Chasing Honor (The Next Generation Book 2)

by Riley Edwards

  “Jesus H. Christ. I wouldn’t expect anything less. I’ll meet you there.”

  He hung up as Lorenz was pulling into my neighborhood. I spotted my Uncle Jasper’s big ass pickup in front of us, speeding toward my house. When we pulled up, my father, Uncle Clark, and Uncle Levi were all standing on my lawn.

  Lorenz stopped the patrol car in the middle of the street, uncaring he was blocking traffic.

  “What happened?” I ran toward the group of men.

  “Congressman Harris pushed his way in when your mom was leaving to go to the store. It was dumb fucking luck he got the drop on her. He tied her up and held a gun to her head and Honor left with him.”

  “Motherfucker!” I roared. “Did Mom see a car?”

  “Negative. He was at the door fixin’ to knock when she opened it to leave. He bum-rushed her.”

  “Where’s Carson?”

  “Fuck, son. We walked in and saw your mom tied up, I untied her, cleared Honor’s room, and locked them in so I could check the rest of the house. Blake’s in there with them now.”

  I was happy my Aunt Blake was with my mom and Carson.

  “How is she?”

  “I told you, pissed as fuck.”

  “Physically?”

  “Fine.”

  “I need to talk to Ethan,” my mom yelled from inside the house.

  I jogged to my front door, and my anger spiked. A kitchen chair was in the middle of the living room, plastic zip ties, which had obviously been cut off my mom, lay on the floor, and a blue bandana I’d never seen was on the coffee table.

  “I asked you to stay in the bedroom,” my dad scolded.

  “Not now, Lenox.”

  Yeah, my mom was furious. If looks could kill, my father would be dead on the floor.

  “You okay, Mom?”

  “No! I’m so sorry, Ethan. I tried to stop her. I knew your dad was on his way. But when he put the gun to my head, she told him she’d go with him.”

  “It’s okay, Mama. We’ll find her.”

  “She wanted me to tell you something.”

  “What did she say?”

  I stared at my mom as she told me Honor’s last words about how much she loved me and had known from the first day she saw me in the park. Her message sounded a lot like a goodbye and my gut knotted at the idea.

  “I’m so sorry, son.” Seeing the look of fury and devastation in her eyes, I knew Mama Bear was in full force. “That son of a bitch caught me by surprise.”

  “I know, Mama. There’s nothing to be sorry for. We’re gonna find her.”

  I was one lucky son of a bitch having Lily Lenox as my mom.

  27

  Frank had officially lost his marbles. He was screaming at me about videos I’d stolen from his house. I had no idea what he was talking about and now I was up shit creek without a paddle. When he’d put his gun to Lily’s head and demanded I tell him where they were, I’d lied to him and told him they weren’t at the house, and I’d hidden them. I’d already given him my camera, memory cards, and laptop. He thought he’d successfully confiscated the images I’d taken of him sneaking in his whores. Idiot. He’d forgotten about cloud storage.

  “You better not be lying, or you’ll end up like your mother. You’ve always been a pain in the ass and you never could follow directions.”

  My mom? What did he mean by that? My mom had died in a car accident.

  “Don’t talk about my mother,” I bravely demanded. He could say whatever he wanted about me, but I never wanted to hear my mom’s name come from his lying, cheating lips.

  “Your mom was a blackmailing bitch. Bet you didn’t know that, did you?” He laughed. “She thought she could play me. In the end, I taught her the same lesson you’re about to learn. I always win. Now, where the fuck is this park?”

  “What did you do?” I yelled, not bothering to answer him. “Did you have Sam run her off the road too?”

  “Samuel? I wouldn’t trust that nincompoop with anything of importance. He’s lazy and doesn’t have what it takes to get the job done.”

  And I wonder who made him that way? Frank had given Sam anything he’d wanted when we were teenagers. He’d made him into the spoiled, entitled prick he was today.

  “Then who, Frank?”

  “You know the saying: if you want something done right, do it yourself.”

