A Family Secret

by Cross, Kennedy

  I wail in pain as I’m tugged across the street, desperately trying to stay upright on my leg. I pull open my eyelids in a series of blinks, but aside from the two bodies heaving me forward, the street is empty.

  I’m thrust through a car door, facedown in the back seats. I roll over and turn to glimpse at the driver when knuckles collide with my temple.

  23

  Claire

  “After this, you really do owe me a therapy session,” Alison says. She has only been seated for a mere few seconds. I eye her from across the table. “I don’t mean with me,” she adds, “but I could set you up with a great doctor. And therapy isn’t only for the struggling.”

  Despite her words, I can see in her eyes that she considers me part of ‘the struggling.’

  I join my hands on the table between us. “Thank you for doing this. Really.” I shoot my sister a look to show her I mean it. “I was going to come over, but it’s easier to do this here.”

  Alison nods her understanding. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, but I’m not going to rest until we have answers.”

  “How do I help?” she asks. “You said there’s something new with the break-in?”

  “Yes. There’s been a few new developments.” I haven’t really thought about how to best progress into something that I know Alison is going to resent.

  She looks anxious to help. “Well, all I know is that Anna broke in to Dad’s house,” she says.

  “That’s okay. It’s Anna that I want to ask you about.”

  Alison’s eyebrows furrow, but she hardly gives anything away. Just the cool, collected look of a therapist wearing a blank slate of an expression.

  “And you know she broke-in with a gun, right?” I ask.

  “And that Ethan shot her,” she says.

  “Yes, he did.” I draw a quick breath. “Turns out that the gun she was carrying was involved in a murder only a few days prior.”

  Alison’s blank look is replaced with surprise. “Anna killed someone?”

  “No. It wasn’t her.”

  “Okay.” Alison waits. “Where do I come in?”

  “Not anywhere specifically,” I say. Even I can hear how sloppy and unorganized I sound, but the Academy doesn’t prep you on how to question your family.

  I pursued a career in taking down evil. Alison pursued a career in helping people battling their own evils. And now, the difference between the two feels as wide as the Grand Canyon.

  “Have you ever met Anna Maxwell?” I ask.

  “What?” The word comes out in a breath of surprise. Not guilt, not concern, not anything but bewilderment, as if I’d suddenly switched languages.

  “Anna Maxwell,” I say. “The one who—”

  “I know who you’re talking about, Claire. But… No, I don’t know her. Why would I?”

  “I’m just asking.”

  “No,” she says. “The answer is no, I have never met her in my life. I wouldn’t even know her name had she not tried to kill you.”

  I nod. I wasn’t expecting any different. “Have you ever met a Mr. Maxwell?” I ask. This is the question I’m curious about.

  Alison’s eyebrows knot. She leans forward as if she’d had trouble hearing the question. “A Mr. Maxwell?” she repeats. She narrows her eyes, then begins shaking her head. “I don’t underst—”

  “I’m talking about a potential friend of Dad’s,” I say. That’s leading the witness, but to hell with it. The rules of an interview go out the window when you’re sitting across from your sister. “I’ve had a hard time recalling all of them, not that there was a lot,” I add. “But I’m wondering if you may remember someone that I don’t. Someone that was around, but wasn’t always—"

  “I thought this was about the break-in,” she interrupts.

  “It is.”

  Alison cocks her head in a way that seems entirely opposite of Barlow: all skepticism, no contemplation. She inflates her chest with a breath, holding it in as she eyes me. She slowly exhales. It’s not until Alison’s eyes fall to my hands that I realize I’ve been absently twisting my mom’s ring. Our mom’s ring.

  “Where did you find that?” she asks.

  As if pulled down by guilt, my own gaze drops to the ring. “It was in the drawer of that desk in your old room.” I’d completely forgot I was still wearing it.

  When I eventually look up again, Alison’s dark brown eyes are heavy with nostalgia. “It looks good on you,” she murmurs.

