Fool’s Paradise: Cartwright Brothers, Book 5

by Anderson, Lilliana

  "Yeah, I do," he said with a gentle voice as he shifted gears. "And I'm not holding it against you. I'm not even going to ask you to stop. The only thing I am doing is asking that you don't drive."

  Sitting back in my seat, I folded my arms across my middle, my lips pressed together as a sour feeling swarmed at the base of my throat. I wanted to rage at him and tell him he was mistaken, that there was no problem at all and I was fine. But those would all be lies. He’d seen my truth. He’d shown it to me and accepted what it was. Just like that. I wanted to be angry. But I couldn’t because he’d been understanding. How was I supposed to react to that?

  Looking out the window, I worried at my lip, the silence between us deafening. I wasn't stupid. I knew my behaviour was reckless. The drinking. The men. Even Nick had noticed the change in me. And that was saying something because Nick only really cared about Nick. I didn't know if I could talk about it yet, but I knew I'd been self-medicating, hoping it would get better. 'It' being the broken pieces leading up to the moment I told Grey he was my father.

  No. Don’t. I’m your daughter!

  I couldn't have a quiet moment without my mind throwing up an image or a feeling. If I heard the click of a lighter or the weight of an object hitting a table, I felt physically ill. I hated that, hated feeling so out of control. Drinking created a soft fuzz that acted as a weighted blanket wrapped around that feeling of terror.

  Lies. I’ll teach you a lesson you never forget.

  “On top of being their protector,” Toby said, startling me from my thoughts. “My job in the family was also the planner. I thoroughly investigated every single move we made. We didn’t work with anyone I hadn’t run an in-depth background check on. We didn’t take on a job I hadn’t run a thousand simulations on. I was also the finder. Like you, I could take a couple of clues and hunt a person down then bring them back to the family, to my mother, the matriarch of our little organisation, to face whatever was awaiting them. I was really fucking good at my job too. And I’m not even being modest. I got shit done, shit that no one else could, and because of that, I was rarely blindsided.”

  As he spoke, I moved my head to face forwards, watching the road ahead while I focused on his movement in my periphery. He had a loose grip on the steering wheel with one hand, the other arm resting on the ledge of the open window, the wind pushing his overgrown hair to the side. Mostly, he kept his gaze on the road, but occasionally, he snuck a look my way.

  “The first time I was truly blindsided was by my brother, Nate. I’ve spoken to you about him before. He’s the one who got us mixed up with the cartel. You’d think I would have felt blindsided over that, but I suspected early, and it didn’t shock me when it came out. Nate had always wanted… more than the rest of us.” He paused and shook his head a little. “Anyway, the time he blindsided me was during a job. We’d been running a con where we targeted well-off single women. Nate would hit on them at a bar, get them to take him home then slip something in their drink before anything could happen. They’d sleep like the dead while we cleaned them out of anything of value. It was a good scam, we only hit women with good insurance policies and besides being embarrassed, no one got hurt. We could have kept it going but…”

  By now I was looking right at him, my interest piqued as he outlined the ruse. They drugged them? That was ballsy. You never knew what medication a person was on that could cause contradictions. I was always careful who I used a tranquilliser on because of that fact, generally knowing my mark’s medical background before I acted. There were times when I had to take the risk, but that was more out of self preservation than ease. I had to assume that Toby had done these kinds of checks too. A dead woman after a burglary would lead to a manhunt. He was too smart to risk that.

  “The woman Nate married was the best friend of one of our marks. I’d spotted her during my surveillance and well, let’s just say there was something about her that interested me. I told my brothers that under no circumstances were they to involve her.”

  “Did you want her for yourself?” I asked, too involved in his story now to stop my question.

  He glanced at me, a small but sad smile pulling at the left side of his mouth. “Yes. I guess I liked what I saw. She was full of life, always smiling, always sure of herself. It didn’t matter what anyone around her was saying or doing, she was just in the centre of it all, living her best life, the star of her own show. She was something else.”

