Sins of the Father

by LS Sygnet

  “How will you know this emergency call is placed?”

  “That’s where you come into the plan. I figure it’ll take about an hour for the anticholinergic to kick in with the full effect. Wait until exactly thirty minutes before they change shifts to take the pills. The place will be quiet, nothing else going on. I’ll call Ronnie when I see the ambulance leave for Attica before I rush to the airstrip.”

  “You know how crazy this is, how dangerous and absolutely fraught with failure –”

  “Daddy, I have to try. Please.”

  “Give me the pills.”

  I slid the pouch and the syringe across the table.

  “This is why you needed to show up pretending to be an FBI agent, isn’t it?”

  “I had to tip the scales in our direction. They asked for my gun, that was it.”

  “Where is your gun?”

  I grinned. “Dad, I retired. I don’t have a sidearm anymore.”

  “Promise me one thing, or the whole deal is off, Helen.”

  “What?”

  “If something goes wrong, and odds are, it will, you get on that jet and leave without me. If I’m not there exactly thirty minutes after you call this Ronnie character, you go. You get out fast.”

  “Daddy –”

  “Those are my terms.” He tapped the syringe on the table. “Promise me, as the daughter who has never lied to her father, and I’m in.”

  “Fine, I promise, but it’s going to work, Dad. This has to work.”

  Chapter 15

  I paced the tarmac outside the hangar at Genesee Airfield. No more than five seconds passed between glances at my wrist watch. Ten minutes. Eleven. Fourteen. Lights and sirens should’ve made the fifteen and a half mile drive faster than this.

  “C’mon, Ronnie. Where the hell are you?”

  My greatest fear was that Dad’s estimation of the probability for success had been on the mark. I imagined two worst case scenarios. One, he came out from the effects of the succinylcholine too fast, and we were busted. Two, something went wrong and those buffoons let him die.

  I was milliseconds from tearing the cell phone out of my purse to call Ronnie when the flashing emergency lights hit my field of vision. “Oh thank God!” I ran to the stairs leading to the cabin of the small private jet. “They’re almost here! Start the engines!”

  The copilot appeared in the doorway. “Yes ma’am.”

  The roar of ignition sounded behind me as I dashed to where Ronnie and our pretend ambulance skidded to a halt. The back doors of the van flew open. Ronnie’s brother in law helped Dad out, Dad miraculously wearing street clothes instead of what they’d given him in the prison infirmary.

  He staggered, struggling to gain his balance.

  “Daddy!”

  “I’m all right, Sprout, just a little wobbly. That stuff packs a punch.”

  I wrapped my arm around his waist and headed around the corner of the van. Ronnie was peeling decals off the van while his partner started throwing the faux medical guts onto the runway.

  “Is it wise to do that here?”

  “We be back for them as soon as we ditch van,” Ronnie grinned. “It is how you say, hot.”

  “You promised me that you were staying out of trouble, Ronnie!”

  “And I do not want this coming back to my house. It will be fine. We dump van, we come back. They look there while we over here. Perfect!”

  I pressed a thick envelope and the keys to my rented vehicle into his hand. “Remember. You never saw me!”

  He saluted and I half dragged Dad to the staircase on the plane. I poised a step behind him and rested one hand on the small of his back as he slowly began his ascent. Each step I took was heavy, harder to take. Why? Guilt swirled with the agony of what I had to leave behind in my gut. Could I really do this?

  A loud crash drew my attention behind us. Ronnie tossed the emergency lights off the top of the van.

  “Hurry, Dad!”

  “Going as fast as I can.”

  We got to the top of the stairs when I heard it. Something different this time.

  “What was that?”

  “Oh my God. No!” I whipped around.

  “Helen!”

  “No, no, no! Daddy, get inside, you’ve got to hurry!”

  A murky shadow charged across a grassy field toward the tarmac.

  “Orion.”

  “Daddy, you’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Helen, stop!” Johnny’s voice somehow boomed loudly over the noise of the jet engines.

  “Get this plane off the ground, now!” I screamed at the co-pilot.

  “Helen, what’re you doing?”

  “Buying you time.”

  “Honey –”

  “Daddy, I love you. Please go.”

  “You can’t have gone through all of this to turn back now. Get in the plane. He’ll never get here in time if we pull up the…”

  Our eyes met. Dad smiled. “Okay. Go be with him, Sprout. I had to be sure. Go to him now.” He grabbed my hand and kissed it hard. “Don’t worry about the rest, sweetheart.”

  I dashed down the stairs, throwing one last glance up at my father, who had miraculously recovered enough strength to retract the stairs. No time. Damn you, Johnny Orion!

  The battle between head and heart kicked into extreme warfare. Head said get away from him. Heart said run to him.

  They split the difference. I ran, all right. Away from Johnny, away from the small jet that slowly began to taxi down the runway.

  I sprinted harder than I ever have in my life. Occasional glances revealed the jet’s acceleration. “C’mon,” I panted. “Pull up. Take off. Come on!”