  “You wouldn’t dare get your hands dirty.”

  Frank slammed on the brakes and pulled into a fast food parking lot and turned to me.

  “Wouldn’t I? You have no idea what I’m capable of. Now tell me which goddamn park you buried the videos in.”

  “Not until you tell me what happened to my mom.”

  Fuck him. If I was going to die, I wanted to the truth about my mother’s car accident.

  “The bitch had gone too far. She wanted me to kick Sam out. She’d caught him in your room being a normal teenage boy, and, as always, she over reacted and demanded I tell my own fucking son he had to move out of my house. The nerve of that bitch. It was easier to let her believe she’d been blackmailing me into not divorcing her. I knew she didn’t want to go back to being a waitress and living in a shitty apartment with her brat, and I needed her on my arm for state dinners. It was a win-win. She was useful until she wasn’t. Then it was time for me to dispose of her.”

  “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” I screamed and did my best to swing my zip tied hands in his direction. I only made contact once before he grabbed my hands and yanked them to a stop.

  “You’re gonna pay for that, too, bitch.” Spittle landed on my forehead and cheeks as he yelled in my face.

  I couldn’t believe my mom had actually said something to Frank about Sam. All the times I’d talked to her about what he’d been doing, she’d blown me off and told me I was wrong. I wanted to ask what she had on him, but it didn’t seem all that important at the moment. Instead I thought back to the accident. Frank was home with me when my mother lost control of her car and slammed into a semi.

  “What did you do?” I demanded.

  “Made sure when she left the hotel where she’d met with her lover her brakes wouldn’t work. It really was simple.”

  He did it. He really killed my mother.

  “Fuck you. You’re a lying murderer. My mom would never cheat. You’re the one who was fucking every prostitute in Atlanta.”

  “Your mother had been fucking Barry Wells for years. Why do you think he agreed to my proposal when I offered for you to marry his son? He didn’t want his wife to find out.”

  My head was spinning with all this new information. Everything had been a lie. I was so furious and hurt I was numb. I didn’t know if I wanted to scream at Frank or crawl into a corner and cry.

  “Why did you want me to marry, Greg? What was in it for you?”

  “To keep a leash on you. I knew you were planning on moving out and I couldn’t risk you opening your mouth. You’d seen too much.”

  “And when that didn’t work you decided to try and kill me, too.”

  “I warned you. It didn’t have to be this way. But again, you never fucking listen. You’re just as stubborn as your mother was. Confession time is over. Either tell me where the park is, or I’ll kill you now and after I dump your body, that little girl will be next. What will that trash cop think of you then—the woman who got his daughter killed?” He pulled his gun out of his coat pocket and pointed it at me.

  I hated Frank with every fiber of my being. First, he’d hurt Lily and threatened to kill her, now he was threatening Carson. What had I gotten them into? I should’ve left after our run-in at the restaurant, but I’d been selfish and hadn’t wanted to give them up. Now, because of me, they were all in danger. And there was no denying it was my fault. I hoped Ethan and Lenox would find him and make him pay.

  “Head to the West End Motel. Make a left at the intersection. There’s a park a few blocks down.”

  I prayed I’d stalled Frank long enough for Ethan to figure out where I was. I
f not, at least I’d make Frank kill me in a public place. He hadn’t thought out his plan very well. I guess desperate people really did do desperate things. Couple that with Frank’s ego and belief he was above the law, he thought he’d literarily get away with murder—and why shouldn’t he, he’d gotten away with my mother’s.

  28

  “Repeat it again?” I asked my mom.

  I was only just keeping my temper in check. If I’d thought waiting for Honor to pull through surgery was torture, I was wrong. This was worse. Way fucking worse.

  “She said for me to tell you she loved you. She knew the first day she saw you. Then she said, tell Ethan everything always comes full circle. The beginning is often the end.”

  Honor’s words cut me to the quick.

  My Uncle Levi came out of Honor’s room holding a box that had Katie—misc. written in black marker. “Who’s Katie?” he asked.

  “Honor’s mother.”

