me.”

  I imagined Trey’s voice. Breathe, Tai. Breathe with me. On my count. One…two…

  I braced my hands on the table, gripping the wood until my knuckles were white. “I swear to God, Jasper Boone, if something happens to Trey or anyone I love, I will destroy you. I missed one chance to take you down. I won’t miss a second.”

  Jasper smiled, his snake eyes gleaming. The clock in the corner of the screen ticked down to zero, and the screen went black.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I didn’t say a single word as I signed myself out. I collected my driver’s license and pushed open the double doors, the sunshine hitting me like a shovel to the face. I walked as quickly as I could, thinking that all I had to do was get in my car and I’d be fine. But my legs were rubber, and I couldn’t get the key to go into the lock. I had to use both hands to open the door, and when I finally slid behind the wheel, I was shaking so hard my teeth chattered.

  I locked the doors. Then I pulled out my phone and called Trey. He answered immediately, and I almost wept in relief.

  “Trey! Are you okay?”

  “I…what’s wrong?”

  “Has anything happened? Anything weird?”

  A baffled pause. “What do you mean by weird?”

  “Stalkings, shootings, breaks-ins. Threats, kidnappings, car bombs.”

  “Nothing like that.” Another pause. “Why? What’s happened?”

  I let my head fall backwards against the seat. “I don’t know.”

  “What does that mean?”

  I closed my eyes. “It means I went to see Jasper. And yes, I know, I shouldn’t have done it, but too late now, and…oh, fuck.” I fought back tears. “It was too much, way too much.”

  “What was too much?”

  “Talking to him. Seeing him. Remembering…”

  What happened to you, I thought, how close I came to losing you, how much you mean, how much you matter.

  “He threatened you. He suggested he had people in Atlanta, that you were in danger, and that I…I…”

  Trey spoke more slowly. “Tai, listen to me. Tell me, very specifically, what you need me to do.”

  “I need you here. As soon as possible. Get out of Atlanta.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve never been more sure in my life. Maybe Savannah is just as dangerous, and maybe I can’t protect you here either—maybe no place is safe anymore—but I can sure as hell keep you right beside me until I figure out what to do next.”

  A hesitation. “Tai?”

  “Come. Now. Please?”

  His voice was ragged. “Get out of the car. I’m right behind you.”

  I whirled my head around. It took me ten seconds to find him, stepping out of an unfamiliar brown Toyota. He had on his workout clothes, his phone pressed to his ear. He almost took a step in my direction, but then froze in place.

  I threw myself back into the sunshine and went to him. Walking was a good thing. It gave my body something to do. And with every step, I felt my head clearing, my heart beating stronger. I walked faster, not running, even though I wanted to. I wanted to bolt across the pavement at a dead gallop.

  Trey started talking before I reached him. “I’m so sorry. I tried to stay away, I really did, and I thought I could do it, I knew I had to try, and I made it until yesterday afternoon, but…”

  I covered his mouth with mine and wrapped my arms against him. He let me kiss him, let me hold him, his heart beating too fast against mine.

  I pressed my face against his shirt. “Let’s both shut up for a little while, okay?”

  His arms went around me, cinching me tight. “Okay.”

  ***

  We sat in Trey’s rental, my head on his shoulder. He said nothing, asked nothing, which was as much a comfort as anything. Most importantly, he was solid and real and warm under my hand, the best tonic to Jasper’s poison I could imagine.

  Closer inspection revealed something terribly amiss, however. His eyes were bleary, hair less then perfectly combed. He’d missed a spot shaving, and he startled at the least noise. There was a sense of unraveling about him, and it unnerved me.

  I laced my fingers with his. That was when I noticed the bruises on the knuckles of his right hand. I ran my thumb lightly over the swollen skin, and he pulled his hand from mine.

  I sat up. “Trey? What happened?”

  He dropped his eyes to the floorboard. “After you left on Sunday, I…didn’t do very well.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I yelled. A lot. And slammed the bathroom door. With my fist.” He took a deep breath, trickled it out. “But then I took a very long, very hot shower. And then I saw your text, and I called you, and I was better. And then on Monday morning, I went to work. I went to the meeting. I was fine. But after that, things went…not so well again.”

  I got a sinking feeling. “What happened at the meeting?”

