“How do you know he was tipped off?”
Colin Francis looked a little uneasy for a second, as his eyes wandered from me to Harley. Then he shrugged. “It was just an assumption, and you just confirmed it.”
Harley’s hand loosened on mine. She was growing more relaxed as this played itself out. It seemed to be going exactly as we had thought it would.
“After he’s arrested and everything starts to play out, what happens then? Will we have to testify?”
“You might. We’ll need to be able to show where the evidence came from.”
“So we’ll have to stick around,” I said.
“Were you planning in leaving town?”
Harley shrugged. “You never know. One of these days I might actually be able to talk him into going back to Texas with me.”
“I was thinking more about the Bahamas.”
Harley shook her head. “I’m fair-skinned. I’d burn too easily.”
“How about Tuscany?” I asked, nuzzling her neck gently. “That might be fun. A little villa in a small community. Our own grove of olive trees.”
“That does sound nice.”
Colin cleared his throat. “Do you have the information?”
I glanced at him. “Do you have what we asked for?”
He glanced toward the windows on the far side of the restaurant, as though he expected someone to be there, watching us. Then he looked deeper into the restaurant, waiting as a waiter walked past our table to the kitchen. It took him several minutes to feel secure that we weren’t being watched. Then he shoved something at my knee under the table.
I wanted to laugh. Didn’t he realize that he’d just confirmed everything we already knew? Not only that, but he’d just hung Philip’s father just as surely as he’d hung himself.
And it was all thanks to Grant.
“Then we’ll give them what they want,” Grant said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Who’s this contact of yours? Who have you been talking to?”
“Philip James. His father—”
“Is Franklin James, right?” Grant shook his head. “The two of you are so far in over your heads, you don’t even know how deeply you’re buried.”
“What are you talking about?” Harley demanded.
“I’m talking about the fact that Franklin James is in just as deep with these people as I am. Who do you think paid for his campaign for the US Senate?”
Harley shook her head. She clearly didn’t want to believe it. I went and sat next to her, took her hand in mine in an attempt to offer a little consolation. I knew exactly how she felt. I didn’t want to believe half of what I’d just learned today either.
“I’ll prove it to you. And the feds. You call this Philip, tell him you want to meet with that reporter fella, but first you want to make a deal. You tell him that you want something in exchange for the information. Something they won’t balk at. Like, say, a couple thousand bucks or a new car or something.”
“A new car. You’re joking, right?” I said.
Grant shook his head. “That’s nothing to these people.” He waved his hand at Harley. “Go tell him what I said. He won’t question you. And when this guy hands you the money, you’ll know which side he’s on.”
Harley did, and Grant was right. Philip never questioned her.
So much for distancing himself from Daddy.
Just to make sure we weren’t walking into something we couldn’t control, I called Randy, the guy who first told me about Grant and got the original feds in touch with me. They immediately jumped when I told them Grant wanted to cooperate. At this very moment, Grant was downtown spilling everything he knew to the feds about his clients, the things he’d done for them, and who else they had working for them. Grant even knew where they could be found. They were in town, sitting back to watch the show, unaware that they were about to become the star attraction.
There were also half a dozen agents here in this room just waiting for me to signal them.
We didn’t have to go through with this. But I wanted to know what was in the information I’d gathered that they wanted so badly.
I took the package he slid under the table to me and put it in Harley’s lap.
“Can I ask you something?”
Colin shrugged, but his eyes were nervously moving around the room again.
“Did you really have proof that Margaret hit a teenager on the streets in Santa Monica? Or did you just hear a rumor and suspect you could bluff your way through it?”
Colin’s face tightened, as he turned his gaze back to mine. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You see, I was there. I was in the car with her. And I saw that boy before she hit him. He was drunk as a skunk. That’s why he stepped into the street. And Margaret, she didn’t have her license yet, and if she’d been caught driving, she wouldn’t have been able to get it until she was eighteen. She didn’t want that, so she asked me to pretend that I was driving. So, even if you talked to the victim himself, who I know for a fact is serving nine years in the federal penitentiary, he would have told you I was driving.”
Harley’s mouth opened a little as she listened to me talk, but she shut it again, aware of all the ears listening to us.
Colin’s eyes narrowed even more.
“What do you want with this information, anyway? It only incriminates you and your people.”
“If you believe that,” he said slowly, “then you don’t fully understand what it is you have.”
All pretense was gone now. He wasn’t pretending to be a federal agent or a reporter anymore. He was just a terrorist who thought he could control everyone around him. But maybe he’d finally met someone he couldn’t bully. And that was making him nervous.
“I have a list of dates. Of times when you and your people came into town to meet with Grant. And I have a bunch of deeds to properties you bought up that will, very soon, belong to the United States government. This is all stuff the government will have very soon. So why is it important to you?”
Colin just shook his head as he slowly stood up.
“This conversation is over.”
