Hail Mary

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  She didn’t have anything to say to that, and I didn’t bother to explain myself. She’d learn everything along with the rest of them in just a few minutes anyway.

  ***

  Twenty minutes later we were in a conference room. Cobie was sitting next to me, and we were waiting for the men to arrive.

  Rafe, a man who—among other things—worked with my brother, was sitting across the table from us, watching with unconcealed interest.

  I ignored him. When I’d left Hostel earlier in the day, he’d been working.

  Now he was here.

  He needed to be fired.

  “Why is Drake living in your house?”

  She grimaced.

  “Apparently, Drake had to sell his house to help pay for Marianne’s cancer treatments. I felt bad, so I let them use the house that I was living in before my grandfather left me this place.”

  “He pay rent?”

  She nodded. “He insisted, actually. A thousand a month.”

  I grunted.

  “Thousand a month is pretty steep. What part of town?”

  That came from Rafe.

  “Wildwood.”

  He blinked. “You moved out of Wildwood, to a house in the historical district, and you’re letting someone live in it for a thousand a month?”

  It was obvious that he didn’t agree with her decision.

  “She was my best friend, and he was her husband. What did you want me to do, let them live on the streets while she battled cancer?”

  Rafe shrugged.

  The door to the office slammed, and soon three men were making their way into the conference room, taking various chairs around the table and sitting.

  All of them were big.

  They were all Army.

  I could tell by the tattoos that each one of them had on their arm.

  Huh, go figure.

  “This is Jack,” Sam, who’d taken a seat directly across from me, pointed to his left.

  I nodded my head at Jack, taking in his dark eyes and even darker hair. “Nice to meet you.”

  Jack didn’t reply.

  “This is Max,” Sam gestured to his right. “They both worked on Marianne’s case.”

  I didn’t bother offering a hello to Max. He was scowling at me like I’d done something wrong.

  “And I think you know Rafe.”

  I nodded. “I do.”

  “Tell us what’s going on.”

  I looked over at Cobie before turning back to Sam.

  “It’s easier to start from the beginning,” I muttered.

  “Please do,” Rafe said sarcastically.

  I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “Why am I giving you a paycheck when you’re not even doing your job?”

  Rafe’s lips tipped up. “I am doing my job. Right now, in fact.”

  My brows rose, and I pulled out my phone, looking at the log of calls and pick-ups we were supposed to be filling right now. “You are? Because right now, I show that there are four outstanding recoveries that need to be made. You’re on the clock, am I correct?”

  I might not have put in the hours that I should have over the last couple of years, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t keep tabs on my business. Not to mention that before Lily had passed, we’d created an app that literally showed us all impending pick-ups when they were entered into the computer—and still did, to that fact.

  Rafe grinned. “Sure.”

  I growled under my breath and turned to Sam, who showed no surprise at either Rafe being there when he shouldn’t be, or me knowing that Rafe shouldn’t be there.

  “I had a one-night stand with Marianne when she lived across the street from my brother. After leaving that night, she disappeared, then showed back up with a baby she said was mine. She told me that she couldn’t take care of her any longer and that it was my turn.”

  Neither Sam nor anyone else at the table for that matter, said anything in response to that.

  The woman at my side made a choking sound in the back of her throat, but I didn’t look at her.

  “She told me to look her up on the internet,” I continued. “Then, a while later I tracked her down. She got two promises out of me, and then I left. I didn’t see her again unless you count her funeral.”

  Sam cursed.

  “What were those promises?”

  “They were to watch over this one,” I indicated to Cobie with a tilt of my head. “And to watch over our girl. If I ever suspected that there was something brewing, I was to come to you.”

  “What do you think is going on?”

  That came from Jack.

  I leaned over and pulled out an envelope that was folded multiple times. Once I unfolded it, I pulled the letter I’d received out and laid it out flat on the table before turning it around for the men across from me to see.

  “That’s a letter from an attorney,” I said. “When Marianne died, she left everything she had to Mary. In doing so, she also put Mary on Drake’s radar.”

  “What did Marianne leave Mary?”

  I pulled out my copy of the will, laid it out flat, and pushed it forward for them to see.

  “Eight million dollars. Two estates, one in Massachusetts and one in England. Multiple automobiles.”

  “If he had that much money, why did they have to rent a house from me?”

  I looked over at Cobie then and shrugged. “He didn’t have any money. Nothing. Mary is the beneficiary. I am the co-beneficiary until Mary is of age. Drake had nothing because Marianne made sure of that. If I had my guess, you resembled a cash cow like Marianne did, and Drake was trying to use you until he could figure out how to get his wife’s money.”

  “She had to know that by naming Mary in her will, she would be shining a spotlight on her,” Max added his two cents.

  I nodded and blew out a frustrated breath.