  “I met with the lawyers. We went over the lawsuit. They drafted a response.”

  “And?”

  “And then I left work and drove here.”

  He was leaving something out of this bare-bones recital, that was for sure. Regardless, he was gonna b
e in a world of trouble. The one thing Boss Lady had made abundantly clear was that he was supposed to stay away from Savannah.

  “Does Marisa know you’re here? I mean, surely she’s suspicious, what with you AWOL this morning.”

  “Actually, no. I mean, yes. I mean…Marisa knows I’m here. I told her I was coming. But the reason she’s not expecting me at work is because she suspended me.”

  I knew I was staring at him with my mouth open. I knew I should say something, something girlfriend-wise and comforting, but I was utterly shell-shocked.

  “Because of the lawsuit?”

  “No.”

  “Because you pulled your weapon on her?”

  “No.” He raised his eyes to mine for one second before dropping them again. “That’s why she pulled my firearms license. She suspended me because I walked out of a client meeting despite her direct orders.”

  I remembered our conversation from the previous night. “Is this what you wanted to tell me face to face? That you’d been suspended?”

  “That. And…the other thing.”

  “That you’ve been following me since, what? Early Monday afternoon?”

  He kept his expression neutral. “Correct.”

  “So last night, during our conversation, you were…”

  “Parked in the empty lot across from your cousin’s house. The one with the construction equipment.”

  Excellent concealment, bulldozers and such. I didn’t have to ask how he’d found me—my car had an anti-theft tracking system that he had full access to. Of course he’d promised he’d only do so with my permission, or in case of an emergency.

  “So the whole time I was telling you everywhere I’d gone, you already knew.”

  “Correct. Except that you didn’t tell me everywhere.” He narrowed his eyes. “You left out the detention center.”

  I winced. “Yeah. I didn’t want to worry you.” I ran through a quick timeline of yesterday’s events. “That was the trigger, wasn’t it? At the meeting. You saw that my car was at the detention center and you didn’t know why I was there or what was going on.”

  He didn’t say anything; he didn’t need to. He pressed his thumb to his temple, closed his eyes. I recognized those symptoms—a headache coming on top of everything else.

  “Have you slept?” I said.

  “Some.”

  “How much?”

  He frowned. “Four hours. Or five. Four or five hours.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “Yes.”

  “Something besides protein bars?”

  He hesitated, then shook his head. Suddenly the hornet’s nest hanging high in my family tree took a back seat to this new dilemma—my rapidly decompensating boyfriend. And it was a relief, in a way, to backburner that whole mess and deal with the mess right in front of me.

  I squeezed his hand. “Trey, listen to me—”

  He waved me quiet. “Who’s that?”

  “Who’s who?”

  He pointed across the parking lot, and I saw what had him on red alert. Shane the PT guy stood next to my car, peering in the windows. He had his hands shoved in his pockets as he gave the backseat a thorough checking out.

  “That’s Jasper’s physical therapist. And he appears to be casing my car.”

  Trey put his hand on the door handle, preparing to launch himself like a ballistic missile. I grabbed his arm.

  “Hang on a second. Look.”

  Another car pulled up next to mine, a dark gray Mercedes with Fulton County plates. Shane ambled to it as the passenger side window slid down, then he leaned over to talk to whoever was sitting there. Trey kept his eye on the scene as he scrambled around in the floorboard for pen and paper. He wrote down the tag number just as Shane opened the rear door and got inside. The car sped away, hooking a sharp left past the stand of oleander trees, leaving a flurry of deadly petals in its wake.

  I sat back in my seat. “Wanna bet that car belongs to Ainsworth Lovett?”

  Trey pulled out his phone. “I’ll let you know after I’ve checked the data base.”

  “The one you access through Phoenix?”

  “Right.”

  “Will your clearance still work if you’re suspended?”

  He tapped and swiped and typed. Frowned. Tried again. Frowned deeper.

  “Apparently not,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  I decided nourishment was our immediate priority, so I took him to the first place I could find, a mom-and-pop sandwich shop at the I-16 junction. Trey sat in the booth across from me, a bland polite cipher. He seemed disconnected, but it wasn’t until we tried to order our food and he couldn’t even make a decision that I recognized how much he was crumbling.

