Lewis Security

by Glenna Sinclair

  She didn’t say a word. She didn’t even breathe for a long time. I waited. When I lost patience, I stood and faced her. She shook like a leaf, almost cowering in place. She had put on my t-shirt and it hung halfway to her knees, which only made her look smaller, more helpless. I wished I could feel even a little bit of pity for her just then, but pity was the furthest thing from my mind right about then.

  “Tell me. Why did you lie? What did you really see that night?”

  Chapter Thirteen– Molly

  One time, when I was around six years old, I decided to leave a note on my dad’s car. He had just taken me out for ice cream that night because I got a great report card, and he even let me play on the huge metal-and-fiberglass death traps the restaurant called a playland. In other words, it was a great night, and I wanted to let him know how much I appreciated him for being the best dad in the whole wide world.

  Now, most kids would’ve written something in crayon or magic marker, put a bunch of stickers on it and called it a day. They would’ve left the note on top of their dad’s car, maybe under one of the wipers. Then, they would’ve giggled the night away, knowing their beloved father who let them play for an entire hour after getting ice cream—what’s better than that?—would see the note in the morning and know they were appreciated. I went to sleep that night thinking just that. Dad is gonna be so happy.

  Which is why I was so stunned when he barged into my room the next morning with his belt in his hands.

  “What’s wrong?” I’d asked in a shrill voice as I scampered to the back corner of my bed, by the wall. Not only did his eyes spit fire, but so did my mom’s. She stood behind him, arms folded, almost shaking with rage.

  The veins in his neck just about popped out. “What’s wrong? I go to the garage this morning and find what you did to my car and you ask me what’s wrong?”

  I still didn’t understand. I thought he would be happy. And he would’ve been, if I had written the sort of note most kids would write. But I wasn’t most kids. Why write a note on a piece of paper when you can write it on the car itself? In permanent marker? I was always an overachiever.

  Up until the moment Brett found out there was nothing on the memory card but a bunch of random photos I took ages earlier, I thought I knew what rage was. I was sure that morning with my dad was the most infuriated a man could be.

  I was wrong.

  “Do you feel like explaining this to me? Or are you going to tell me some more lies?” His fists were balled up by his sides, clenched so tight the knuckles were white. I knew he would never hit me, but the sight of those fists drained away any confidence I might’ve had. Damn it. Well, I had taken my chances, and they had failed me. I knew it was a possibility.

  What was there left to do? I couldn’t do anything but tell the truth.

  “I need a glass of water,” I whispered.

  “Don’t walk away from me.”

  “You can follow me if you want to, but I’m thirsty. I need water.” I went to the kitchen and poured a glass from the faucet. He was waiting for me in the dining room. I joined him and pulled up a chair from the round table, then sank into it with a shaky sigh. My stomach was in knots. What would he think of me when I told him? The memory of what had just happened between us was still fresh in my mind, in my body. Would that memory be all I had of him once I finished confessing?

  “I didn’t want to get him into trouble,” I explained in a voice just above a whisper.

  “What? Who?” His eyes spat fire, and the muscles jumped in his jaw. He was barely holding himself back. Would he throw something? Punch a hole in the wall? He couldn’t do that, at least, lined with batting the way they were. Still, he could do damage if he felt like it. I was poised, ready to curl into a self-protective ball if he did.

  “My brother.” I leaned my elbows on my thighs and covered my face with my hands. “It was my brother. The one I told you about earlier.” It actually felt good to admit the truth after telling so many lies.

  The room went silent except for the sound of Brett’s breathing. Finally, he asked. “What does your brother have to do with this? I didn’t even know you had a brother until tonight.”

  “I know,” I said from behind my hands. “I didn’t mention him before now because I was hoping he would be able to get away without you knowing about him. I wouldn’t have mentioned him at all, except it was so easy to talk with you and I lost track of why I was keeping him a secret to begin with.”

  “But what’s he got to do with this?”