  “Yeah, pretty much,” I agreed. “I’m in over my head at this point. I was in the Air Force. I’ve seen my share of clusterfucks, but I have a really bad fucking feeling right now. I’ve been sitting here, twiddling my thumbs, for almost six months, trying to make sense of some of this stuff, but I’m not getting anywhere. I need help. I need to know if Drake is as bad as he appears to be because I have a feeling that once this one lets Drake know she isn’t going to be his cash cow, he’ll come after Mary next. Plus, Drake knows where and how to find me very easily.”

  Chapter 8

  Make your weird light shine bright… so other weirdos can find you.

  -Bumper Sticker

  Cobie

  My mind was working at about a thousand miles an hour.

  However, I was stuck on one thing in particular.

  I am not anyone’s cash cow!

  Sam sat back in his chair. “How do you know Drake?”

  Dante’s mouth worked, causing his jaw muscles to flex.

  “He used to be my brother’s best friend,” he grunted. “At first, I wasn’t too sure about it. But his name, Drake Garwood, isn’t so fucking common. I knew it was too big of a coincidence. Then, when I had to go to the reading of the will in Mary’s stead, I recognized Drake immediately.”

  “Does your brother know?”

  He shook his head.

  “No.”

  “Are you going to tell him?” I asked.

  I was really curious. Why wouldn’t his brother know this? It was his niece who was affected, after all.

  He shook his head again. “Not yet. I don’t have enough proof. I don’t want to jump the gun yet, then ruin whatever friendship they have left if it’s not what I think it is. Reed still talks to him on occasion. He’s made it a point to keep up with him through the years, and I don’t want to ruin that relationship without knowing the full story. Maybe he’s just caught up in this. Maybe he’s just in over his head and needs a way out. Maybe he won’t do anything at all, but I just can’t take a chance with Mary like that.”

  I
licked my lips and blew out a breath.

  “Marianne told me once that Drake scared her,” I hesitated. “Then another time, after their son was killed, she lost it, blaming it on Drake. She said that he did it on purpose, and even went as far as to tell the cops, as well as every single news outlet that covered the baby’s death, what she thought.”

  He stared at me unnervingly.

  “She also told me, about a week before she died, that Drake had her going to some doctor that she thought was ‘pretending’ to cure her cancer.” I licked my lips again. God, why were they so dry? “He’s an MD, I looked him up after her death. I couldn’t get her words out of my brain. But the thing is…”

  “But,” Dante drawled.

  “But that’s all that I could find on him. There’s no case studies or articles or anything on these experimental miracle treatments he supposedly developed. There’s literally nothing out there on him at all.”

  The man scowled.

  “I’m not going to say that I’m good at finding shit on people, because I’m not. What I’ve found out is by asking people stuff, like I did with you. I don’t have any computer skills what-so-fucking-ever. That’s why I wanted to come talk to these guys. I need to know what the fuck is going on.”

  “Because of what you showed me earlier?”

  “Yes.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Why now?”

  His jaw clenched at my question.

  “Honestly?”

  I blinked.

  “Yes,” I paused. “Why would I ask you a question and not want you to be honest?”

  He chuckled.

  It was the second time he’d done anything like that in the entire hour that I’d been in the same space as him.

  “Tell me about the pictures.”

  “What pictures?” the beautiful man that Sam had introduced as Rafe asked.

  Dante reached into his pocket, pulled out the jump drive and then slid it across the table.

  Rafe immediately reached for it and slid it farther down the table to the man called Jack.

  Jack took it, stood up, and walked over to a panel on the wall where he plugged the jump drive in.

  “Hope that the data isn’t corrupted,” I muttered mostly to myself.

  Dante gave me a look, and I found myself blinking my eyes innocently at him.

  He rolled his and turned when a screen descended at the front of the room.

  “This is like the future,” I uttered to myself once again.

  Jack turned and offered me a smile.

  “Not the future,” he said. “Just technology that is advancing every single day.”

  I didn’t argue with that, mostly because it was so true.

  Every two years, a new iPhone came out, and every two years, I got a new one. The newer models weren’t really all that different from the older ones. At least that’s how it seemed until you compared an older iPhone to your newest one, side-by-side.

  Something I’d actually done myself a few weeks ago while I’d been digging through my grandpa’s old desk and found one of my old phones.

  The fucker had even turned on and run after I’d charged it. I was purely amazed and sat there for twenty minutes looking at the old pictures. Of course, the pictures were tiny compared to the phone I carried now. Pictures that I’d somehow lost, and smiled for hours as I thought about the things I used to do as a teenager. Camping with my grandparents. Fishing with Grandpa. Cooking with Grandma.

  God, there’d been so many freakin’ pictures of pies that I’d had to laugh.

  “Tell me where you were when you took these pictures.”

  Sam’s comment brought me back to the present, and I stared at the same picture that Dante had shown me earlier.

  “Right outside her house.”

  “You live there with him?”

  Dante shook his head. “This is her old place. She rents it to him.”

  I nodded my head, and we explained what had happened again to them.

  “At first, I started watching her place, thinking she was living there. When I realized Drake was there, I’d intended to leave it alone, not wanting to draw attention to myself. But then I started noticing strange things, and I couldn’t help myself.”

  “See that number, Sam?”

