“Thank you.” Cord nodded, and bit back on his grin when he saw her blush. He and Jackson headed for Jake’s office, a room that at one time had likely been a dining room.
Jake nodded as they entered. “Melissa is a senior at the school. She’s here for the next month one day a week as part of her co-op program.”
“That’s a good thing you have going on over there,” Jackson said. “I think it’s good for young adults to get out into the real world, lend a hand, and learn a few basic skills.”
“We think so, too. Of course the reverse is also good—when adults pitch in at the school, either to give talks, or, you know, coach a team.”
Cord swallowed his snicker. There really wasn’t anything subtle about Jake Kendall at all. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jackson scowl.
Before his brother could come up with a retort, Jake set down his pen. “Now, what can I do for y’all? You wouldn’t say on the phone so I doubt you’ve come by with a decision on the offer of that land. Not that there’s any rush on that.”
They’d decided that Cord would speak for them. That was only because Jackson often let his impatience win out over his brain.
“Chase has told us that before anyone is hired, or allowed to settle in town, that there is a security check run on them.”
Jake sat back in his chair, giving the appearance of being completely relaxed. “We’ve had some incidents in the recent past, of people coming to town and trying to kill some of our residents. The Town Trust frowns on that sort of thing. So yes, security checks are performed—on everyone and, yes, that includes the two of you.”
Cord grinned. He was able to read this new-to-him cousin pretty well. He waved his hand in a sign of dismissal. “That’s fine. We’ve got nothing to hide. And that is good because it tells us there are no exceptions to this rule.”
Now Jake looked a bit confused. “That’s right. No exceptions.”
“Would I be correct in presuming that you are the person who goes over these reports? I mean, since you’re the administrator for the Town Trust?”
Jake looked from him to Jackson. Then he shook his head. “I think I’m getting an idea as to why we’re playing twenty questions, here.” He looked out the window that was to his left, and seemed to be gathering his thoughts.
“Our Ginny was in a very abusive relationship before she came to Lusty. She managed to break free, and Adam convinced her to have the bastard charged with assault. He went to jail, locked away for a few years, at least. She stayed here and began to heal, and grew stronger…and Adam and I fell in love with her. And then that bastard who’d hurt her escaped custody.”
“Good Lord. The two of you must have been pissed.” Cord thought of the man who’d hurt Ari coming at her again and his heart nearly stopped.
“We were, and Ginny was terrified.” Jake leaned forward. “Adam and I were all, ‘don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.’ We asked her if she trusted us, and she said she did, and I know she meant it. We told her that we were going to take care of her. We told her that the whole fucking town was going to take care of her.”
Cord nodded his head in perfect understanding, and saw that Jackson was, too. What man worthy of the name would do otherwise?
“And then we turned around and she was gone. Gone! All the way to New Jersey—where she’d never been before, I might add—because we had assured her that she could trust us, without our having asked her what she needed or wanted to do. And what she needed to do, it turned out, was to understand that she could trust herself—her judgment, and her ability to be strong.”
Cord wasn’t stupid, and now he knew Jake was a lot smarter than he’d imagined him to be. “I don’t know if Ginny’s situation compares to Ari’s.”
“No, you don’t. Does Ari know that you’re here today, trying to find out about her past?”
“Hell, no.” Jackson got to his feet and began to pace. “She’s afraid of something, and we don’t know what it is. She’s told us only some of what happened to her when she was a child. We know where she lived and at what age she ran away from her home.”
Cord understood and appreciated the tone in which Jackson had practically spat that last word. He looked over at Jake and wondered if he did, too.
The man was the most inscrutable lawyer he’d ever met.
“Gentlemen, I cannot, and I will not, reveal details gathered in a confidential investigation. My directions from the Town Trust are clear. Our investigators delve rather deeply and gather information the subjects of these investigations believe to be confidential. Once we determine that the subject poses no danger to any member of the community, then those files are, for all intents and purposes, sealed.”
“So she could be in danger, and you won’t do anything about it?” Cord felt his temper rising and had to battle the urge not to move on Jake.
“You’re new here and you don’t know me, so I am going to let that pass. If anything comes up that will lead me to believe there is any danger—to anyone in this community, including Ari—you can damn sure bet your ass that something will be done about it.”
Cord wasn’t proud of that last statement. He held his hands up, palms out. “I’m sorry.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, hoping the slight pressure would help him get his emotions under control.
“Damn it to hell, we’ve barely started and already I can’t get her out of my thoughts. And I sure as hell can’t explain this heavy feeling of dread that’s lodged in my gut.”
“What is it you’re really afraid of? That she’s in danger, or that she’ll run?”
“Don’t even mention that second possibility.” Jackson sounded as strung out, emotionally, as he did. “Her taking off doesn’t even bear thinking about.”
Jake sat back for a moment, as if he was weighing options. “Okay, listen, there is one thing we can do that we haven’t done yet. We can add Ari to the list.”
“What list?”
