Tin Men (The Clay Lion Series Book 2)

by Amalie Jahn

  I could feel the tension in the room.

  “What exactly did you read about my daughter?”

  “Just that she died of a drug overdose.” She paused. “Clearly, the drug epidemic in this country knows no boundaries. If someone with a father as astute and dedicated as you becomes an addict, it seems to me there’s an obvious breakdown in drug enforcement. I assume it will be a concern you’ll be addressing in your next term.”

  “Yes. Of course,” he stammered.

  “It must have been awful for you, knowing what she was going through. I’m sure you tried to help the best you could, but I know how it is. I watch those television shows about addiction. You can only help someone who wants to be helped, right?”

  “Yes. Precisely.”

  I could hear Brooke’s confidence building. “Usually on those shows, something bad happens that sends the person down the path of addiction. There’s always a death or a divorce or some sort of abuse. A catalyst, you know? I can’t imagine it was anything you would have known about. That must have been difficult.”

  “It was very hard. Nothing my wife or I were involved in, naturally. There happened to be one particular man who ruined her life, just like you said. After he led her astray, we were unsuccessful in bringing her back to us. A tragedy, truly. We tried to keep the matter private. I’m surprised you came across anything about her.”

  “Well, like I said, there’s very little information out there. Anyway, I’m so sorry for your loss, Mr. Weddington. I hope the man was eventually brought to justice for what he did to your daughter.”

  “He was. He certainly was. Thank you for your concern.”

  I heard Brooke chuckle thinly. “I like to think if it was my dad, he would have killed the guy. I hope you don’t mind me saying that, but my dad would do anything for me. Still calls me ‘pumpkin’ to this day. I’m sure it was the same with you and your daughter, but you know, since you’re in the public eye, it’s not like you can just go around taking care of things for yourself.”

  “You’d be surprised what I can do.”

  “Really?” She giggled. “Oh, I believe you. You have so much power and influence. I bet if you wanted to take care of that guy, he’d be taken care of for sure.”

  I heard the feet of a chair scraping across the floor. “Let’s just say the man who hurt my daughter is no longer with us.”

  “My goodness, you are a courageous father. I guess it wouldn’t be too hard for someone like you to get rid of some common thug though.”

  “This guy was no thug.”

  Brooke gasped. “Really?”

  “No. He was a pretty big deal. But of course, I wasn’t directly involved in his… retribution. I have people to take care of that sort of thing.”

  “Of course you do.” I could hear her shuffling papers once again. “You needed someone with better climbing skills than you possess.”

  I feared my heart would explode from my chest.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Climbing skills. You don’t know the first thing about mountaineering with all the ropes and carabiners… and anchors.”

  “I’m not quite sure to what you’re referring,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Sure you do. It’s pretty convenient that your bodyguard, Buddy O’Leary, is a member of the Vertical Rock Climbing Club. He knew exactly how to rig Johnson’s anchors so they’d fail. That was pure genius. The only thing I still don’t understand is why you blamed him for Victoria’s death? What do you think he did to her?”

  The microphone recorded dead silence. Not even the sound of breathing. I stopped pacing and pressed the earpiece further into my ear, listening for something, anything, to come out of the room. Just as I was about to burst into his office, I heard a loud thud, like the sound of fists being pounded onto a table.

  “Who sent you here?” Weddington spat, his voice laced with fear and condemnation.

  “No one sent me.”

  “You’re a liar!” he yelled. The waver in his voice suggested he was coming unhinged. I only hoped she stroked his ego firmly enough that he felt safe exposing her to the truth.

  “I’m not going to say anything to anyone,” Brooke replied timidly. “I just wanted to know why. Your story fascinates me.”

  I heard a crash, like something had fallen. Or been thrown. I was suddenly worried for Brooke’s safety and began moving toward the door.

  “You want to know why?” he growled. “I’ll tell you why. That bastard, Phil Johnson, got my girl pregnant and then ran off, that’s why!”

  “That was 20 years ago,” she replied. “Why kill him off now?”

  “I didn’t know it was him back then! After having the baby, she turned to drugs. Never came back home. When she overdosed, the guilt almost destroyed me, knowing I wasn’t there for her all those years. And then I saw the kid.”

  “Charlie?”

  “Yeah. Charlie. Noticed him with his father at some charity event. I try not to pay much attention to other people’s families, but something about him gave me pause. Maybe it was his eyes or his hair color. Who knows?” He hesitated and I held my breath, waiting for him to continue. “I spent the entire night trying to figure out what was so familiar about him. I don’t know why I didn’t see it right away. Maybe I didn’t want to see it, but when I finally allowed myself to acknowledge his resemblance to my daughter, I confronted the piece of garbage about it. Johnson admitted everything. Then he talked about what a whore my daughter was.” He was silent for a moment. “He didn’t deserve to live,” he concluded.

  I heard Brooke breathing heavily. She had done amazingly well under pressure, getting all the information we needed to convince the police to reopen the investigation of my father’s death. Now it was time for her to get out of there.

  “I’m so very sorry to have upset you, Mr. Weddington. I appreciate your time. I’m happy to see myself out.” There was static as the recording device in her pocket jostled about.

