by LK Collins
“Hey, Max.”
“I got your dry cleaning in case you want to change before court this morning.”
“And coffee,” I say raising the cup to him.
“That was actually Alexa; she knew you guys slept here last night. So are you ready for court today? Can I help at all?”
“I think we’re good, but thanks for offering.” Max hangs my dry cleaning on the back of my office door. I know he means well, and I appreciate it, but sometimes it pains me to just have simple small talk. For some reason, especially lately, I’ve found myself plunged deep into thoughts of what my life used to be like, what I expected my future to become, how I saw things unfolding between Natalene and I, and pulling myself to the surface for any kind of random chitchat has been like a spike between the eyes. I find myself preferring those depths, wishing things could have been different. I’d thought that if I threw myself into Liam Brown hard enough, I could really be him, truly get past it all, but it’s worked it’s way back up to the front of my mind. For all these years, I’d let it go. I didn’t look back or even remember who Micah was, but lately something inside of me has changed. There’s a tic in my brain calling me back. I have to hope that it’s just a temporary trigger, that seeing Bridgette safe brought it up, and now my thought process will go back to the way things have been, melt into a Liam frame of mind. I can never go back to my old life, so there’s no point to think much about it now.
Getting up, I close my door and change into the fresh suit. Checking the clock, we have to get going, so after brushing my teeth and running some water through my hair, I head out, running smack dab into Bridgette. It’s her first day back in the office, and seeing her makes everything click. She’s absolutely the reason that my mind has been off balance. I was such an instrumental part in helping find her that I didn’t even realize then what it had done to me. Thinking back on it now, I guess when we had to rescue her, I went into a mode, a mode that I used to live in when I was Micah, pulling up all my sketchiest skills and putting them into practice, and I hadn’t been in that mode in years. It’s like Micah was buried just beneath the surface and was just waiting to be brought back to life.
“Hey, Bridgette, how are you?” I ask.
“I’m good. I wanted to thank you for everything. I mean, you’ve done so…” Her voice muffles as my mind glides back to the night I was shot. I can see Natalene’s face next to mine, her loving eyes, so reassuring even though there was pain in them. She listened to me and believed that I would find her. She followed the plan that we had set up in case of an emergency, even though I knew right then that I was turning my back on her. I have to live with that decision every day, and recently, every day that goes by is taking a toll on me more and more.
But what I did was to keep us both safe and alive. So I strive forward, knowing it’s the right thing.
Sitting back, I keep my eye on C.J. as he ruthlessly questions the on-scene medical examiner. After our all-nighter, the three of us agreed this is where we need to make the case stick.
On the projector are the crime scene photos, and when it flips to the victim on his back with a pool of blood around him, my mind flashes back to that fateful night a decade ago. I can still picture my brother lying there…the life drained from him. He died in almost the same position as Mr. Pascal and the similarities rock my soul.
My mind races to my dad. The sound of his body as it hit the floor. He tried to save us, but ultimately, his ego and need to avenge my mother’s death is what ended him and changed everything for all of us. Some say that you can’t change your fate, but when you mess with the devil, he’ll flip your world upside down. That’s precisely what we did – Moretti is the devil and we fucked with him. I wonder sometimes why they died and I didn’t. What is my purpose now? I’ve tried in my own fucked up way to make up for past sins in my work as a lawyer, but I don’t have my family, I can’t be with Natalene…just thinking her name is agonizing. Fuck, I miss her – so much.
Vincent taps me on the shoulder. “Did you hear that?” he whispers.
I nod my head acting like I was listening all along and suppress the thoughts that have quickly pulled me out of my zone. That life lost me everything. I was reckless, so now I’m methodical in everything that I do and for damn good reason. It’s gotten me this far and it’s kept me safe, plus I know there is no going back for me, unless I want to sign my own death certificate. If I even think for a second that I can change the way things are, it will endanger the both of us.
Clearing my mind, I let go of what I lost because it’s never coming back and listen to the rest of the testimony. I try to fill in the blanks for what I’ve missed, since I lied to Vincent and haven’t the first clue about what is going on. It sounds like to me that C.J. has been able to coerce the examiner into confirming that there is little chance a one hundred and five pound woman could shoot a man with a .45-caliber gun from across the room and land the shot as accurately as Josephine is accused of doing.
We break for the day and things are feeling like they could be back in our favor. “Good job today,” I tell C.J.
“You’re up tomorrow – better not let me down,” he jokes.
Vincent is on the phone as we walk out so he doesn’t respond.
“Are you guys going back to the office?” I ask before getting into my car.
“Not after last night; Alexa is waiting for me,” he says. “I’m gonna head home.” I give him a wave as he walks off.
“You?” C.J. asks.
“Yeah, I got an email from one of our dispensaries regarding their cash flow, so I’m gonna head in and get it handled.”
“All right, man. See you tomorrow.”
