by M. Leighton
If Sloane’s brother is innocent, I’ll make it my mission in life to prove it. Until then, the only thing I can do is reach back into a life that I promised I’d never go back to. Not for any reason.
But that was before Sloane.
With steel resolve, I punch in a number that I’ll probably never forget. When a familiar voice answers, I feel disgust rise in my throat like bitter bile. “Sebastian, it’s Hemi. I need a favor.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE- Sloane
I have a hard time meeting Steven’s eyes when I climb into the passenger seat.
“What the hell happened? How’d you end up out here?”
The backs of my eyes burn. With heartache, with shame, with humiliation.
“Steven,” I begin, turning my head to stare out the window and let the tears fall as he drives toward The Ink Stain to let me get my car. “Did you know anything about some dirty cocaine being impounded a couple of years ago?”
“What kind of a question is that? I don’t know anybody who works in narcotics except Duncan’s dad. Why would I keep up with shit like that?”
I’m relieved at the speed of his answer, and how in character it is with his surly attitude. He doesn’t seem defensive or act suspicious in any way. In my head, I curse Hemi for making me doubt him for even one millisecond.
“Is there any way you could’ve been connected to a bust that went down or something? Any way your name could’ve come up in association with something like that? Or with Duncan’s dad?”
“Not that I can think of. What’s this about, Sloane? Are you gonna tell me why I had to pick you up at a gas station, all alone, and now you’re asking me bizarre questions?”
“Somewhere out there, someone thinks you had something to do with selling some rich kid bad coke. He ended up dying and no bust was ever made. Now his family thinks you had something to do with it. I think that’s why you’ve been getting threats.”
“I don’t know where you get your information, Sloane, but the threats I’ve been getting are obviously a case of mistaken identity. They’re from someone who…who…”
He trails off as if a light bulb just went off. “What, Steven? What is it?”
“One of the phone calls I got was from a burner phone. All it said was, ‘We want our money’. I have no frickin’ clue who it was or what money they thought I might owe ‘em. That’s why I didn’t take it very seriously at first. It wasn’t until they started threatening lives and shit that it got real.”
“Steven, who could they have you confused with? How could something like this happen? Do you have any questionable friends? Informants? Anyone that could’ve implicated you without you knowing?”
“Not that I know of. But hell, Sloane, I’m a cop. A detective no less. I have to consort with the pond scum to some extent just to get information.”
I’m running over the details in my mind, trying to shake something loose that might mean something. That’s when I remember Hemi’s odd question to me a few weeks ago.
“What about when you and Duncan lived on Tumblin Street? Did you have any run-ins with people that might’ve been involved in something like this? Did you make any enemies that might use some outlandish detail to make it seem like you were a dirty cop?”
Steven shakes his head. “No. For most of that time, we just laid low. Hell, we didn’t even have any parties after those first few weeks.”
“What about Duncan? Did he have any questionable friends?”
Steven shakes his head again. “No. He laid pretty low, too. In the beginning, I thought he had a girlfriend. I’d hear his car leaving at night sometimes. And he was awful damn happy during that time. I figured he was getting laid. A lot.”
I feel the frown wrinkle my brow. My first thought is that Duncan is somehow involved. I don’t know why, but something in my gut just jumped when Steven said that. The problem is, Duncan is Steven’s partner. That’s like some sort of weird sacred cop thing. You don’t question your partner. You don’t suspect them. You don’t distrust them. You just give them your loyalty. Your unwavering loyalty. This is the person you trust with your life every single day out in the field. That blind faith is a very strong bond between partners and I know Steven won’t take it well if I start casting suspicion on Duncan.
“Well, maybe something will turn up. We’ll just have to keep our eyes open and our ears to the ground,” I say, having every intention of talking to Dad about it later.
Steven laughs. “Oh really? And what connections, pray tell, do you think you have that might give your eyes or your ears a clue as to what might be going out there in the criminal underworld?”
I think immediately of Hemi. I don’t ever plan to speak to him again, but little did Steven or I know that I was consorting with someone who has lots of secret ties to different people, not all harmless ones.
I think about Steven’s reaction to Hemi and I amend my first thought. Maybe Steven did know. Maybe I should’ve trusted my brother more all along.
Maybe I don’t have the good judgment to go and spread my wings. Maybe I was better off living my life in a cage.
********
My phone buzzes against my side. I don’t even turn on the ringer anymore. It’s depressing when it doesn’t ring and it’s depressing when it does.
I glance at the bright screen. I see Hemi’s name and Hemi’s number. Again. He’s called at least six times every day since the day I got out of his car. And every day I ignore him. The first few times, he left messages. Short ones that said things like, “I’m sorry, Sloane” and “Please forgive me, Sloane.” Nothing that really makes a difference. They’re just words. Empty words.
Now he says nothing. He just waits for the voice mail to pick up and I hear silence.
I tuck the phone away where I can’t see it or feel it. I close my eyes against the clock on my nightstand that says it’s already eleven o’clock. And I’m still in bed.
I didn’t go to school today. I couldn’t. It’s been almost a week and I still can’t sleep. I can’t think. I can’t seem to face the world anymore. So I’m here. Waiting. For what, I don’t know.