“It certainly is,” our waiter said, as he came up behind Colin and slapped handcuffs on his wrists.
Our waiter was actually a federal agent who’d been listening to the entire conversation via a bug we’d consented to bring in with us when we arrived.
It was in the hem of Harley’s shirt.
I can’t tell you how much satisfaction I felt, watching them handcuff this scum and walk him out of the room.
We’d been told Philip’s father and others Grant had named had been, or would very soon, be arrested. The media would be in a frenzy very soon, everyone trying to get as much of the story as they could.
I still couldn’t make much out of it. All I knew was that Grant had done something wrong, but he’d redeemed himself by going to the authorities before they came to him. And that my mom was there, by his side, as she has always been.
There would be consequences for Grant’s involvement in all of this. For my mom, too. But not as much as there would have been otherwise. Thanks to Harley. Thanks to her quick thinking.
No one could have known about Philip’s dad; that was just an odd twist of fate. Harley believed that Philip was honestly trying to help, that even he didn’t know about his father’s criminal connections. We probably won’t ever know for sure. But it all worked out for the best.
And now it was time to go home and celebrate.
Chapter 34
Harley
I curled up in the bed next to Xander and took another bite of pizza.
“I’m sorry,” I said, as I nibbled at a slice of pepperoni.
“For what?”
“For not remembering you. For putting you through that whole ordeal.”
“It’s not like it was your fault.”
“It must have been hard, though, living here with me when I didn’t even k
now who you were.”
He reached over and rubbed a smear of grease off my chin. “It was rough,” he said, his eyes softening as he studied my face, “being near you and not feeling free to touch you.”
“It must have been surreal.”
“It was…difficult.” He chuckled a little as he picked at his own piece of pizza. “I thought it was all over when your parents showed up and demanded that you go home with them.”
“Yeah?”
“I thought for sure that you would agree to go. I mean, I was standing there, imagining you and your mom in the spare room packing your things while your dad lectured me about forcing myself on you after you made it clear that you no longer wanted me.”
“He would have, too,” I said, laughing around my food.
Xander pushed the empty pizza box onto the floor and flipped over, laying his head in my lap as he ate his last piece. I picked a sausage off of mine and fed it to him.
“I’m sorry about Philip. I guess that wasn’t the grand idea I thought it was.”
“Again, not your fault. And it bought us time. If things had gone differently, we never would have been able to convince Grant to turn himself in.”
“Have you talked to your mom?”
“She said she’d call in the morning.”
“It’ll be okay. Grant will make sure she’s protected.”
I bent and kissed Xander’s nose. Then I pushed him away.
“I need sugar. Isn’t there ice cream in the freezer?”
“Chocolate, I think.”
“Hmm,” I tilted my head as I thought about it. Then nodded. “That’ll do.”
I grabbed his shirt and pulled it on, humming as I went downstairs. My leg was a little sore, and my physical therapist would have a stroke if he saw me walking around without the boot on, but it was cumbersome, and I just couldn’t stand to wear it all the time. Besides, wasn’t the whole idea to get me out of the thing? Maybe taking it off and hobbling down the stairs wasn’t such a horrible idea.
I stumbled around the corner as I made my way into the kitchen. That smarted a little. I’d sure be happy when this thing healed.
“Still hurts?”
I looked up, my heart nearly leaping out of my chest when I saw Margaret sitting at the breakfast nook. She held up a small gold key.
“Xander gave it to me when he first bought the house. In case I ever needed to get in when he wasn’t around.”
“Are you here to see him?” I asked stupidly. “He’s upstairs.”
“Nope. Here to talk to you.”
“Margaret…”
“You know, Xander was the only friend I had when I was a little girl. All those other people’s kids, the Hiltons and the Van Pelts and all the other people’s children Daddy wanted me to be nice to, none of them were like me. They were all precocious little brats. And I…well, I wasn’t perfect, but I was more of an introvert. Until Xander. He knew how to draw me out, how to get me to open up to him. I think I fell in love with him when I was only five and nothing ever really changed.”
My heart sank. I’d accused her of just this when I was trying to make her believe that Xander and I were broken up. But she’d denied it. At the time, I knew it didn’t ring true, but I think I chose to deny that truth.
I couldn’t now.
“Everything I ever asked of him, he would do for me. He even married me when I convinced him that Daddy was trying to force me on some guy I didn’t want. I thought…I assumed that after a while, the marriage would become something more than it was. I hadn’t expected him to continue dating, to go off to graduate school and leave me behind. If he hadn’t done that, I might have pushed the issue some; I might have convinced him then that we were meant to be together. But I thought I had time. And he wasn’t the only one who wanted to sow a few wild oats, you know.”
“You agreed to a divorce.”
“Yeah, but I made sure the paperwork would get lost so that if he ever filed for a marriage license…well, you know.”
“You set us up.”
“When he came around and started talking about you…Harley, this, and Harley, that…I got tired of it really fast. But I couldn’t tell him that. There were other ways to sabotage your relationship.”