  I smile weakly. “It was Mom’s.”

  “I know.” She returns a smile more potent than mine. “She got it at an art fair one day. I was with her, she stopped and talked to this one jeweler for hours.”

  I muster a fragile laugh.

  “It was because of that ring, Mom was just enamored with the way it’d been made,” Alison adds. “And the emerald on it, she loved emeralds.”

  I nod. That’s something I remember about Mom.

  “You wear it well,” she says.

  I smile at that. The conversation has shifted, and I know exactly where it’s going before she even speaks again.

  “I’ve always admired you, Claire. For so many things.” Alison exhales, shaking her head. “I’m the big sister, I’m supposed to be wise, resilient, the mentor…”

  “You are, Alison.”

  “But I have always looked to you for strength,” she says. “You are the strongest person I know, and that’s something you’ll never give yourself enough credit for.”

  I don’t know what to say.

  “Whatever I did for you, through the years,” Alison says, “I promise you, it pales in comparison to what you’ve done for me.” She holds me in her stare. “In the worst days, you were the reason I persisted on. You were the reason I put on a strong face. You are my backbone.” She pauses. “It’s because of you that I am where I am. I help others because I know I have the strongest backbone around to support me when I need it.”

  I shut my eyes, partially to contain tears, partially to withdrawal from the room into an envelope of darkness. “What do you want to say, Ali?” I ask. I open again before she’s made another sound.

  “I see you in a way that not a lot of people do,” Alison says. “I know you as a sister, and I am so lucky that I do. But I think you’re battling a lot of conflicting emotions right now.”

  I want to object, but I give up before anything comes out.

  “This will pass, Claire,” she says. “I know it’s impossible, maybe even immoral, to see it that way right now. But believe me, you cannot lose sight of the forest through the trees.”

  “What else am I supposed to do? I’m not going to sit idly by. I can’t do that.”

  “No,” she says. “No, I wouldn’t expect you to. All I’m saying is, considering the things you’ve had to endure recently…” She lays her hand gently over mine, over the ring. “I don’t know how you’ve done it, Claire, I really don’t. It’s like I said, you are the strongest person I know. But everyone reaches a breaking point.”

  There it is. The punch I’ve been waiting for.

  “I’m worried that this may just be too much to take all at once,” she whispers.

  “It’s not.” I keep my voice dogged and firm.

  Alison matches me when she speaks again, returning to normal volume. “You’re not the only detective around here, but you are the only one who’s just lost a father, who’s coming off a break-up full of betrayal and broken trust, who’s romantically involved with one of the witnesses,” she says. My eyes snap up, and Alison notices. “Barlow told me. The day after the break-in,” she explains. “I was worried sick, so he told me where you had gone for the night.”

  “Ali, it’s not—”

  “I don’t mind,” she assures. “Everyone finds a way to cope. I’m not blaming you. But…” She presses her lips into a thin line. “But at least recognize the different sources of emotion and what they might be doing to your thinking.”

  I swallow. “So, let me make
sure I have this right, you think that I’m making this up because I can’t handle Dad’s death, a break-up, and Ethan’s lover trying to kill me all at the same time?” This time I’m the one to speak over her when she tries to interject. “The worst part,” I say, “is that there’s something tying all three together. And I may be the only one with access to why.”

  Something emerges in the corner of my eye, and I turn to see Barlow striding hastily down the hall, toward us. My stomach shrinks into a ball of dread.

  Alison follows my gaze, turning her head at the same time Barlow throws open the conference room door.

  “We have an emergency. Colter and Liam were hit on the way to the safehouse.” He’s panting. “Colter’s down. Liam’s missing.”

  24

  Liam

  I blink to consciousness, but I can’t lift my right eyelid. It’s swollen shut. There’s a sharp pain in my temple that’s temporarily drowning the pain in my leg, but not by much.