“One of our people has developed a computer program—sort of like an Everywhere Earth alerts on steroids. This person is charged with monitoring all news outlets and Internet sites and a few other places we won’t talk about for mention of members of the families.”
“Fuck me, that must be one hell of a list,” Cord said.
“And getting bigger all the time. There are only a couple of us who know who this person is, and we trust this person completely. I’ll add Ari to the list and ask him to scan back over the last month or so. If there is anyone out there looking for her—which is what you’re afraid of and likely something she’s afraid of, too—then we’ll know it.”
Cord met his brother’s gaze. Sometimes they could almost read each other’s minds. Jackson nodded, and Cord turned back to Jake. “There’s only one problem with that plan. We think that ‘Ari Stein’ isn’t the name she was born with.”
Jake gave him a very small grin. “Oh, I can assure you that it’s not.” And then he shook his head. “Trust me when I tell you it’s better for her to tell you the rest of her story. And I will remind you that in your own words, the three of you are only getting started.”
Cord looked over at Jackson and knew his brother felt the same way he did. Jake was offering them a hell of a lot less than they’d come here to get—but all things considered, he guessed it really was the best they could hope for.
Chapter 10
Frank Mills had orchestrated three successful congressional campaigns, one governor’s race, and two bids for the United States Senate. But the one campaign success he wanted—craved, really—above all else had eluded him until now.
He believed with all that was in him that of all the men for whom he’d played kingmaker, Thaddeus Bishop was the one man who had what it would take—the drive, the ambition, and the deeply buried sufficiently horrendous skeletons—to be his man in the Oval Office.
All he had to do was work things just right, and the man would be his forever. As he awaited the arrival of his investigator, he reviewed what
he’d managed to pull together so far.
Bishop must have believed he was stupid beyond imagining, to have given him that bullshit line about his stepdaughter having run off due to his “drunken rages.”
He opened the folder on his desk and reviewed the information he’d gathered so far on Representative Thaddeus Bishop. He’d had his eye on the man for nearly two years, and had done some preliminary digging into his background.
Yes, the man was a recovering alcoholic, and yes, he’d turned his life around. Those were good points and would work well with the electorate.
But before he’d done those two commendable things, he’d been not only a mean, ugly drunk, but he’d dabbled in drugs and, most damning, he’d “bought” a few young—very young—prostitutes. One of his contacts had sworn some of the girls—and boys—hadn’t even been of legal age. But that wasn’t the only thing the kids had in common. The girls tended to be slight, and gangly, with long, red hair. The boys had also been similar to each other, all blond haired, brown eyed. Bishop had apparently been very specific in his tastes.
He looked down at the last picture taken of Connie Bishop, her freshman high school picture. The girl fit that description to a tee. Frank Mills didn’t have to be a psychologist to draw the line between why Bishop had used those particular girls—or to come to the conclusion that he’d finally stopped going for the substitutes and instead grabbed the original model.
It was the only thing that made sense, the only explanation for why a pampered, shy girl would leave home—and why she’d run when her stepbrother had spotted her in Austin.
Mills had his suspicions about the stepbrother, too. That could be a potentially greater skeleton in Bishop’s closet. He wasn’t certain how he would go about proving his suspicions. Would Connie have run away from her stepbrother if he’d been in the same boat, so to speak? An interesting question.
Mills was going to take one of two courses of action, depending upon the information his investigator had for him.
He was going to find the girl, and promise her a chance to get back at “dear old dad” for what he’d done to her. Getting her accounting of the events that led to her decision to flee on the record was key. He even knew a couple of notaries who could verify her testimony as legitimately made by her, and make it all nice and legal looking. Then he’d pay her off—it probably wouldn’t take much. Then, after a time, the woman would have a very unfortunate and fatal accident.
His second option was much like the first, but took into consideration the possibility that she would not want to cooperate. There were people quite adept at forcing a person’s cooperation and fortunately for him, some of them owed him, big-time. He’d get his hands on the woman and ensure that she gave him what he needed.
Either way, he would have Thaddeus Bishop by the short hairs.
The report he was about to receive from his investigator was really just a formality. There was only one piece of information he needed from Sly. Mills already had a pretty good idea of the kind of woman Constance Bishop had grown up to be. By all accounts, she’d led a sheltered life, until she’d run away from her letch of a stepdaddy. She somehow evaded the efforts of the police at the time to find her. She’d been a city councilman’s daughter back then, so they would have looked, thoroughly and hard.
A fourteen-year-old babe in the woods wouldn’t have been able to evade the cops without help—and that kind of help came with a particular price tag. She’d likely been pimped out and been damn near worn out and used up by the time she was eighteen. Mills actually had believed, for that reason, she was already dead. It had come as a shock that Bishop’s son—he was betting it had indeed been Jeremy—had seen her apparently alive and well three years ago, in Austin, Texas.
She’d likely found herself a better class of johns in the Lone Star State. He really didn’t think it would be very hard to find her. All he needed was one piece of information, and he’d bet his man Sly had already dug that up.
Once he had the name she’d used to evade being found, actually locating her would likely prove to be the proverbial piece of cake.
His cell phone bleeped, a very short text that he didn’t need to read. Sly Olson had entered the building. Mills looked at his watch. The man was exactly on time. Lucille, his secretary, had just left ten minutes before, on her lunch break. Mills replied with a single letter, their prearranged code that told the man to come up. A couple of minutes later, he heard the outer office door open. The sound of a heavier step told him who’d arrived. He sat back in his chair, his gaze on his inner office door, which stood open.
Sly nodded, came in, and shut the door behind him, a force of habit that Mills couldn’t protest. Keeping the door closed prevented accidental eavesdropping.
“Well?”
Sly sat down and pulled a file folder out of the leather bag he carried. The man was a certified private investigator, but he looked more like a college professor.
“It took a bit of muscle and a few bucks, but I have the name your little hottie used to evade the police. The punk who set her up with it did one hell of a job. And I’ve checked. The dumb broad has even filed tax returns, paying her share to Uncle Sam, under her ‘new name.’”
“I didn’t know hookers paid taxes,” Mills said.
“I guess they do if they’re hookers posing as estheticians.” He handed the folder over.
“Do you want me to look for her? Start in Austin and search outward?”
Mills never liked to keep all his eggs in one basket. “No, I have that covered. I just needed the name. You’ll receive your usual payment.”
Sly knew how to take a hint. He nodded, closed his leather bag, and left as unobtrusively as he’d arrived.
Frank opened it up the file folder and sat back. “Ari Stein.” He shook his head. “I know who you are now, honey. All I have to do is find you.”
* * * *
Ari had intended to resist seeing Cord and Jackson after work on Monday. A part of her was very much afraid that she was becoming addicted to them, even after just one night. Being with them made her want things that, for the last ten years, she’d convinced herself she couldn’t have.
But they’d worn her down, and as she left the spa early—her last appointment for the day had been over at three thirty—she decided to take a walk through town, rather than head right to her apartment. They had asked to pick her up and take her to dinner. But that wasn’t until seven. She had lots of time.
Lusty was actually the smallest town she’d ever lived in. It certainly felt to be the safest town. Ari had thought it might be the perfect place for her. Her reasoning at the time was simple. She’d never heard of Lusty before she’d answered that ad in the Waco paper she’d discovered online.
Never far from her thoughts—and fears—was the time a few years back when she’d looked up and seen someone she knew from her past, someone from Indiana. He’d found her accidentally, she discovered later. No one had ever asked for her by name after she’d left Austin and the salon where she’d worked. She had to believe part of the reason he’d run into her in the first place was that she’d been in a city that was not only large, but a state capital. Yes, it had been happenstance, maybe a one-in-a-million kind of thing, but she thought there were some things she could do to reduce the odds of it occurring again.
So she’d moved then, and ended up moving a couple more times after that. The story had always been the same. She thought she saw someone who looked familiar, or got word that someone was looking for someone and she’d jump to the conclusion they were looking for her. So she’d run to the next big city, starting all over again, but never, ever, feeling safe.
She’d figured a small town like Lusty would be just the place to hide in plain sight. By listening as the ladies talked, she discovered that Sheriff Kendall kept an eye on anyone coming to town who was a stranger. As each day had passed she’d come to believe that moving to Lusty was the smartest decision she’d ever made.
But making that move, and her being here, had certainly resulted in unintended consequences. She had begun to change, and what once had seemed off-limits and unattainable, now seemed—well, if not within reach, at least possible.
If I had known that moving here would change everything for me, would I still have come? Ari had no answer for that question.
She continued walking, past the Big House, a fixture in the small town that she knew many of the residents visited on a regular basis.
During those first very frightening months on her own, Ari often thought of her Nana, her father’s mother. Nana had kept visiting after her daddy had left. She hadn’t realized until after she’d run that her mother had probably hated that. Nana had been a force to be reckoned with. Sometimes, Nana would take her for walks through the cemetery when she’d been small. She had taken Ari to Poppa’s grave—Ari had never met her father’s father. And they would stop and visit the graves of people they didn’t know, Nana reading the inscriptions on the stones.
Then Nana had stopped coming. It wasn’t until much later she understood the elderly woman must have died. It had been typical that no one had told her.
When Ari had moved to Texas at the age of seventeen, cemetery walking had been a habit she’d picked up again, on her own.
There’s nothing to fear here, child. No spirits will harm you. This is a quiet, comforting place to visit, to take a moment to think on all those who came before us. I can guarantee you, my girl, that nothing you ever face in life is anything that someone before you didn’t also have to handle.
Sometimes it was a good thing to do something that had once been a special activity with a loved one long since gone. In a way, it brought them back, if only in the memory. Ari had found that within the boundaries of sacred ground, she felt her Nana near to her once more, and she could let her emotions show. The dead would never tell that she really wasn’t as hard-as-nails as she sometimes liked to portray.
Love Under Two Quarterbacks [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 11