  I had to be honest. After the break-in attempt, I didn’t even know if I could trust Michael anymore. It had to be him trying to break in—and after seeing what I’d seen, after finding out what he was capable of, I couldn’t pretend to believe he was only coming in for a visit. Not when he had spent the week staking out the place, finding out when I was being watched. Like a predator.

  My hands dropped to my lap, and I managed to lift my eyes to meet his. I felt so ashamed. Michael had been the family secret for so many years, it was difficult to break free of the habit of shutting down when he trickled into a conversation.

  “Michael got mixed up with some low-level mafia guys around six years ago,” I whispered. “He met one of them in college. Well, the son of one of the guys pretty high-up in the organization. After graduation, this kid then introduced my brother to more and more members of the family. He always told us they were just friends of his—he wasn’t involved in what they did, they just hung out together. We knew he was full of it, but nothing we said could get him to forget those guys. He was always the most open, fun, smart person—magnetic. Like I told you, I was sure half my girlfriends were only friends with me in hopes I would introduce them to him. He was just that kind of person you wanted to be around, you know?” I smiled a little at the memory. “I try so hard to remember him as that person. I don’t want to think about the person he’s become. It’s too painful.”

  “Who has he become?” Brett’s voice was tight, but the rage was gone. That was a relief.

  “Secretive. Angry. Disconnected from our family, from his old friends. Nothing that used to matter to him matters anymore. He might as well be a different person. He lives in another world. Nothing that matters to us matters to him. The last time we had dinner together, Mom asked if he was coming for Thanksgiving this year, and he looked at her like she had lost her mind. He’s that far apart from the rest of the world.”

  “It’s a whole other life,” Brett muttered.

  “Yeah—believe me, I’ve watched every single mafia movie, read dozens of books. I want so much to understand what he’s going through. I know priorities shift, the sense of right and wrong blurs. And the other world, what you and I think of as the real world, looks like a bunch of suckers. Following the rules and all that—they think that’s a joke. I can tell Michael does. He thinks of his mafia family as his real family. If he spends Thanksgiving with anybody, he’ll spend it with them.”

  “What are you telling me?” he asked. “Are you telling me it was him? He was the one who pulled the trigger?”

  I closed my eyes and prayed that I would be forgiven for what I was about to do. I didn’t have a choice anymore. We had covered for Michael for too long. “Yes. It was him.”

  Brett sat with a thud on one of the other chairs around the table. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “It’s my brother!” I didn’t mean for it to come out the way it did, almost a scream. “I love the person he used to be, and I can’t believe that person isn’t in there anymore!”

  Silence filled the room again, and I fought to get control of myself. My pulse was racing almost out of control and I saw little dots in front of my eyes. I took a slow breath to the count of five, then exhaled to another count of five. In, out. In, out. I felt my heart slow. It was easier to breathe.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “You just don’t understand what I’m going through. You’ll never know how I feel. He’s my big brother, and I love him.
And it’s not just that, either. My mom and dad—the pain they’re in. It’s bad enough to suspect that he’s up to terrible things. But to know? To know for sure? How can I be responsible for that?”

  When he spoke again, his voice didn’t sound as angry. “How did you get mixed up in this? Why were you really out there that day?”

  “He visited the house that day—he does sometimes on Sundays. Mom makes dinner, that sort of thing. She treats it like a national holiday, I swear. She would do anything to make him happy and bring him back home, you know? And believe me, there’s no choice over whether or not I should be there. It’s more important than church. Besides, I like seeing him. Sometimes he forgets who he is now and relaxes, and we can have fun then. Every once in a while it happens. But it didn’t happen that night. He was tense and irritated, short answers to questions. And he left in a hurry, too. Mom was heartbroken—so was Dad, but he hides it better than she does. I made an excuse to leave right away, too, and I followed him. He kept checking the time throughout dinner, so I knew there was somewhere he needed to be.”

  “You followed him? Didn’t you think there might be something bad happening?”