  “Helen, stop running!” The voice chasing me was close, too close.

  An instant later, the front wheels of the jet lifted off the ground, just as Johnny manacled my arm and jerked me backward. I hit his chest hard and knocked us both to the ground. I jumped to my feet, ready to fight. Jet climbing. Just minutes away from Canadian airspace.

  Johnny was ready for me. He grabbed my upper arms and shook me hard. “What the hell did you do?”

  “Let me go!”

  Hysterical command didn’t work. Maybe jujitsu would. He easily sidestepped my maneuver and had me face down in a field of scratchy something, arms twisted behind my back. Something hard and cold snapped around my wrists.

  “You’re arresting me?”

  “I ought to blister your ass first,” he snarled in my ear. “Tell me that wasn’t your father getting on that jet, Helen.”

  “All right. That wasn’t my father getting on that jet.” In a purely technical sense, it was the truth. I was certain that Aidan Conall wasn’t on a flight bound for Canada.

  He jerked me to my feet.

  “Easy!”

  “So it wasn’t Wendell Eriksson’s face that I clearly saw? Wrong, Helen. I know what you did tonight. This was never about what’s going on in Darkwater Bay. You were leaving me.”

  I bit back the overwhelming emotion. Johnny started dragging me back to where he’d presumably parked his car. My mind started racing. How had he figured it out? When did he put it all together? There was no way…

  “Maya.”

  “That’s right,” he sneered into my ear. “Maya. Care to tell me who you really put on that flight, Helen?”

  “My father.”

  “Not even close. I can’t decide what pisses me off the most, the fact that you kept the truth from me about what Gillette said to you, or that you planned to just fly off with daddy dearest and take my children away from me!”

  “Johnny, I wasn’t –”

  “Don’t you fucking lie to me, ever again!” He shook me hard enough to rattle my teeth. “From now on, you do exactly what I say, when I say it. If you want to stay out of prison for helping a convicted felon escape, you’ll face the facts.”

  “What facts?” I said.

  “You belong to me, Helen. My game, my rules from now on. Are we clear?”


  A sob choked me.

  “Don’t you dare cry. It won’t work this time. That ploy won’t ever work with me again.”

  My chest shuddered with the effort of holding back what I felt. Tears streamed silently.

  “This is what’s going to happen, Helen. We’re going to the FBI and you’re making a statement about where I found you.”

  “Johnny, no! I will not betray my father!”

  “About the fact that I found you in a warehouse in Jersey owned by Sully Marcos. There are exactly three people who know why you left town, Helen.”

  Him, Maya and me. My heart wilted. “But Marcos doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “Doesn’t he? I can’t think of anyone better to point the finger at to explain why I had to fly out here to haul your ass back home, and it sure as hell beats explaining why you were on the coast the night your so-called father found himself suddenly liberated from prison. I realize that wasn’t part of the plan, you staying behind to buy time so he could escape. But now you’ve got to deal with reality, Helen.”

  “So arrest me! Do you think I care? I don’t! It was worth the risk to set him free.”

  Johnny jerked the front door of his car open and shoved me inside, hands still cuffed behind my back. “I realize that, sweetheart. What you don’t seem to comprehend is that while you might be more than willing to give birth to my children from the confines of jail, where I might add, you so justly belong, but I am not. Do you hear me?” His eyes burned into mine, mere inches from my face. “I will not allow my children to be born in prison! So we’re doing this my way, and if in the end, you can’t live with your non-existent conscience, you can turn yourself in. But that day won’t come until my children are safely born.”

  “Johnny, you can’t take me back. They’re not going to stop coming after –”

  “They’ll stop. They’ll stop because you’re no longer for sale, Helen. You’re mine, remember? My game. My rules.”

  I shrank into the door the second it slammed. I’d never seen Johnny this angry before, certainly never directed at me. Was this how Devlin felt when Johnny threatened to rip his hand off and feed it to him? If so, I no longer questioned Devlin’s reticence. That didn’t mean I was willing to give up without a fight.

  Johnny slammed his door, fastened his seatbelt and started the car. His white knuckles gleamed in the moonlight over their perch on the steering wheel.

  “You could at least let me explain.”

  “Lies,” he whispered. “That’s all I’ve ever gotten from you, Helen. Lie after lie after lie. Never an ounce of honesty. I suppose that should be expected, considering that you were raised by the scum of the earth.”

  “Don’t you talk about him that way! You don’t know my father at all!”

  “I know enough. He’s a liar. He’s a thief. He might well be the person responsible for the mess back home, and you let him go. Unbelievable. You actually picked that corrupt son of a bitch who destroyed a family over me, someone who did nothing but love you and try to protect you.”

  “Great job, Johnny. How many times have I been assaulted because you were off doing something else?”

  He slammed his fist against the steering wheel. “Is that what you really think? Because I remember it a little differently, Helen. I seem to recall that every time you got hurt it was a direct result of running off alone, a glaring lack of trust in the people who have done nothing but embrace you with open arms. