Alex smiled. “Good choice,” he said, said his goodbyes, and left.
When he got into the waiting SUV, he contacted Matt Scribner, his CFO, and ordered him to get himself, and a team, down to Texas.
“Do you know who’s behind that shit?” Matt asked.
“Yes,” said Alex.
“Who?”
Alex wasn’t prepared to say yet. “Get down here. Finding the woman behind this scam is far more important than recovering the money. You understand?”
He understood. Matt was no choirboy either. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’m on it!”
And Alex hung up the phone just as he was receiving an incoming call, not on his main cellphone, but on his red phone. He answered urgently. It was Tino Castellano. “Tell me they’re okay,” he said.
“They aren’t okay, sir,” Tino responded honestly.
Alex stilled his heart. “Tell me,” he said.
“We were near the Virginia/North Carolina border when a group of patrol cars pulled Miss Grant’s car over. They had apparently been tracking it because they came in force, sir. They arrested them.”
Alex frowned. “Arrested them? What the devil for?”
“They planted drugs in the trunk of her car, sir, and claimed they were hers.”
“Drugs?” Alex asked. “The officers planted the drugs?”
“Yes, sir. Some yahoo planted them in her trunk. And it was more than enough to send her away for a long time, sir.”
Alex couldn’t believe it. “Get me to the airport now!” he ordered his driver. “And contact my pilot. Tell him to get it ready now. I want immediate takeoff.”
“Yes, sir,” the driver responded, and began phoning the pilot as he sped up.
“Where’s Miss Grant now?” Alex asked Tino. “And what about Jordan?”
“Both, sir, have been detained. I’m following them to the station as we speak.”
“Both? They detained Jordan too?”
“Yes, sir. I’m following them to the station as we speak.”
“But why? Why would they plant drugs on them?”
“I’m sure they’re going to proclaim they got themselves a drug smuggler in their county. They have laws, you know, where they can seize your assets if they catch you trafficking in narcotics. I’m thinking that’s what it’s all about. They want that Rolls Royce.”
Alex couldn’t believe it. Ruins lives. Put people away in prison for years. And for what? A fucking car? “And you did not extricate them from that situation why?” Alex asked Tino.
“We were about to, sir,” Tino said. “But then it got even weirder. Even more cop cars flew past us and joined in on the arrest too. I thought we could take on the first group if it came to that. We were prepared to do so. There were only three cop cars at first. But then they showed up in force. There was no way, sir. We would have been shot down dead and Miss Grant and her son could have disappeared from the face of this earth. Because they would have been witnesses. But I made the decision to be the witness for Miss Grant and Jordan. I’m eyeballing everything that’s happening as we speak.”
“Don’t let them out of your sight,” Alex said.
“I won’t, sir.”
“And you played it right to stay back, Tino. Because I need you to bear witness to keep them alive. You follow them to that station and immediately let those cops know you are there as my representative. I’ll have my attorney contact the best local attorneys and get them there, too.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tino, thus far, was the best detail chief Alex had ever had. “But I’m relying on you to keep them alive, and to keep those cops on their toes.”
“Yes, sir,” Tino said. “I will, sir.”
Then Alex frowned. “Please,” he added, with pain in his voice.
And Tino’s voice became even more resolute. “Yes, sir,” he said. And they ended the call.
Alex’s heart was hammering. He should have fucked Texas and been there with Kari and Jordan. He should have been there! “Damn! Damn! Damn!” he yelled. “Step on it, gotdammit!” he yelled at his driver. “Get me to that airport now!”
“Yes, sir,” the driver responded in a nervous voice, and stepped on it even more. He was doing upwards of ninety miles per hour to get Alex to his plane.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When Alex entered the police station in Hobnob, Virginia, a town so foreign to him he still couldn’t understand its name, his backup was already there. Six local attorneys, all hired over the phone by Alex himself, as well as Tino Castellano. Alex was also pleased to see that Benny Church, Jordan’s godfather, had heeded his call and gotten his ass there too. His wife Faye Church and Lucinda Mayes, Kari’s best friends, had also flown to town with him. They were all there, representing for Kari, but the fear Alex had in his heart was still achingly real. Everybody who should have been there was right there in front of him. Everybody except Kari and Jordan.