  “Of course, but it was more important for me to know where he was going. It was a stupid idea. I was alone. Nobody knew what I was doing. But I did it anyway. I wanted to know what he was doing instead of asking myself all sorts of questions. There’s nothing worse than when your imagination runs wild in a situation like this, believe me. Knowing the truth is almost easier than constantly having these mental images running through your brain.” I shuddered, remembering the new images that had taken the place of the old ones.

  “I followed him to that abandoned restaurant and parked a few cars back from his and waited until he went inside. I don’t know what made me think about bringing the camera with me, honestly. Maybe I wanted to use them to convince him to straighten out. I would be the hero. I would bring him back. So I took the camera and took the pictures of him inside the restaurant with the other guys. And you know what happened after that.”

  “Did he see you?”

  I nodded. “Yes. It was him, the one who chased me. I don’t know if he ever intended to catch me. Did he only make it look like he tried to catch me so he wouldn’t have to hurt me? I want to believe that. When I reached the car, I switched out the memory cards and smashed the camera on the ground.” I looked at him. “And then I saw my brother, standing there a few cars away. We locked eyes. And he mouthed the word Go. Then he turned around and ran back to the restaurant.”

  The silence was deafening. It was thick, too, filling the room. And heavy. It weighed on me, crushing me a little underneath it. I felt Brett’s judgment in it. That was the hardest thing of all. He judged me, and he hated me for holding back the investigation. I could almost hear his thoughts. It was uncanny and painful.

  “I’ll never forget the look in his eyes. He looked crazy, wild. And like he was suffering more than I’d ever seen a person suffer. I know now, you see. I know he didn’t want to do what he did. He kept tapping his feet during dinner, tapping his fingers on the table, checking the time. Sweating even though the air was cranked way up. At first, I thought he was sick—it would explain the pale skin. But no. He was in torment. I have to believe it.”

  “I think you’re being naïve.”

  “I don’t care what you think. You don’t know him. I do. I know the person he used to be is still in there. When he looked at me?” I put my hand over my heart and squeezed my eyes shut, like that would help block out the pain. “When he looked at me out there and I saw all that pain in his face, I knew he didn’t want to do what he did. They made him do it. Maybe it was his initiation. Maybe they thought he was slipping away and had to pull him in closer. I don’t know, and he would never tell me. I can only guess.”

  “You need to tell the cops,” he muttered. “They’ve been wasting all this damn time chasing ghosts, when you knew the name of the person who pulled the trigger all along.” He got up so abruptly, the chair fell backward and hit the floor with a crash. “Do you know how ridiculous this makes you look?”

  “I think you’re more concerned with how it makes you look,” I fired back. I knew as I said it that I was likely taking my life in my hands but I couldn’t help it. “You hate that you’re on my side and protecting me but I didn’t tell anybody the whole story.”

  He threw back his head and laughed, while one fist hit the other palm. “Didn’t tell the whole story? That’s adorable. I love how you made it sound like you just withheld a few details, like what the weather was like when you saw the hit take place. Whether you could see the sun setting or not. If there was a breeze. What it smelled like out there.” He ran his hands through his hair and started pacing the floor. “You lied, Molly. You made us all look like fools.”

  “That’s all you care about, whether or not you looked like a fool. Like you’re not man enough to get the truth out of me. Isn’t that it?” He only shook his head and laughed like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. I had to make him understand. “Listen. If you saw somebody you love doing something like that—killing another person, somebody who begged for their life in their last moments—what would you do? If the person who pulled the trigger was somebody you looked up to when you were little, somebody who helped you learn how to ride a fucking bike?” I couldn’t stand it anymore. I couldn’t be strong. My voice broke, and I leaned against the wall with my head on my arm after the damn broke and tears flowed down my cheeks. I was sure my heart would break—the memory of Michael pulling the trigger, superimposed with the image of him showing me how to ride a bike and helping me practice writing my letters and letting me sleep in his bed during thunderstorms. My big brother. I loved him so much. He was my hero for so many years. How could he have become the person he became? What happened to him? Could I have stopped it?