  I’m lying on my stomach in the back of a sedan with my face pressed against the leather seats. The pain in my leg becomes more and more acute as I come to full awareness. The spot where the bullet grazed me is throbbing with a sharp burn. I desperately want to reach for it, but my hands are bound. It’s like the worst kind of unreachable itch. My mouth is gagged so that I can barely swallow. The dry, ragged cotton fills most of my mouth. It’s tight against my tongue.

  But that’s when it occurs to me. I’m not blindfolded.

  I will myself to suck in a long, silent breath. There’s the sound of air being pumped through the car’s vents, but I feel suffocated by the tight space, the inability to move.

  I begin slowly shifting in the seat. Inch by inch. I scoot my hips, gradually turning more and more forward. I strain my neck for a glimpse before I’m all the way around. Two figures. One behind the wheel, the other in the passenger seat.

  Another silent breath through my nose.

  The two men are talking, I realize. Mumbling between themselves.

  I close my eyes. The pain is unbearable. It’s clouding the scene around me, blurring shapes and lines. After every attempt to push it away for a split second, it instantly returns with a new flood of force. It’s everywhere in my body.

  Another breath.

  I’ve almost turned around. I’m facing the car’s ceiling. The leather seats are doing no favors in cushioning the pain. It’s firm on my back.

  It’s excruciating to breathe and shift at the time, so I hold a breath for the final rotation. Right as I roll onto my shoulder, the figure in the driver seat turns around.

  “Look who’s awake!” We lock eyes. They’re grey and sunken. And familiar.

  The thin scar on his chin moves in parallel with his smirk. He turns back to the road, nudging the arm of his companion. The man turns his wide shoulders around. He looks up and down at my sprawled position across the back seats, then smiles.

  “Aren’t so pretty anymore, are ya?” he asks me. They both laugh.

  I’m searching for their names, but every attempt is thwarted by the searing pain in my temple. It shoots through my forehead like an electric needle stabbing and hammering at the same time. And I don’t think I ever caught their names to begin with.

  That night at the bar seems impossibly distant. Claire’s image feels more like a delusion. I used to be able to touch her. She was in my house, in my bed. She’d tried to protect me from this. But she couldn’t.

  “Hey, where’s your lady at?” the passenger asks as if they’d also kidnapped my thoughts.

  The scarred man shoots him an amused smile. He glances at the road before turning to me and flashing a set of crooked yellow teeth.

  “Can you pour me a drink, Liam Carter?”

  25

  Claire

  Alison and I both stand in unison. My whole body seizes with anger. With fury. “What the hell happened?”

  “They hit him at the intersection of 22nd and Quincy,” Barlow says.

  “Is Colter—”

  “Confirmed dead at the scene.” Barlow’s face is dismally narrow.

  I pound the table with a closed fist. “God dammit!” Alison’s hand clamps on my shoulder. “Witnesses?” I ask.

  “None. The car’s tracker was damaged in the crash. Sent some officers after we couldn’t get a response from Colter. Both cars were ditched there in the street.”

  And they took Liam. My forehead goes hot with rage.

  Instinctually I begin to follow Barlow out of the conference room before stopping to turn around. Alison is still standing, frozen in place.

  “Call Ben,” I tell her. “Tell him to take Danny and get out of Fort Martin.”

  She barely nods.

  “To his parent’s house,” I add. “They can’t wait, just go.”

  She reaches for her phone.

  “And Alison?” I wait for her eyes. “Make them go without you. You do not leave this building, you understand me?” Her lips purse momentarily, but she only nods. “I can’t risk you, too,” I say under my breath.

  When I turn back around, Barlow is down the hall, stopped and waiting for me. I stride toward him. “How is it that these bastards can always find us, yet we can’t touch them?” I seethe.

  Barlow resumes walking when I reach him.

  “How’d they find him?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. The lines on his face are tense with the same question, an urgency like fire in his eyes. We round the corner into a large room bustling with officers.