“What did you think was going to happen, Margaret? That I would leave him over your ill-fated marriage and you would swoop in to save the day? Not the best plan in the world.”
“No, but it worked for a while. And then Bonnie came to me and told me what Daddy was up to. Told me how you had something you were taking to a reporter that would ruin Daddy’s reputation and possibly put him in jail. I couldn’t let you do that. So, I figured if you were dead, it would kill two birds with one stone…if you know what I mean.”
“Is that why? You thought you would win Xander back if I was dead.”
“I thought that I’d waited long enough. I’ve known Xander Boggs since I was five years old. He was mine to do with as I pleased. And then you walked in and suddenly he doesn’t have time to have dinner with me, to listen to my troubles, to be my date to the occasional party. Breaking up with you wasn’t enough. I needed you gone.”
“You wanted him because he was no longer alone and miserable. Because he wasn’t free to be your second choice.”
“He was mine first. And you…you come along, and it’s not enough to steal Xander from me. You had to steal my daddy, too.”
I shook my head, disgusted by her selfishness. “You could have gone and found a man of your own.”
“I had two men: Daddy and Xander.”
“So you drove the car that hit me.”
“You’re too predictable, Harley. You jog past that damn storefront every morning at the same time every day. All I had to do was wait around the block. When you went past, I just gunned it. If you hadn’t turned and seen me, I probably would have smashed you against the concrete wall of that building, but you turned and the angle wasn’t right. That’s why you flew into that stupid palm tree instead.”
I nodded. I could see it; I had seen it multiple times in my memories since climbing out of bed this morning. I kept telling myself that I was remembering it wrong, that my memory was playing tricks on me. But it was there, strong and definitive. And exactly how she described it.
“So what do you want now? Do you think that I’m just going to walk away now that everything is over, now that Xander and I are finally back together?”
“Oh, I know you won’t. But you know, this part of Los Angeles is nice and everything, but there has been a string of home invasions in this neighborhood over the last few months. A woman even got shot a few blocks over when she surprised the burglars at work.”
As she said it, she pulled a gun out from under the table. It was a good-sized piece, a forty-five maybe. I grew up on a ranch in Texas. I knew guns. And I knew a gun that size had a good kick, but it was also accurate. And the human body makes for a pretty big target.
I stepped back against the wall and held my arms up so that she could see my hands.
“You really can’t believe that Xander won’t put two and two together and figure out what you’ve done.”
“He’ll forgive me just like Daddy did.”
“Your dad?”
“Who do you think helped me get the car fixed after your little accident? You may be a petite girl, but you left one hell of a dent in the front of my car.”
“Grant knew?”
“Of course he knew. He sent me out of town for a few days, had the car fixed, and made sure no one saw me at the scene. He might even have paid off the cops, but I’m not too sure about that. It’s not something he talks about often.”
“You can’t really think that Xander would be as understanding. He doesn’t have the same bond with you that your father does.”
She stood slowly, coming toward me with the gun outstretched between us. “Xander loves me. He always has. If I’d told him about the accident, he would have helped me just like Daddy did. He did it once bef
ore. What’s another hit and run when you’ve already walked down that road?”
“If you love him, how can you be so unaware of who he is as a person?”
Margaret’s face tightened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that Xander carried around a hell of a lot of guilt after the first accident. Do you know that he stayed in contact with the victim? That he used to send him money and that he sends money to his daughter now? Did you know that Xander attended the trial that sent the man to jail for nine years, and that he plans to go to his first parole hearing in six months?”
Margaret stared at me as if I was speaking a foreign language.
“He doesn’t do that.”
“He does. And when he first told me about it, he said he was driving. That’s how much he cares about you. He never told anyone the truth until today. Until he was trying to save your dad from his own fate.”
“Xander?”
“He was the one feeding the feds information on your dad. Did you know that? Did you know they threatened his mother? Did you know that what I was doing that day, trying to meet with that reporter, was just to protect Xander?”
“But Xander wouldn’t turn on my dad. He knows how much that would hurt me.”
“Yeah, well, he was doing it. Maybe his mother meant more to him than you.”
Margaret shook her head, her dark eyes widened by emotion. Her hand was shaking. I thought that maybe if I timed it right, I could knock it out of her hand. But then her focus cleared, and she stared at me.
“You’re lying. You’re just trying to upset me so that you can run. But that’s not happening.”
“I’m just telling you the truth, Margaret. No one is really who you think they are. Not even Xander.”
Tears started to roll down her cheeks. “All I know is that my dad is going to jail because of you. And Xander is gone because of you. That’s all that matters.”
I inclined my head slightly. “You saw Xander when I was in the hospital. You saw how he refused to leave my side, saw how he brought me here even when I didn’t know who he was. Do you really think he’d get over my death that easily?”
KYLE: A Mafia Romance (The Callahans Book 4) Page 33