I drift in that space between sleep and wakefulness for another hour before the doorbell rings. Drowsily, I open my eyes and look at the clock again. I turn over and snuggle back down into the covers.
And the doorbell rings again.
With a growl, I throw back the blanket and stomp down the stairs to wrench open the door. I think for a second that my dad would kill me if he saw me forget to check the peep hole. Unlike him and my brothers, though, I’m hardly used to my life being in danger and of being suspicious of every single person I pass.
But this is no one to be afraid of. It’s a woman. Dressed in a blue polo shirt with FLOWERS BY WANDA embroidered on the left breast.
“I’ve got a delivery for Sloane Locke,” she says in her deep smoker’s voice.
“I’ll take it,” I say, eyeing the enormous vase of lilies. I can smell them already.
The woman hands me the vase and then extends a clipboard. “Those are beautiful,” she says as I tuck them into the bend of my arm and scribble my name on the paper.
“Thank you,” I tell her, moving to shut the door.
“Have a great day,” she throws over her shoulder as she turns to walk back down the sidewalk.
“It’ll be shitty,” I mutter, flipping closed the deadbolt. “Just like yesterday.”
I set the vase of flowers on the never-used dining room table, taking out the card to glance at it. “I hope you’ll find a way to forgive me. H.”
I toss it beside the vase and make my way back up to my bedroom, wishing this day would be over already.
The next three days progress in much the same way. Each day I sleep in and each day the doorbell rings sometime in the late morning. It’s always the same lady carrying a beautiful vase filled with an explosion of color and fragrance.
Every day she tells me the flowers are beautiful, and every day I sign my name
and thank her. And every day, after that, I leave them on the dining room table with the rest. Card and all.
Today is Friday. For some reason my father is home from work. I know this because at seven thirty, he knocks at my door. “I’m sleeping in,” I mutter from behind my pillow. I hear nothing for a second before I catch the sound of him turning and walking away.
I wake up hours later, my first thought being that it’s nearly one in the afternoon and the doorbell hasn’t chimed. Deep inside my chest, my heart breaks a little more than I thought was even possible. Today marks the day that Hemi gave up. Yesterday was how much he cared about me, how sorry he really was. But not today. Today marks the end. Today marks the day he gave up.
I’m still crying into my pillow when I hear the doorbell. My heart trips up into a little faster cadence as I listen to the muffled voices of Dad and a woman. I wait for a few minutes before I venture downstairs. My father is standing in front of the dining room table, staring at the vases full of gorgeous flowers of every color and variety. I notice the new vase right in front of him. It’s holding at least two dozen pure white roses, and in the center, a single blood red one. I don’t know what it means. It could mean anything. But for some reason, this single bud speaks more clearly than anything else has. It’s as though Hemi knew his calls and his flowers were all white noise in the background of my hurt and disillusionment. But this is him screaming at me from the haze, telling me something I’m not sure I believe.
“What the hell is this, Sloane? Are you trying to open up a flower shop?” Dad asks when I reach around him to take the card from the clear little trident that holds it in place.
“Are you just now noticing these?” I ask in astonishment, looking up at him as I tear open the tiny envelope.
“I never come in here,” he defends.
“Wow, some detective you turned out to be,” I mumble teasingly.
It’s the first time in days I’ve felt like talking to anyone, much less teasing.
“Watch it, smart ass,” he says taking the card from my fingers. I lunge for it, but he holds it high above his head. Much too high for me to reach.
“Okay, I’m sorry. I was just playing, Dad. Now give me the card.”
“No. I want to know what’s going on. You’re like a damn vampire, sleeping all day. You won’t eat, you won’t talk to anybody and you keep getting flowers.”
“It’s nothing, Dad. Nothing I can’t handle.” I’m still fighting being the protected little girl, even though sometimes I’d give anything for my father to pull me into his arms and tell me everything will be fine.
“I’m not stupid, Sloane. I know there was more between you two than just friendship. And I know a betrayal like that is hard, if not damn near impossible to get over. But you should try to put yourself in his shoes. Think about what lengths you’d go to in order to protect one of your brothers. And God forbid something happen to one. You act like you’re not a Locke in some ways, like you don’t understand why we treat you the way that we do, but if someone hurt one of us, you’d be a damn bear to deal with.” I say nothing as I listen to him. He knows just enough of the situation to know Hemi’s roll in looking for a dirty cop. Beyond that, I gave him very few details, other than that some things he’d discovered pointed to Steven. “Well,” he continues when I say nothing, “I know I’ve always been hard on you, but I hope you know you can talk to me. I’m still your father and I love you more than anything.”
“I know, Dad. And I love you, too,” I reassure him. “And I’m fine. Really.”
“Slo-ane,” he warns.
“Da-ad.”
“Are you still worried about Steven?” he asks, making me sigh.
“Maybe a little.”
“You did what you had to do, what you thought was best in coming to me. He’ll see that one day. Especially when I tell him what I found out today.”
My ears perk up. “What? What did you find out today?”