  At once, the chaos swimming in my head is joined by the frenzied mayhem of various voices all fusing in the air. Bodies and uniforms ricochet around the room. I catch sight of Jessica Fawley standing in front of a whiteboard, talking with a male deputy. She’s the one who spoke to the press after Dad’s death, now evidently preparing for the same task.

  How does the media already know? How does everyone know everything, but we’re left playing catch-up?

  Hot bile rises into my throat, but I swallow it down. The same seconds I’ve spent standing here, Liam has spent in the merciless hands of The Club. His leg is wounded, but he’s probably enduring much worse. If he’s even still alive.

  I shut my eyes, abandoning the possibility in the dark as I refocus myself.

  We’re going to save him. And shouldering his suffering isn’t going to help. I need to think clearly, because if they didn’t kill Liam alongside Colter, then there’s a good chance he’s still alive.

  Barlow hands me a collection of several photos all capturing different angles of the scene of the crash. Below each are small scribbles of information. Liam is long absent from the passenger seat of the wrecked undercover Buick and Colter’s body has been removed, but it doesn’t keep me from picturing the final moment before the impact. Judging from the photo, they never saw it coming.

  A black Impala collided with the front left fender of the Buick, directly into the left headlight. The driver side window is missing entirely, the airbags inflated behind the windshield.

  I feel a sudden pang of recognition. I’ve seen that Impala before. It was there that night. Parked outside The Drunk Pinkie.

  I met the drivers.

  I shuffle through the photos until I’m looking at the one of the license plate. I hadn’t committed the Impala’s tag to memory, but its numbers are as familiar as a nightmare when I see them. Unmistakable.

  In a near spasm, I reach for Barlow’s arm. I pull him out of the incident room and into the hall. “I know who it is,” I say. “I know who took him.”

  “How?”

  “The plates.” I stab my finger into one of the pictures. “This Impala, I know who drives it. I’ve seen it before.”

  “Where?”

  “Outside the Drunk Pinkie!” I stop to poise myself. “We need to go somewhere to—”

  Now it’s Barlow grabbing my arm, leading me down the hall to the closest desk. We’re on the same wavelength.

  “You know who was driving?” he asks. I rest my palms
on the desk and lean over it. I’m going faint with shock the more it settles in.

  I meet his eyes. “I spoke to them.”

  “When? How did—”

  “At the Drunk Pinkie. I was there with Liam, they were there too. They came to sit next to me at the bar.”

  “How many?”

  “Two males,” I say. “Engaged us immediately, they said I looked familiar.”

  “Did Liam know them?” he asks, and I shake my head.

  “I’d asked him earlier that night, and he said no. But they were so flagrant that I followed them to the door and noted the car they got into. Same Impala, same plates.” I pause as my breath gets caught in my throat. “They were there to kill Liam,” I murmur.

  I have to sit down. Barlow follows my lead, taking a seat in the chair across the desk. My every thought continues trickling into a murky pool of realization.

  I look at Barlow. “They work for Black & Williams.”

  “The two men?”

  “Yes.” I feel my heart shudder. “I don’t have names, they didn’t say.”

  “But they mentioned Black & Williams?”

  I nod. I feel incapable of moving until Barlow’s eyes go still with understanding. They stay motionless, then flick to me.

  “That’s the connection,” I say, though I can barely hear the words leaving my mouth. “Black & Williams is the connection. They asked me if I knew an Ethan Black, that was their first question.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I said yes. They mentioned having seen pictures of me in Ethan’s office.”

  Barlow rakes a hand through his hair.

  “Uniformed pictures,” I add.

  “They knew who you were, and knew you were a cop.”

  “So they left the bar instead of waiting to take out Liam,” I say.

  “What the hell did they say they were doing in Fort Martin?”

  “Said they were working on a project at the local Hyatt.” As the words come out of my mouth, my fists clench at the idea that I had once believed such an obvious lie.