  “Oh, no. Not quite yet, Miss Wallace. You need to understand something before you leave here this afternoon.”

  “Oh?”

  “You need to remember who you are dealing with. I am a very powerful United States Congressman. My pockets are deep, as are my connections. No one in Washington will believe anything I’ve told you and neither will anyone else. You are in way over your head with your little investigative reporting stint. So I would suggest you move on and pretend this meeting never happened.”

  “Of course. I understand. I have no intention of speaking to anyone.”

  “I’ll deny anything you say. And who do you think people will believe? A beloved civil servant or a nosy teenager?”

  “You have my word. I’ll never speak of this to anyone. Again, I apologize for interfering and I thank you for your time. I’ll see myself out.”

  I began walking toward the elevator, distancing myself from Brooke in the event Weddington should follow her out the door. I turned the corner and sent her a quick text, letting her know I would meet her outside at the corner of the building.

  She hadn’t turned off the microphone, and I could hear her panting as she took off down the hallway. I was already in the lobby when she texted her reply, C U there. By then, we were too far apart for the recording device to adequately transmit the sounds of her departure. I watched discreetly from the street corner, my hood pulled over my head, for her to arrive. The seconds ticked by, each one seemingly longer than the one before.

  At long last, I saw her scurry down the front steps and turn in my direction. Our eyes connected. She was scared. I slowed my pace, crossing the street in the direction of the Metro station. In less than a block, I felt her beside me.

  “Keep walking,” she said. “He might be following me.”

  “I gathered. That’s why I got out of there.”

  As we reached the next corner, she headed north on 3rd Street towards the Capitol building.

  “The Metro station is the other way,” I told her.r />
  “I’m not headed to the Metro,” she said. “We’re going to the police, and we’re going there now.”

  C HAPTER THIRTY TWO

  An hour later, we were seated in Lieutenant Paul Grimes’ office, whose desk was littered with stacks of files and empty soda cans. Officer Grimes remained silent as he took our statements but seemed very interested in listening to the recording of Weddington and Brooke’s conversation.

  “I just pulled your father’s report from the local sheriff’s department where the accident occurred. It looked like a pretty open and shut case. What made you think to go after Weddington for this?”

  I quickly decided to leave out any mention of time travel or my mother. “The police returned all my father’s gear, and I noticed all the anchors were tied in a way that could cause this sort of tragedy. I knew he wouldn’t have made those mistakes. I began to suspect someone else had tampered with his equipment. It took me a while to figure out who it was. After I was told about my adoption and learned Weddington and I were related, the pieces started falling into place. In the end, he was the only one who made sense.”

  “Well,” said Grimes, “you’ve done some good investigating. Let’s hear what you’ve got.”

  He clicked the thumb drive into his tablet and pressed play on the audio file. We relived the recent conversation, and I watched Brooke’s face as their exchange grew more heated. She cringed as we listened to their confrontation, and I touched her tentatively on the knee. She took my hand, holding it tightly as though she feared Weddington was about to walk through the door. When the recording ended, the officer shook his head while massaging the back of his neck.

  “I suppose you two know what you’ve got here?”

  I exchanged a sideways glance with Brooke and shrugged my shoulders.

  “No, sir,” I replied. “What do we have?”

  “You’ve got yourself a one-way ticket to an all-out media circus, that’s what you’ve got. It always amazes me how arrogant some of these politicians are, thinking they’re above the law, and that no one will have the guts to stand up to them. Nobody in this town probably would have, to be honest. Sometimes all it takes is somebody with nothing to lose to discover the truth.”

  His words reverberated in my mind. It seemed ironic he thought I was someone with the freedom to do whatever I wanted, immune to the consequences. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Since the moment my father died, I was constantly reminded of just how much I had to lose. I knew, as far as Brooke and I were concerned, we’d avoid being a part of any further investigation. I wouldn’t allow either of us to risk the third chance we were given. I squeezed her hand tightly and gave her a wink.

  “I think we’d both like to sidestep the media circus, if you think that’s possible.”

  He thought for a moment, filing our statements in an envelope. “I think if this goes to trial, it will be hard to avoid. But with evidence like this,” he said, holding up the thumb drive, “I think our illustrious congressman might just settle out of court and quietly accept a plea bargain. We have a ‘one-party consent’ statute here in DC, so this should be admissible as evidence. We’ll have to see how it all plays out.”

  Brooke fidgeted in her seat. “Should we be concerned for our safety?” she asked.

  “I’ll be sending officers to arrest him immediately so I don’t think you’ll have anything to worry about. He’d be a fool to send someone after you. You’re certainly free to go, and I’ll contact you if I need something more. And don’t hesitate to call if there’s ever anything you should need from me.”

  Without another word, she was on her feet. “Thank you very much for your time today, Officer,” she said, shaking his hand.

  We said our goodbyes, and after a quiet ride on the metro, we were back in my car on our way home.

  It was difficult to concentrate on the traffic bottlenecking around us as we left the city. Brooke hadn’t spoken a word since leaving the police station, and as she rested her head against the window, I was beginning to think the intensity of the day had been too much for her.