As I wait for him to tell me, I notice the deep lines of worry etched into his forehead, the unhappy way his mouth is pulled at the corners. Whatever it is, it’s not good news.
“There were a few kilos of bad coke confiscated by homicide during one of their investigations. It was a joint Narcotics/Homicide kind of thing. It was around that time, so I started looking into the impounded drugs. Turns out there are a couple of kilos missing. From the very back of the shelf, where no one would notice unless they were specifically looking. I checked into the log to see who all came and went during the six months after that evidence was logged in.” He pauses, spreading the fingers of one hand over his forehead. “It shows Steven using his access card to go in. Half a dozen times.”
I gasp. “What?” My heart is pounding so hard, it feels like it might explode.
“Don’t get too excited now. This is your brother we’re talking about. I checked the physical log to see what was signed in or out. Someone signed Steven’s name as checking out an evidence file on a cold case he’d worked the year before. The thing is, it’s not Steven’s signature. I’ve kept this on the down low up until now, and I’m gonna try and keep it that way. I made a copy of the log sheet and I’m going to take it to one of the handwriting analysts the city uses for court cases. When I take this to Internal Affairs, I want the record to already show that the handwriting is forged. And then I’ll be on this thing like stink on shit until I find the bastard who framed my son.”
I can see fury emanating from him like steam. “Who would do this to him, Dad? And why?”
“Well, I have my suspicions.” He looks at me meaningfully and, after a few seconds, I realize why he is dreading telling Steven what, at first, seemed like only good news.
The timing—when Steven lived with Duncan on Tumblin Street. The coincidence—Duncan leaving late at night on what Steven thought were trysts. The facts—someone was able to get Steven’s access card, just long enough to use it to check out evidence from the lockers. And it would have to be a cop.
All things point to one person. My brother’s best friend. His most trusted ally. His partner.
“Oh frick,” I breathe. “Duncan.” I raise my eyes to my father’s and I see the sadness in them. I’m sure he feels betrayed by him, too. He loved Duncan like a son. He’s worked with Duncan’s father for years. Duncan’s father who works in Narcotics.
Finally, he gives me one curt nod. “But I have to have proof. And I’m going to need your brother’s help. And you know he’s not going to like it.”
“No, he won’t like it, but he’ll do it. Because it’s the right thing. It’s the Locke way,” I say, handing back to my father with a smile words I’ve heard all my life.
“Yeah, it’s the Locke way. We protect our own. At all costs.”
For some reason—for the millionth time—I think of Hemi.
CHAPTER FORTY- Hemi
Sloane still won’t answer my calls. I don’t know how else to reach her, how else to convince her to talk to me. To hear me out. Just one more time.
There are things I need to tell her, things I’ve just realized myself. Things that I can’t say on a voice mail or in a card, or with flowers.
Important things.
Truthful things.
Like I promised her.
One more time, I try her number. It rings and rings and rings. Finally, I hear her familiar voice click on with her familiar message. My gut twists up just listening to it, fearing that I really won’t ever be able to make this right, that she’ll never forgive me and I won’t ever be able to tell her what I need to say.
“Sloane, it’s me. There’s something I have to tell you. It’s important. Please, just give me five more minutes. Please.”
With a sigh, I hang up.
Again.
Now I just have to wait.
Again.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE- Sloane
I thought maybe a night out with Sarah would make me feel better. Not only do I not feel better, I actually feel a little queasy as I naviga
te the road back to the house. I’m not surprised really. I haven’t been eating well or getting much sleep since everything happened with Hemi. I reason with myself that I’m probably just run down.
When I get home, Dad is sitting at the dining room table, looking through the cards that are still lying there. Most of the flowers are dead and have already been thrown out. But for some reason, I couldn’t quite bring myself to throw out the cards. Not just yet.
“What are you doing, Dad?” I ask, stopping beside the chair he’s sitting in.
Before he answers, Dad neatly stacks all the flower cards together and hands them to me. “Have you read them all?”
“Yes.”
He nods slowly, folding my fingers around the little rectangles. “No change?”
I don’t really know how to answer that. I’m less upset than what I was, yes, but I don’t know why yet. I don’t know if I’m working my way toward forgiving Hemi or if time is just healing the wound.
Finally, I shrug my answer.
“He came by here tonight. Looking for you.” My father watches me, carefully gauging my reaction. He says no more, which prompts me to speak.
“What did he want?”
“To talk to you.”
Duh.
“Did he say why?”
“Not really. But I think you need to at least listen to him, Sloane.”
“That’s easy for you to say, Dad. You don’t know the whole story.”
“It’s not easy for me to say. I don’t like the thought of anyone hurting you. For any reason. In any fight, I’ll always take your side. Part of me wants to wring this guy’s neck for putting you through the hell you’ve been in the last couple of weeks.
“It’s hard for me to think about my little girl growing up and possibly falling in love, Sloane. It’s hard for me to think of having to give her up to some cocky jerk and hope he takes care of her. But I know that I have to do it. Eventually. And something tells me that this one means a lot to you. More than what I gave him credit for. I knew there was something going on, but I don’t think I knew how important it was to you, how important he was to you.”