Heading into the office, I call Tony who owns ten of the dispensaries in Colorado and produces some of the best marijuana in the state. He’s not the biggest client we have, but his product allows him to charge ridiculous prices. When the money comes in, I’ve got him all set up to launder it through a cover business. It’s the most risky thing I’ve done in a decade, but at the time when he contacted me, the guys and I where looking to buy a private jet for the firm. Moving their money around is illegal, especially with the marijuana business not being covered by federal laws. That’s why the banks in town are scared to do business with them. However, C.J. and Vincent jumped at the opportunity after I told them how much money we could be bringing in, and for the most part, things have gone surprisingly smooth, so far. It’s all above-board, at least within the firm.
“Tony, it’s Liam.”
“Hey, thanks for getting back to me.” He pauses and I don’t like the silence – he called me.
“I got your email, why are you guys short this month?”
“The cartel, they hit me during a deal and I lost over half of my inventory.”
“Goddammit, Tony, I thought you weren’t doing business with them.”
“I wasn’t.” He exhales into the phone. “But they offered me double the normal asking price for a new strain I developed and—”
“I got it,” I cut him off. “Let me get into the office and look at things. I’ll see what I can do to get you some extra funds. But you’ll owe me double next month, plus a pain-in-the-ass fee.”
“Thanks, man.”
We hang up and right away I know that even for the money, helping these stupid ass potheads wasn’t the best idea. They are amateurs rolling in a shit-ton of cash that they can’t keep track of. I’m their only source of a bank account, or any organization to their business for that fact. They turn to me for everything and it’s starting to piss me off.
Sitting behind my desk, I boot up my computer and turn on all four of my monitors. I log into the software for the dispensaries and look at the dry cleaners that Tony’s funds are laundered through. It’s not looking pretty – he’s not been depositing money like he normally does. They are all almost in the red.
Something’s off. Hacking into his credit report, I see a new loan from Bentley of Denver.
&nbs
p; What the fuck? Is he fucking with me?
My chest tightens; I hate to be lied to. The loan went through today, so I know he is.
Sitting back, anger consumes me. I slam my fist down on my fucking desk and the instant that my hand hits the hard wood surface, everything inside of me spins. My attention is averted to the picture that falls from underneath and drifts towards the floor. It floats through the air like a feather before landing so gingerly next to my shoe. It’s her. Natalene. My throat closes seeing her face, her eyes, her beautiful body. Looking at her again brings back so many memories. I reach down to pick it up and smile as I rub my thumb over the worn image. It’s so faded and light. I forgot that I’d hidden it in here. It’s the only picture that I have of her. I carried it in my wallet for years, and the day that C.J. and I opened this practice, I vowed to never look back on my old life again. So I put it away.
Holding it close to me now, I look into her eyes, the eyes of the only woman that I have ever loved. God, I miss her. Seeing this picture makes me realize how huge the hole is inside of my heart. I’ve justified my decision again and again, but I do wonder how our life would have been had I followed our plan and found her like I’d promised.
Six months after we parted, I was supposed to post a wanted ad on Craigslist in San Diego, California, a place we loved to visit. Looking for one ice cream cone and list all of her favorite toppings on it with my phone number…but I never did. I couldn’t even bring myself to look if she ever posted anything either. Fear took over every time I imagined doing it, like Moretti knew our plan and would sniff it out. And imagining Moretti coming back after us was a horrific thing. Keeping my distance was the only answer. I’m not sure how I’ve survived as long as I have living in fear, but I found a way, and over time, it got easier. I can’t risk her life again, so living apart is the only way to ensure her safety.
My phone rings. It’s Tony. I answer in a pissed off mood, ready to put him in his place.
“Why did you buy a Bentley?” I come straight out, sounding like a nagging bitch, but not caring. Someone needs to put this fucker in line.
“Uhhhh…”
“Exactly. I also noticed that you’ve had basically no deposits lately. So why don’t you return the car, pull your shit together, and deal with the cartel yourself.” I hang up, angry, but knowing that I made my point satisfies me.
Staring down, I realize that I’m still holding Natalene’s picture. I glance up at my screen and consider looking her up, just to make sure that she’s okay and to see where she is.
Did she stick with the plan?
Somehow I’ve managed to hold off for a decade, but her pull is as strong as it ever was and the thought gives me a crazy feeling inside. Besides, I don’t think that Moretti knows where either of us are or he’d have had us dead long ago. So there’s no harm in looking, for my own peace of mind, to quiet the demon working inside of me lately. Maybe this is all I need to get out of the slump I’ve been in since helping find Bridgette. It could give me closure knowing that she’s okay.
Staring at my computer screen, I start where any hacker would, just like when I was searching for Bridgette, and pull up her credit report. I assume that she’s living under the new name that my father had set up for her, Audrey Welsh. Just like I’m living under Liam Brown. I type slowly, each of my fingers moving with hesitation. Her name is in the search field and all I have to do is hit enter, and after a beat, I do. Right away I get back over two hundred matches, but only six are in Washington. Since Seattle was her planned destination if anything ever happened, I narrow my search results down that way and find two. One is fifty-seven years old and the other was deceased at the age of twenty-nine.
My heart stops.
I read the word again, deceased. There is no way that this is my Natalene. The walls of the room are closing in on me, as I’m about to hyperventilate. I click on the date of birth I picked for her, even though it might confirm my worst fears, and sure enough…it is true.