  “And what if he wants me dead now?” I managed to ask through my sobs. It was unthinkable, but no less true. There was a good chance he had gone so far that he wouldn’t be able to hold himself back from doing anything to protect himself—including killing me, or letting his friends kill me.

  The feeling of Brett’s arms sliding around me was only in the background as I wept, and the comfort of being in his arms with the side of my face against his chest did little to dim the pain wracking every part of my body. Even he couldn’t make things better. Nobody could. I had lost Michael, and it was very possible that he couldn’t convince his new family to let me live after seeing what I’d seen.

  Chapter Fourteen– Brett

  I almost wished she hadn’t told me about her brother. It would’ve been easier to hate her for lying to us. Instead, I was standing there, holding her. The last thing I should’ve been doing just then. I should’ve been locking her in a room and calling Ricardo and getting things moving in the right direction.

  She trembled in my arms like a wounded animal. It was amazing to me that she could cry so hard, so loud, when she was so small. The jagged, almost howling cries tore through me. I had heard cries like that, coming from men under torture. She was tortured inside. It was ripping her to pieces.

  “I wanted to tell you,” she sobbed in a thick voice. “I did, I swear.”

  “I know.”

  “He’s my brother. And my parents…”

  “I know.” My arms tightened a little. “I get it. I do.”

  “Please, don’t hate me.” That was the worst. I squeezed my eyes tight and willed away the rush of emotion that threatened to drown me.

  “I don’t hate you. Don’t worry about it.” She melted against me a little after that—I felt tension draining from her muscles. She could trust me. Well, she needed to know she could trust somebody.

  Slowly, she calmed down. I stroked her hair and back and waited for her to relax, like I was comforting a baby. She would shudder every once in a while, but after a long time she was quiet.

  “I never told anybody about him,” she whispered as she pulled her
face away from my wet shirt—she had soaked it with her tears. “I mean, none of my friends. My parents lie about him all the time, too. When people as how he’s doing they say he’s great, has a good job, all sorts of lies. When you lie for long enough, it starts to become a habit. You don’t even think twice about it anymore, you know?”

  “That makes sense.” I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. How many times had I played down the things I did and saw during the war? When people asked me, I would shrug it off and try to change the subject as fast as possible. It was too painful, and I didn’t want to share that pain with anybody else. And I wasn’t exactly proud, either. Just like Molly’s parents.

  “But it wasn’t my intention to hurt you, I swear.”

  I nodded. “You didn’t hurt me. But you did hurt the investigation, and I think you need to talk to Ricardo about it. He has to know—I mean, the guy’s beating his brains out trying to come up with something to use to push the case forward, and you knew all along who killed that poor bastard.”

  “I just couldn’t do it. I know what Michael did was terrible, but…”

  “I get it, but that doesn’t make it right.”

  Her eyes hit my belt buckle. “I know.”

  I checked the time. It was already almost three-thirty, and if there was any justice in the world, Ricardo would be asleep. Or getting laid, then falling asleep. The man worked harder than anybody I knew. “I’ll text Ricardo to come over in the morning and when he does, you’ll tell him what you told me.”

  She only nodded, then went to the bathroom. The door was still open while she was in there, and I heard splashing. Washing her face, I guessed. It gave me a second to get my thoughts together. So we were going after her brother. I had to remind myself that it didn’t matter who he was to her—he had killed a guy, and it was possible that he might try to kill her to keep her quiet. Or his “associates” would. He couldn’t stop them, I was sure. The way she made it sound, he was a pretty low-level guy in the organization—otherwise, Ricardo would know about him and would’ve made the connection before then. He was nervous that night at his parents’ house, short-tempered, checking the time over and over. This told me it might’ve been his first time performing a hit. It was scheduled, of course. They had made arrangements to meet the target at the abandoned restaurant with the intention of killing him. It was probably Michael’s initiation.