When Alex entered the station, the entire group, led by Benny, made their way over to him. Alex, in his tailored suit and carrying a briefcase, looked as if he’d just walked out of a business meeting rather than flown all the way from El Paso, and his cool was a little disconcerting to the Apple Valley group. They were frantic and worried sick. Alex looked calm as calm could get!
“Hello, sir.” Benny and Alex shook hands.
“Hello, Faye,” Alex said as he placed his arm around Faye’s waist and Faye hugged him. Lucinda hugged him too. “We’re worried sick,” she said to him.
“Where are they?” Alex asked Benny.
“They’re here,” Benny responded. “Tino has confirmed that. But these people won’t tell us anything. All the local lawyers have tried, I’ve tried, but they won’t give any information other than to say she’s still being processed.”
“Bullshit,” Alex said, and it was the first time any of them saw any sign of emotion on his face.
“We know it, too, sir,” Benny said. “But that’s what we’re getting. We even dropped your name, repeatedly, but these jokers are acting as if they’d never heard of you. It’s like the land that time forgot!”
Alex knew it would be this level of resistance. As Tino said, they wanted that Rolls. “Who’s in charge?” he asked. “Chief Duncan?”
Benny was surprised Alex knew already. “Yes, sir,” he said. “He’s also the guy who was in on the arrest. But even he won’t see us.”
Everything within Alex wanted to call in an army and flatten that entire fucking police station, but he knew making Kari and Jordan fugitives from justice wouldn’t exactly help their cause. And although his anger was all inward, and he was a master at revealing only his poker face, he was beginning to show some signs. Those local lawyers who only knew Alex by name and reputation didn’t see it. But Benny saw it.
Alex left their side and made his way to the front desk. The desk sergeant, who had been dealing with that arrogant crowd all night, didn’t look happy to see Alex either. “Yes?” he asked.
“Tell Chief Duncan I’m here to see him,” Alex said.
JimBob, the cop in on the arrest, too, was standing behind the desk pouring himself a cup of coffee. He laughed. But the desk sergeant didn’t find it funny. The nerve of these people, he thought. “And who are you?” he asked.
“Joe McGraw,” Alex said.
Everybody in Alex’s party looked at him. Joe McGraw? Who was that?
But it was the perplexed sergeant who asked that question. “Who?”
Alex didn’t miss a beat. “Your boss will know,” he said.
The sergeant stared at him. Was this some kind of con? And if it was, the sergeant knew he would be in trouble for disturbing the chief like that. But he nodded to JimBob anyway. And JimBob went across the hall and into an office.
Alex desperately wanted to ask the sergeant if Kari and Jordan were okay, but he knew he wouldn’t get a straight answer. Men with egos were men with insecurities, and the men he’d thus far encountered in that backwater town seemed to wear
their insecurities on their sleeves. They thought it was toughness they were displaying, their homegrown brand of machoism, but Alex knew the difference.
The door to the office didn’t just open, but it flew open, and Chief Duncan, the same chief who had arrested Kari and Jordan on the side of the highway, hurried out with JimBob behind him. But when Alex turned to face him, he frowned. “You ain’t no Joe McGraw,” he declared.
“No, I am not,” Alex said and the sergeant rose to his feet. It would be his ass if the chief was angry enough!
“But,” Alex continued, “do you not find it interesting that I know who Joe McGraw is?”
The chief’s face changed from anger to what could only be described as embarrassment. He glanced at his sergeant, and Benny and the group further back, to see if they picked up on his sudden change in mood. And then he looked at Alex. “What do you want?” he asked him.
“A moment of your time,” Alex said.
The chief looked again at the people around him, but then he nodded his head. And just like that, by dropping a name nobody in that station had ever heard of, Alex got more accomplished in a few minutes than hours of pleads by the entire gang before him.