  “Sounds like maybe you watched her more than your mark.”

  He laughed a little. “Almost.”

  “So, how did your brother end up with her?”

  “We’ve always had the same type. Blonde, busty women with great arses and a spunky attitude.” He glanced my way, and I actually grinned. No wonder he’d walked me home. “We had a rule that if we both liked the same girl neither of us would go after her. The night of the job, Holland got up on stage and belted out this karaoke tune. He saw her, and I guess it was love or lust at first sight, because all of a sudden, his word meant nothing. He cut his comms and took the girl.”

  “And you guys were out there ready for a job while he was cutting your grass?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “I was pretty fucking livid, but we still did the job. We cleaned the poor girl out twice, actually.”

  “And she still married him?”

  “Not by choice.”

  My eyes went wide at that little bomb drop. “What the hell?”

  “That was the second time I was blindsided. Holland and her friend figured out who we were and tracked us back to our place. Snuck up on us and everything. If it wasn’t for Rogue sniffing them out, they might have called the cops on us.”

  I pressed my lips together at the mention of his dog. He was being so strong over his loss.

  “Jasmine wanted them dead. She ordered me to kill them both, but I said no fucking way. She said she’d do it herself, but Nate came up with the crazy plan to marry them so they couldn’t testify in court. Holland married Nate. Sam married Alesha—who was the original mark—and I stayed behind to mind the fort, drinking myself stupid and growing increasingly bitter.”

  Ah, now I see the point of this story. I placed my hands flat against my thighs and waited for him to tell me that the solutions to my problems weren’t at the bottom of a bottle, some stupid cliché like that.

  “I stayed angry for months, even made a pass at Holland. I was so pissed at my brother. I didn’t think he deserved her, and I’d convinced myself she should have been mine. So I confronted her, made a total fool of myself then got the shit beaten out of me by the one person I’d always been closest to. I felt fucking betrayed, left out in the cold.” Holy shit. His brother was an arsehole. I wanted to beat the shit out of him in Toby’s defence.

  “After the beatdown, I withdrew from the family as much as I could while still working with them. We ran some jobs without him because he wouldn’t even speak to me after I’d touched his plaything. As if I was the bad guy in this story.” He paused for a moment, shifting his hands on the wheel. “It was fucking bullshit, really. He was being a selfish bastard, and I was the guy who’d done wrong. The entire family was running around, figuring out how to coax him back.” He let out his breath, shaking his head a little like he was trying to gather his thoughts or decide whether to continue or stop.

  With the road stretching out in front of us, the arid plains to our left and right, there was nothing much else to do but to talk and listen, so I kept my mouth shut and waited for him to continue. There was more to this than I’d anticipated, he wasn’t giving me a lesson in quitting drinking; he was sharing his own experience. Perhaps a little of his pain. Maybe he was doing it because he hoped I’d share some of mine, too. Maybe he needed it off his chest. Either way, my ears were all his. He was on a roll, I was his confessional. He either trusted me, or he was so sure we would die that he saw no harm in clearing it all out.

  I’m listening.

  “I’ve never told a soul this part befor
e,” he said, eyes swinging to meet mine for a little longer than was safe inside a moving vehicle. “But I made sure Holland found out about the poppies. I wanted to hurt him. And the best way to do that was by showing his wife exactly the kind of man he was.”

  “Did it work?” I asked, almost in a whisper.

  “For a moment. Then I got the guilts and found her, told her he was all bent up without her. They loved each other. And as much as I wished I was the guy who got the girl for a change, I couldn’t deny reality.”

  “Did she go back?”

  “Not right away. Nate was losing his mind. He was desperate for her, not eating, drinking too much, and being generally belligerent and awful. He came up with this idea of staging a fire and faking his death so Holland would run away with him.” He pulled at his bottom lip with his teeth and shook his head. “And since I’m the guy who gives the world and doesn’t ask for a fucking thing in return, I helped him make that plan a reality.” He rolled his eyes. “Off he rode, into the sunset with the girl I’d convinced myself I was in love with. Lucky Nate. Everybody loves him.” Not from where I’m sitting.