  I flashed on Gabriella’s accusations—towers and death, scythes and lightning—and realized his decline was less crash and tumble than she’d predicted. It was a gentle slippage, like a mansion sliding into a sinkhole, but it was definitely slippage. He’d left behind every bit of psychological scaffolding he had—his apartment, his workouts, his nine-to-five, even his gun. And now he was in Savannah, a city as strange to him as Mars. There was one thing, however, I hoped he hadn’t abandoned, his most potent touchstone.

  “Why aren’t you in the Ferrari?” I said.

  He took a sip of water. “I couldn’t surveil you in the Ferrari. You’d have spotted me instantly.”

  “So where is it?”

  “I had it valet parked. At the Hilton.”

  “The DeSoto?”

  He nodded.

  “You got a room there?”

  Another nod. Good. He’d at least had the presence of mind to find a place to sleep. When the waitress brought our food, he cut his turkey sandwich into four triangles, then rearranged them on his plate in two squares.

  I reached across the table and took his knife away. “Eat. Now.”

  He dutifully picked up one of the triangles. “Why were you at the detention center? You know you’re not allowed—”

  “I know. But I risked it because I thought I could pry some information out of Jasper.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. But not the information I was expecting.”

  I explained what I’d seen, how Jasper had batted not one eye at the idea of Hope being threatened, but had been definitely caught off guard by the news of John’s disappearance.

  “Whatever scheme he’s working, it didn’t include that,” I said. “But I’m betting it does include Shane. That boy’s playing both ends against the middle.”

  Trey took one tiny bite of sandwich. “Have you created a 302 on him?”

  “Not yet. But I will be, him and Ivy both.”

  “Who?”

  So I filled him in on the surreal Ivy Rae, on the implausible yet undeniable ring on her finger, and on the rest of my visit, including my confrontation with Ainsworth Lovett and Lovett’s definitely-not-some-old-guy investigator. In short, I spilled all of it. He listened without commentary, though I saw him clench his jaw a couple of times.

  “You could have told me about all of that,” he said.

  “You could have told me that you were down here.”

  He put the sandwich back down. “I know. I’m sorry. And I tried to stay in Atlanta, I really did, but—”

  “I know.” I reached across the table and took his hands in mine, squeezed tight. “Here’s the thing. You and I haven’t been the most aboveboard of people lately, but I’m gonna give us some credit. We were trying to protect each other.”

  “True.”

  “But it’s gotta stop. So let’s make a deal. From this point on, we’re a team. No secrets, no hidden agendas, no excuses. Deal?”

  He nodded solemnly. “Deal.”

  The waitress came by with more sweet tea just as my phone started ringing. Whe
n I saw the name blazing on the display, my stomach plummeted. “Oh hell.”

  “Who is it?”

  “The prosecutor. Madame Olethea Jones herself.”

  Trey flinched. “Oh.”

  The phone rang again. Time to face the music.

  I put it to my ear. “I can explain.”

  “Of all the things I thought might go wrong today, getting a phone call from Ainsworth Lovett accusing me of harassing his client was not on the list.”

  She was not a happy prosecutor. The connection practically sizzled with rage. Dang that stupid self-righteous Lovett. I hadn’t expected him to call her this fast.

  “There’s a situation,” I said. “Jasper’s suing me for three million, Trey for six.”

  “So I am learning. But tell me, Ms. Randolph, what do you think this lawsuit is?”

  “It’s—”

  “I’ll tell you what it is, it’s a ploy to get your attention. To get you in his face. And he succeeded.”

  “But—”

  “We have already been over your testimony. I have made clear the facts to which I am expecting you to testify.”

  “There’s been some other stuff.”

  She hesitated. “Stuff?”

  “You know. Criminal stuff. Stuff like—”

  “And you are done talking, Ms. Randolph. I don’t want to hear anything coming out of your mouth that I might have to reveal to defense counsel. If you have knowledge of a criminal wrongdoing, or believe that a crime has been committed, then you need to report it to law enforcement in the proper jurisdiction.”

  “I did.”

  “Hallelujah. Gold star for you. This means if it’s something I need to hear about, I will. Through proper channels. Until that time, I want you to remember what I told you during our first meeting.”

  I searched my memory banks. “The part about telling the truth?”