  “Okay, so, Honor’s online activity is boring,” my Aunt Blake said from the dining room table. Her fingers were flying across the keyboard as she spoke. “No social media. She spends most of her time online reading blogs related to photography. Professional print labs and gallery websites. Most recently she’d been searching parenting websites. One in particular called Baby Center. She’s joined two groups—Stepparent Adoption and Mothers and Daughters.”

  My heart did a somersault, Honor had been looking up parenting and adoption sites. I should’ve felt guilty about invading her privacy but if any of the information could lead us to her, I couldn’t summon the feeling.

  “Mom. You said Frank wanted to know where the videos were?”

  “Yes. He wanted some pictures she had, and she gave him her camera stuff and her computer.”

  “When we saw him at the restaurant, she told him she had pictures of him with women. But she never said anything about videos.”

  “She has cloud storage, but it’s password protected,” Blake announced. “It’ll take me a while to figure it out.”

  “Try Buck Sully,” my dad offered.

  “She told Frank she’d take him to where she hid the videos?” I asked my mom for clarification.

  “Yes. She told him if he didn’t hurt me, she’d show him. He told her if she was lying he’d kill her and be back for me. I tried to tell her not to go. I knew your dad was on his way. But Frank had already gagged me, and she refused to make eye contact with me. She was more concerned about me than herself.”

  I glanced at the box now in front of me on the coffee table and started to peel back the packing tape. Most of the adhesive had worn off, a testament to how long it had been since the box had been opened.

  “I’m in,” Blake told us. “You were right, Lenox. Buck Sully for the win.”

  I moved the items in the box around and wondered why Honor had never opened it. There were pictures of her with both her mom and dad. A scrap of fabric, baby shoes, a lock of hair taped to a piece of paper. It was a box of keepsakes from Honor’s youth. The only thing out of place were two flash drives. I fished them out of the bottom and turned to Blake, just as she was turning the screen of her laptop in our direction.

  “Back up of the pictures of the congressman with the women.”

  “Here, check these.” I handed her the drives.

  Nothing we’d found was going to lead us to where Honor was. However we did have enough to nail the son of a bitch. But none of that mattered if we didn’t find her before Frank hurt her.

  Fuck.

  Where are you Honor? Where would you hide the videos?

  “There’s not enough eye bleach to erase what I just saw,” my Aunt Blake complained. “Guess we now know what videos he’s after.”

  I turned toward the screen and watched in horror as Harris’s pasty white ass drilled into a redheaded woman.

  “That’s not Katie.” Jasper said holding up a picture of Honor and her mother. “She had light brown hair.”

  “I don’t think she knew about the videos,” I said.

  “If she did know, she was leading him away from the house to protect Lily, because there are a bunch more videos on these memory sticks,” Blake told me.

  I looked at my dad, his arms were crossed across his chest, and when I looked at my uncles, they were mirroring his stance, they all had matching scowls. What the hell were we missing?

  “Everything comes full circle. The beginning is often the end.” I contemplated Honor’s words again.

  “Does that mean something to you?” Levi asked.

  “No. But I feel like it should.”

  “She said she knew the first day she saw you,” my dad reminded me.

  “First day, the beginning, full circle. Where did you meet her?” Clark asked.

  “The park off Gambler by the West End Motel,” I answered.

  “Would she take him to a park or the motel she was staying in?” my dad asked.

  Neither made sense if you were hiding videos. A room would be cleaned, there would be no good hiding places. And a park? That made even less sense, but if Honor was trying to send me a message—the park was the answer.

  “Detective Wild and Lorenz will come with me to the West End Motel. What room was she staying in?” Captain Rolland asked.

  “Three hundred,” I answered.

  “We’ll head there now. You head to the park. I don’t think I have to remind you there are—”

  “You don’t,” I cut Captain Rolland off. “I promise to use my best judgment, but I can’t promise I won’t protect my woman at all cost.”