  “So you drank,” I stated, finding that my emotions were rearing their ugly heads again, drying out my throat.

  “Yeah. I drank. I drank, and I cursed, and I hated. It was eating me alive, because not only did he have the girl I wanted, but he had the freedom I’d always craved too. And I fucking helped him. He’d gotten himself into a fucked up mess over these poppies, beat the shit out of me because I kissed his wife in a drunken moment, and I helped. I tapped my beer bottle against his and said, ‘Sure brother, let me make your dreams come true’.”

  I was suddenly glad I didn’t have siblings. It sounded like one hell of a problem, and not at all what sitcoms led you to believe.

  “The day of his funeral was the third time I was blindsided. The cartel came to collect. Told us that the fire took their crop and since Nate was gone, we had to compensate their loss. No one knew he was still alive but me and Holland. Everyone else was mourning, my mother especially. Her response to their demands was to stab the guy in the fucking throat with a penknife. He bled out in the driveway and we couldn’t leave the security guy alive.” He took a breath, seeming to struggle with his next words. “He had to be put down too.” He paused for a long while, staring at the unending stretch of road with tension etched upon his face, lips tight. “He was the first person I’d ever killed. I grabbed his head, took a breath and…” Oh god. Toby.

  He didn’t need to finish. I knew.

  “I was a fucking mess after that. But it was also when I realised what I was capable of. I didn’t want to be blindsided ever again. Especially by my own brother. So, we hauled him back and made him deal with the cartel himself.” He shook his head before glancing at me. “Fat lot of good that did us.”

  “Are you still angry?” I imagined myself in his shoes, fighting a fight that wasn’t really mine all because of a sense of familial duty. It didn’t seem fair. But what in life was fair? I certainly hadn’t seen a lot of fairness.

  “I wasn’t. I’d made peace with Nate, moved on from my feelings for Holland, left to find a life of my own. But now, driving through the fucking desert to go back there and finish the problem he started? Yeah. I’m fucking mad. Why couldn’t they do this without me? Why am I always the one sacrificing, always rescuing? Why can’t I just fucking live?”

  Something flared inside me at the strain in his voice, the desperation of his words. I wanted to protect him, whisk him away from all this, somehow make it better. With little to truly offer, I reached across and placed my hand on his. “Pull over, Toby.”

  He flicked his eyes towards me, red-rimmed, confused.

  “Pull over.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can’t change where we’re going, but I can definitely take your mind off things.” I touched my hand on his thigh. “Pull over. Lose yourself in me.”

  Reacting almost immediately, he steered into the dusty part of the road and slowed the camper to a stop. But he left the engine running. “You don’t need to fuck away my problems, Blair,” he said, turning to face me while reaching out to take my hand in his. I had a moment where I wanted to pull it away, to fall into my habit of deflecting with anger then drinking it away. But he’d just called me out on that behaviour. I didn’t want to prove him right.

  “I thought that’s what we did,” I said instead, giving him a slight smile.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what we’ve been doing. But right now I just want to talk. Is that’s all right by you? This is shit I could never talk about with anybody. The fact I can say it all out loud around you without having to pretend I’m something I’m not...” He shook his head at the wonderment. “It feels really fucking good to get this crap off my chest and know the person I’m talking to gets it.” I didn’t feel worthy of his secrets.

  “Why are you so sure I get it? I have no family. No brothers to fight with. No mother to rally against. There’s just me, Toby. Me and no one who gives a damn.”

  Pressing his lips together, he brought my hand to his lips and placed a kiss against my knuckles. “I give a damn, Blair.”

  My heart swelled in my chest and my eyelids fluttered. “You barely know me.”

  He shrugged. “And yet, I give a damn. Just because you don’t have a family, doesn’t mean you can’t understand what it’s like to feel blindsided in a situation where you thought you were in control.”