  “You were amazing this afternoon,” I said.

  “I’m glad I could help.”

  “I never could’ve done what you did today. Without you, Weddington would have gotten away with murder.”

  “He still might.”

  “He won’t.”

  She fell silent once again.

  “You know what else? Without you, I never would have met my mother.”

  “I’m glad I could help,” she responded again, somberly.

  I reached across to poke her on the shoulder. “Heck, without you, I don’t know that I would have ever found the courage to ask about the adoption. You found the picture, found my mother, took me to find her in the past…”

  “I’m no saint, Charlie,” she interrupted. “I only did it all because I love you. You’d do the same for me.”

  I brushed her hair from in front of her eyes. “I probably would. The difference is that you’ve never asked me to because you’re so much more cautious than I am. But that’s about to change. No more trips. No more adventures. No more Sherlock and Watson. Just plain, ordinary life. How does that sound?”

  “Honestly?” She grinned at me. “It sounds horrid.”

  “What?”

  “I’m serious. That’s not who you are. That’s not who we are. It may not always work out the way we want it to, but life’s not about sitting on the sidelines. It’s about doing what you were meant to do and being who you were meant to be. Now that you know who you are, Charles William Johnson, illegitimate son of the deceased Victoria Weddington and Phillip Johnson, adopted son of Karen, amazing half-brother to Melody, and grandson to a crazy assassin congressman, you can go about the business of being exactly who you’re supposed to be.”

  “Grandson of a crazy assassin, huh?”

  “Yup.” Her eyes sparkled mischievously.

  “I sound amazing. But you forgot the most important thing about me.”

  “What’s that?”

  I reached for her hand and interwove her fingers between mine, knowing I was exactly where I was supposed to be. “I’m the lucky guy who gets to love the amazing Brooke Wallace.”

  E PILOGUE

  There were bugs everywhere and I was beginning to question my sanity. I smacked another mosquito biting my calf as we crossed the creek.

  Brooke swatted the air, walking through a swarm of gnats. “Ugh, Charlie! What would possess you to make a three-hour drive back here for a hike the day before your graduation? I can’t believe I haven’t learned my lesson with you.”

  “You love this place.”

  “I love it in October. In January. In March. But May? Between the bugs and the poison ivy, I can honestly say this is definitely your dumbest idea to date.”

  “Dumber than the time I tried to go ice fishing and fell in?”

  “No. That was pretty stupid,” she said, as she attempted to free her t-shirt from a thorny shrub.

  I slapped a mosquito off the back of her arm.

  “What about when I took you to that secluded beach with the great swimming?”

  She rolled her eyes. “The one with all the jellyfish? Yeah, that was a good time.”

  I laughed at her sarcastic tone. “So, see, by comparison, what are a few bugs?”

  She sighed heavily. “It’s not just the bugs, Charlie. It was three hours here, and we’ll have another three hours back… I don’t know why we couldn’t have just done this next week, after we’re home for summer vacation?” She paused. “Or at least I am.”

  We reached the falls and our picnic spot in record time. I brought along a blanket, which I laid along the riverbank, just close enough for us to take off our shoes and put our feet in. As I sat down, she plopped down heavily beside me and rested her head on my shoulder.

  “It is nice here,” she relented, stomping an ant with her shoe.

  “It is.”

  She sat motionless,
staring at the falls. “I can’t believe you’re graduating already.”

  “It was a crazy year. It went by fast.”

  “And now everything is about to change.”

  “For the hundredth time, I’m not leaving you.”

  “The Global Freedom Center is in Arlington. That’s a long way from home. It’s a long way from school.”

  “It’s an amazing fellowship though. And it’s just for a year. Think of all the people I’m going to be able to help.”

  “But vet school’s in Blacksburg.”

  “So maybe I’ll join you there when you start. Get my graduate degree in social work or criminal justice. Who knows what’s going to happen over a year from now?” I turned her face from the falls to look at her properly. There were tears in her eyes. “It’s all going to work out.”

  “How can you be so sure? Life is so… complicated.”

  “Because I know how I feel about you. And I know wherever you are is where I want to be. The universe wants us to be together, remember?”

  I felt my heart begin to race. It was time to do what I came to do. I reached deep within my pants pocket and was relieved to feel the coolness of the tiny gold band. I slid it onto the tip of my finger and brought it into the light. Sunbeams played off the water and danced among the leaves, making the diamond glisten. Over the sound of the falls, I heard Brooke draw in her breath.

  “Oh, Charlie,” she whispered.

  After all we had been through together; the timelines lived and relived, the timelines lost to us, the deaths we mourned and the ones we simply moved on from, the love and friendship that persevered through it all, it was time to make good on a promise I made during a timeline only Brooke remembered.

  “You told me once that I promised to wait for you when you broke up with me after Branson got sick. I don’t remember it, of course, but it sounds like something I would say.” I took her hands in mine. “I want you to know, in this time, in this place, I will always wait for you. I will always love you. I will always need you more than you need me. And I will always drag you on bug-infested hikes when you least expect it. Brooke, my amazing, wonderful Brooke, when I asked you before, I never got my answer, so I’m asking you again today… will you marry me?”