The chief pushed JimBob out of the way, and he and Alex went into his office, with the door promptly closed behind them.
Benny, Faye, Lucinda, and all of the local lawyers immediately pulled out their cell phones to Google Joe McGraw. Even the sergeant pulled out his cell phone too.
But inside that office, there was no need for Google. The chief walked behind his desk and sat down. Alex walked up to the desk and stood in front of it. “Who are you?” the chief asked.
“Alex Drakos.”
“Drakos, hun? They claim you’re somebody famous. I’ve never heard of you.” But the chief had something more pressing on his mind. “How do you know Joe?”
“I don’t.”
The chief frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know him. I just know you killed his father two decades ago when you were a rookie cop and he was dating your ex-wife. I know it was cold-blooded murder and you and your minions made it look like old Joe wasn’t murdered, he simply committed suicide.”
“It was a suicide!”
“Yes, it was,” Alex said, “in the same way the arrest of my lady was a drug bust.”
The chief stared at him. “Who are you?”
“I told you who I am. You will drop all charges against Karena Grant and her son Jordan. You will return the automobile, her automobile, back to her. And I will give you this.” He sat the briefcase onto the chief’s desk.
“What’s that?”
Alex opened the briefcase and then turned it toward the chief. “Two-hundred thousand dollars in untraceable bills,” Alex said.
The chief’s eyes went big as he stared at the rows and rows of hard, cold cash.
“All for you,” Alex said, “and you alone.”
“Just if I release that . . . woman?”
“And her child, yes.”
The chief stared at Alex. “You’d give me all of that money for them?”
He’d give his life for them, but that wasn’t the chief’s business. “Yes,” he said in what even he knew was an understatement. “Drop all charges against Karena and Jordan Grant. Discipline the officers who planted those drugs on them.” Although Alex already knew the chief was in on the frame. “Clear any mention of their names.”
And when the chief looked away from Alex, and at that cash again, Alex knew the victory was his. He knew Kari and Jordan would be going home.
And he was right. He left the chief and that briefcase in the chief’s office, and he went back into the lobby of the station. And within minutes, all charges against Kari and Jordan were dropped, and they were free to go. A case of mistaken identity was the official reason.
But Alex didn’t give a shit. He just wanted them out of that town. Because, as they waited in that lobby for Kari and Jordan to show their faces, he saw other faces. The faces of men, all of them black men, being escorted in arm and leg chains from one area of the station to what was presumably the jail cells. And every one of them had been badly beaten. Every one of them had bruised faces, black eyes, knots on their foreheads.
Benny, who was seated next to Alex on the long bench, shook his head. “Even in America,” he said. “And they can always get away with it by claiming those guys were resisting arrest. Or they feared for their lives. Crap like that.”
“You’d think they would at least spare some of them,” Lucinda, who sat on the opposite side of Alex, said. “Just to at least pretend they’re interested in justice.”
“Spare some?” Faye asked. “Are you joking? These people have no shame!”
“Hate doesn’t know shame,” Benny said. “All it knows is hate.”
But Alex didn’t engage in the conversation at all. He just sat there, with his legs folded, and watched prisoner after prisoner lumber their beaten bodies to the next hellhole. One prisoner was moving too slow for JimBob, who was overseeing the move from holding cell to lock up, and he took what looked like a metal bat he had in his hand and slammed it into the man’s back, taking the man to his knees and taking Benny, who was especially touched by the treatment of his fellow black men, to his feet.
“Get your ass up!” JimBob yelled to the prisoner. “Get your ass up!”
The unfortunate man stood up. But, unfortunately, the man spat a wad in JimBob’s fluffy pink face and JimBob took that bat and gave that man a beat down he wouldn’t soon forget.
But when he began beating the man on his penis, as if he wanted to destroy his very manhood, Benny attempted to go to the man’s defense. “You dumb cracker!” he yelled with gritted teeth.