  No. Don’t.

  I’m your daughter.

  Lies.

  Letting my eyes rest on our joined hands, I nodded slowly, pushing my intruding memories away. “Yeah. I know a little about that.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  A Lumbering Ballet

  “Where are you now?” Nick asked, the reception a little spotty as I leaned up against the outside of the camper van. Toby had gone inside to pay for petrol and grab a few supplies before we hit the road again, heading to a little town called Ceduna that was almost two thousand kilometres away, or twelve hundred miles for those measuring old school. It was surprising how many international travellers we were meeting along our journey. We’d spent the night before chatting to an American couple during dinner at the local restaurant. They told us of their adventures since arriving in Sydney then travelling anti-clockwise around the country. It had taken almost twelve months to get three quarters of the way. They couldn’t believe how huge Australia was.

  “We’re crossing the border into South Australia today. Stopping to look at the cliffs at the Great Australia Bight on our way to Ceduna. Stuff like that.”

  He paused for longer than was normal. “You’re sight-seein’?”

  “You got a problem with that, Jennings?”

  “Are you actually kiddin’ me? Some mobster is after your head and you’re out there sight-seein’?”

  “What do you expect us to do? It’s a long fucking drive towards our doom, Nick. I think we have every right to stop and smell the roses before we blow everything up at the other side.”

  “What about you blowin’ up? You’re supposed to be takin’ him back to his family. The longer you spend fuckin’ around in the desert the easier it's gonna be for our Irish friend to find you. They left yesterday, by the way. I was tryin’ to get a hold of you."

  I rubbed my hand over my forehead, gritty from the red dust in the air. A small lizard ran straight past me. "There isn't any reception while we're on the road and we only checked the phone this morning."

  "We? You two besties now? Or you just fuckin' him?"

  "Nick," I said, warning in my tone. I wasn't going to get into any of this with him. I didn't owe him any explanations, just a thank you for keeping an eye on Irish while Toby and I were on the road. "Thank you, OK? I mean it. But I've got it from here. You spoken to Big Jim?"

  "He thinks you've gone off the rails since you haven't called in. There's been no reports of you gettin' on that boat so the only people who know are me, the
Cartwright and Irish. I'm leavin' on another assignment now, so I guess you're right, you're on your own from here. I can’t help you anymore."

  "That's not what I meant, but sure. I get it. I really do appreciate you sticking around, Nick. You went out of your way to cover for me and it means a lot."

  "Jesus, Blair. What happened? Did you fall in the desert and catch feelin’s or somethin’?"

  I laughed. He knew me well, and I didn’t say thank you often. “No. I'm just a little reflective. I guess almost blowing up for the second time in my life, then travelling long distances on a mission to kill the guy who ordered it can do that to a person.”

  "That's a mouthful. Just... take care of yourself, toots. This world won't be as fun without your wise-arse in it."

  "I'll do my best." I toed the ground with the tip of my shoe.

  "All right. I'm out of here. Call me in a couple of days. You know, proof of life and stuff."

  I laughed, feeling a little lighter for a moment as I realised that maybe a handful of people did care about me in this world. "OK. And maybe tell Big Jim I'm OK. Tell him I'm taking a holiday or something. I don't know, just keep him from looking and worrying, I guess."

  "Will do. Try not to get too attached to your collar."

  Before I could answer with a lie, telling him I wasn't attached to Toby at all, he disconnected, leaving me with silence on my end. "See ya," I said to myself as I sighed and lowered the phone.

  "Everything OK?" Toby asked, his arms laden with bags of cold drinks and food as he approached.

  I slipped the phone in my back pocket and reached out to help him. "Nick says Grey's men left yesterday. If they drive straight through, I reckon we've got a day or two before they catch up."

  "Well, let's hope that they drive straight through. They'll go right past us that way and never know it."

  Smiling, I placed the groceries on the counter and started unpacking. "You know, I like the way you think."