  Max’s question had me straining my eyes to see where Max was pointing.

  “No. Where?”

  “That one.”

  A red laser light appeared where a hazy gray number was on one of the bottom boxes, and I strained to see it even more.

  “What is i…” I turned my head at the same time as I spoke and stopped when I saw Max, a gun in his hand, aiming it at the screen.

  My mouth fell open.

  His eyes met mine, and he saw the way they were nearly popping out of my head, and then looked kind of sheepish.

  “Fancy laser pointer you have there,” I mused as he put the gun back in someplace behind his back.

  Hmmm. I hadn’t realized he was armed.

  Imagine that.

  “Sorry,” he snorted. “Seemed easier than getting up. My knee fucking hurts.”

  “Everything always hurts,” Jack agreed, retaking his seat.

  These men were all older. Late forties, early fifties, I’d guess.

  But, don’t think for a second that these men weren’t handsome as hell, or that they were any less dangerous than a younger man at his prime.

  Nope, I’d been around my fair share of military men in my time. In fact, I’d been a member of the LTWC—Longview Texas Welcoming Committee—since I was a kid. Twelve at the most.

  See, it all started when I realized how alone I really was in the world. Yes, I had grandparents, but they were literally all I had.

  Which got me to thinking about other men and women who didn’t have even what I had.

  Then, one time I’d heard about a soldier coming home, and a welcoming committee was needed for him since he didn’t have any family. So, I’d begged my grandmother to take me to Dallas, and together we’d welcomed home this young soldier from war. It was so satisfying seeing his smile directed toward us that I’d been doing it ever since.

  In fact, I had one that I had to go welcome home in three days.

  Most of these soldiers were young, but that made them no less deadly.

  But these older men in the room with me, staring at me like I was amusing them, were definitely in their prime, right along with the soldiers I welcomed home every few weeks.

  “I’ll send it to my woman and see if she can do anything. She only has the laptop with her at work, though. It might take her longer.”

  Sam stood up and opened the door wide. “Janie!”

  A woman whom I presumed was Janie came walking in with a sandwich in one hand, and a dill pickle in the other.

  She was a gorgeous blonde with long, flowing hair, bright green eyes, and a smile that was stunning. She was slim on top, but her bottom half had a little more meat to it than the rest of her, making her hips flare wide.

  “Yeah?” Janie asked, leaning forward to take a bite of her pickle.

  It crunched noisily, and she looked sheepishly around the room, pausing only slightly on Rafe a little longer than the others, before returning her gaze to Sam.

  “Can you do me a favor and bring me the report on a Drake Garwood?” he asked her. “Everything.”

  Janie nodded and turned to go.

  I watched her hips sway as she walked away, and I wasn’t the only one.

  Rafe watched her, too.

  Like a hawk.

  But before Sam and the other two could notice, he returned his eyes forward.

  And caught mine.

  I raised my brows at him, and he gave me nothing in return. Not a smile. Not a shrug. Nothing.

  Interesting.

  Someone had the hots for the help!

  Grinning, I went back to paying attention.r />
  “In all honesty, I would’ve continued to keep my distance and only watched had I not witnessed that last night,” Dante said, looking at the photos. “I have a feeling he’s in it up to his eyeballs, and it won’t be long before he’s looking for alternate ways to get money.”

  “The info we pulled on Drake was bad if I remember correctly.” Sam rubbed his forehead. “I can’t remember exactly, though. I might be getting him and another guy mixed up. But I remember pulling her. She almost didn’t make it. Wren, I think.”

  Jack grunted. “It was Wren. She was the one who showed up sick as a dog, battling a fever, and so banged up and bruised that we couldn’t touch her anywhere without her crying out in pain.”

  Knowing that Marianne had gone through that was making me sick to my stomach.

  “Only one of our birds who asked to go back, though,” Max said. “That’s why I remember her so clearly.”

  I had nothing to say to that.

  Why would she go back if she was safe?

  “They were exhuming the son’s body, and they needed her eyewitness account to charge the husband,” Janie said as she came into the room, looking down at the papers in her hands instead of at the room. She ran into a chair but didn’t seem to care as she stopped and continued to speak as she read. “The case was almost dismissed due to not being able to find Marianne. According to Marianne/Wren, she went back because she wanted her husband to pay for killing her son. Only the case was dismissed anyway due to lack of evidence found during the autopsy, as well as the fact that Marianne had been diagnosed as clinically depressed at the time, which Drake’s attorney used to get her testimony thrown out.”

  I remembered that vividly.

  It’d been a huge case, and it’d also brought Marianne home. I’d been both stunned to see her and ecstatic that she was back. She seemed to be back to the old Marianne, that was until she’d started spewing all those accusations about Drake.

  They’d been so outrageous that I’d not taken her seriously. How could I? The man that she described wasn’t the man that I knew. That anyone knew.

  Drake had never once shown himself to be anything other than a caring father and husband. He doted on their child, and he loved Marianne. He took care of her, and he supported her through her bout with postpartum depression.