But Alex rose and pulled him back. Benny was too valuable to waste away in some jail cell in Virginia. “Not your fight,” he said to the up-and-coming attorney. “Sit down.”
Benny was angry as hell, but he knew Alex was right. Besides, his wife Faye, and family friend Lucinda, were holding him back too. And he did as Alex had ordered and sat back down.
But although Alex remained pokerfaced throughout the prisoner movement, he was not inwardly so calm. He was worried sick that the same fate had befallen Kari and Jordan. What if they did the same to them, he wondered. Kari could be feisty as shit when she wanted to be, and she might have rubbed those insecure good old boys the wrong way. What if those assholes beat her, too, as punishment? Or raped her? His mind was not going to rest until he saw her for himself. Until he held her again. Until he held Jordan!
But they had to wait. The prisoner transfer show was long over, and they still were waiting. It was taking too long. So long that a part of Alex wondered if that chief had called the Feds on him for bribing an official. Was he that kind of man? Alex’s investigation, as he flew from El Paso, had said no, he was not that kind of man. He could be and had been bought repeatedly. He had no morals whatsoever. If past was prologue, he was certain a man like Chief Duncan hadn’t turned him in.
But the wait was still infuriating. Drop the damn charges and let them go. What was the big damn deal?
When the door to the back of the station, where the cells were housed, was finally opened and Jordan emerged, Alex understood why it took so long. Just like those other black men that had been paraded as if they were headed for the auction block, Jordan, a young black man himself, had been beaten as well. It was obvious the chief’s men had been attempting to nurse his wounds before presenting him to Alex, but it didn’t work. Jordan still had a swollen right eye, and bruising underneath.
Faye and Lucinda let out a cry of horror and ran to Jordan. They pulled him into their arms and smothered him with mothering. Benny, too, hurried to his side. He was so angry he could hardly contain his fury. He looked at the desk sergeant, who was looking at him as if he dared him to question what he was seeing. And Benny knew, if he said a word, they would lock him up on trumped-up charges too. For his wife’s sake, for his go
dson’s sake, for Kari’s sake since they still had not presented her yet, and even for his law license’s sake, he held his peace.
But it was a hellish peace to hold.
Alex was holding it together, too, as he stood up and stared at Jordan’s condition. He knew Kari was still somewhere in that station and he had to keep it together. But when Jordan looked away from the Apple Valley group that surrounded him, and looked at his future stepfather, Alex’s control nearly broke. He didn’t see physical pain in Jordan’s beautiful, long-lashed eyes, although he knew pain was there. He didn’t even see humiliation or anger. But he saw sadness in Jordan’s eyes. Those local assholes had taken him there. And he was the kind of kid who didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to hate anybody. He didn’t want to use those bad cops as an indictment on all cops. Or on all white people. But those assholes had taken him there. And it hurt him.
Alex went to Jordan and pulled Jordan into his arms. He was the white man who had to prove to Jordan that all white men were not like those insecure, blame-the-world-for-their-own-failures bastards. It was already difficult, but after today Alex knew it was going to be a herculean task. But that was where they were.
Jordan fought back tears as he held Alex tightly. Other than his godfather Benny, whom he affectionately referred to as his uncle, he had no male role models. His father died when his father was only seventeen and Jordan had just been born to a fifteen-year-old mother. He didn’t know his grandfather, on either side, at all. But despite his sadness, and all the repressed anger he felt toward the white men who had beaten him and arrested him, he and this white man still had a bond. And the way Alex held him, as if he wasn’t about to let him go, only solidified that bond.
But they both were worried about Kari.
“Where’s Ma?” Jordan asked Alex when they stopped embracing. “They said I was free to go. What about my mama?”
“She’s being processed out, too,” Alex said. At least that was the deal he’d cut. Now, given the delays, he wasn’t so sure. And it was inwardly tearing Alex apart. Where the fuck was Karena???
Alex Drakos: His Dangerous Affair (The Alex Drakos Romantic Suspense Series Book 4) Page 9