  Captain Rolland sighed long and hard before turning to Lorenz. “Change of plans. You go with Ethan. I’ll take Wild with me. Don’t let him get his ass in a sling. Necessary force only.”

  “Copy that,” Lorenz replied.

  “Let’s head out,” my dad said, and my uncles followed.

  “I love you, Mama. I’m sorry you were caught up in all this.”

  “Don’t start. I’m fine. Go get Honor and bring her home to us.”

  “Carson—”

  “Is fine. Your aunts are upstairs with her now. Go.”

  Lorenz was waiting for me next to the police cruiser by the time I made my way outside.

  We were half-way to the park, my dad and uncles following behind, when Lorenz spoke. “We’ll find her.”

  I gritted my teeth to prevent myself from lashing out. He couldn’t know that for sure. We had nothing. A hunch based on a cryptic message from Honor. I still didn’t understand why she would have pointed us to the park, if she had at all. And was the congressman so stupid he’d believe she hid the flash drives at the park like some kind of buried treasure?

  Not a goddamn thing made sense.

  “The swings where I first saw her are on the north side of the park. Pull into the south entrance.”

  I checked the mirror and saw my dad was still following us. Lorenz pulled into a parking spot concealed by a row of thick evergreens.

  My dad and my uncles had exited my dad’s SUV and were already on high alert, scanning the area around us.

  “Jasper, Clark, and Levi you take the west side of the park. It will be harder to conceal your movements because there aren’t a lot of trees. We’ll take the east side,” I told the group. I watched as each man lifted their T-shirt, exposing the guns sheathed at their hips. They each tucked the material behind their Kydex holsters, giving them easy access to their weapons.

  Fuck. This was not the middle east nor was it a war zone. None of my uncles would give zero fucks about shooting Frank dead in a park full of people. Not that there looked to be many people there in the middle of the day if the empty parking lot was anything to go by.

  “If deadly force—”

  “This is your op, son. You make the calls but don’t think I won’t place a bullet between his eyes if the opportunity presents itself. The motherfucker put his hands on my wife, your woman, and scared my granddaughter. And they. . .” he stabbed his finger in my uncles’ direction. “
Feel the exact same way. He fucked with our family, and no one fucks with our women.”

  “I know, Dad. I don’t need the reminder, He took my woman out of her home and he had the balls to touch my mother.” I ground my teeth. “But I don’t need you in lockup until we sort out whether it was justifiable homicide, while mom is freaking the fuck out. I have the badge here, not you. Your carry permit won’t do shit to protect you. So, I’m telling you, if it comes to it, I have the fucking honor of putting him down. The four of you are backup only.”

  “Chip off the old block,” my Uncle Clark chuckled. “Copy that, Officer Lenox.”

  “Just like the good old days. Glad to see the Lenox retribution gene was passed down,” Jasper added.

  Not wanting to waste any more time on mindless banter, I flipped the two of them the middle finger and broke from the huddle, heading for the thick tree line on the east side of the park. The extra foliage was necessary for me and Lorenz. We were both in uniform, Frank would spot us from a mile away. Branches snapped under my feet as I made my way through the thick brush at a fast clip. With more than two hundred yards until the woods opened at the play area, I wasn’t worried about Frank hearing us. If they were even here.

  The sweltering humidity had my T-shirt under my uniform top and vest soaked and my hands clammy. Or was it my anger bubbling over? I slowed my pace and balled my right hand into a fist, lifting it to stop my dad and Lorenz from progressing.

  “Did you hear that?” I whispered.

  All three of us stood in silence, straining to hear.

  “There it is again,” I told them.

  “Copy,” my dad mouthed.

  A few moments later the voice was louder and easier to understand.

  “You better not be lying to me, bitch.”

  It was Frank. Holy fuck, she had brought him to the park. My dad pointed to the right and broke off, silently disappearing behind the shrubbery. Lorenz nodded to the left and he, too, disappeared. I continued as silently as I could, hoping we could surround Frank before he spotted one of us.

  “I’m not. It’s under a magnolia,” Honor yelled. Good, she sounded more pissed than scared.