She died…
My heart races even faster as I fear the worst. Goddammit. I thought everything that I was doing was to protect her, but now it all feels so fucking wrong.
Fuck, I shouldn’t have left her.
Fury rolls through me. This is all my fault because I didn’t keep her safe. I should have been a man and found her like I promised. I could have made our lives work somehow, even if we were both in danger. She would have been safer with me than alone.
Leaning forward, I place my head in my hands, reeling in the pain of yet another loss. I did this; it is no one’s fault but my own. She wasn’t meant to be out in this world by herself. Needing to know more, the how, why, when, I get back to what I was trained to do and push forward, pulling up her death certificate. Logging into their system sends a shiver down my spine, but I need to know what happened to her. It takes me all of two minutes to crack their firewall, granting me complete access. Typing in her name and date of death, I get a result and scroll to the bottom of the certificate listing her manner of death. She passed because of “natural causes.”
The fuck she did.
A glimmer of hope sparks inside of me, and within a span of minutes I find myself swinging from life to death and back again. My suspicion peaks – if Moretti or his men did this, they would not have made it look like natural causes. Plus, she was twenty-nine years old – what twenty-nine-year-old anywhere ever dies of natural causes? It’s never natural at twenty-nine. Something or someone has to be responsible. Especially because there was no secondary cause, like cancer or a disease, or other complication. It feels off. Looking at the date of death again, it’s familiar to me. It says she passed away two years ago. Racking my brain, I can’t pinpoint the correlation in my head, so I search the obituaries for both her new and old name and come back with nothing. Something is definitely not right.
Leaning back in my chair, I look out at the sun as it sets over the Rocky Mountains. Her parents would have to know what happened to her. They would’ve celebrated her life, if she really did pass away. They would’ve put something in the paper – that’s just how they were. They loved her dearly, and she would’ve stayed in contact with them, no matter what, even with her new identity. We even talked about how she would do that once we left the country.
But before I jump the gun on this one and make a mistake that I’ll regret, I take a moment to look into them as well. Like I suspected, they are indeed still alive, still in the same house, with the same home phone number. Resting my hand on the phone, I contemplate picking it up and calling her mom and dad now. But what would I even say?
My brain is on autopilot. Nothing could stop me right now. Even though in the back of my mind, I know I shouldn’t, a quick glance at their credit card statement shows they were in Washington just two weeks ago. Doing a search on the account history, it shows that they traveled there four times in the last twelve months, making purchases consistently for about a week at a time. One of which was in April, right around Natalene’s birthday.
Taking a deep breath, I run my hands over my face and through my hair. She has to still be alive, she fucking has to, but…I won’t know until I make the call. Needing to clear my head and plan this out perfectly, I shut everything down. I just need to go home and think about things.
The possibility that Natalene could really be dead hits me hard on the drive home. It’s possible, even if I don’t want it to be. My mind keeps digging deeper and deeper, coming up with all sorts of different fucked up scenarios, all of which have dwindled down to the fact that something’s happened. And the reason her parents keep visiting Washington is to make sense of it all and to try and figure out what really happened, who killed her, how she really died, because it most definitely was not natural causes.
I pour myself a steadying glass of Scotch and sit down on the couch. Staring out the windows overlooking the city lights, I take a drink, preparing my mind to make the call to Natalene’s parents. With the software set up to track their out
going call history once we hang up, I go with my gut – now is the time. If my plan works and they behave as I expect them to, if she is still alive, they will call her as soon as we hang up.
Dialing their number, I’m thinking hard about what to say. I have a plan, but I don’t want to slip up. It begins to ring, and a sheen of sweat covers my forehead.
“Hello?” Her mother, Grace, answers in her soft tone. I’d recognize that voice anywhere. I hope that mine has changed enough so that she doesn’t recognize me.
“Good evening, ma’am, I’m looking for Natalene Siskin.” She’s quiet and I proceed in hopes of making her feel comfortable in giving me any information. “Is this Grace?”
“Yes,” she responds.
“Grace, this is Cliff Youly. Natalene went to school with my daughter, Serenna, and…” I trail off.
“I heard the news, Mr. Youly. I’m very sorry for your daughter, but…Natalene passed away, about a year ago. I wish the girls had stayed closer.”
Fuck yeah, she’s lying. Nat supposedly passed two years ago, a date like that you don’t get wrong unless it never happened. “Oh, wow, I had no idea, that’s terrible,” I tell her, sounding sympathetic.
“Yes, it’s been very hard,” she says, sounding like she’s putting groceries away in the background. It’s like her daughter’s death is nothing to talk about. I’d read online that Serenna is in bad shape after overdosing and now is pretty much a vegetable. Who knew staying up on the news of our hometown would pay off?
“For us too. Well, I was just really hoping that Natalene could come and visit Serenna, maybe her old friend would help. But I’m so very sorry to hear about your loss.”
“Thank you,” she says and hangs up. As the line goes silent, her quick and rude gesture reassures me that I am right. My heart thuds against the walls of my chest. I can sense that Nat is okay. Maybe she thought Moretti was on to her and changed her identity again.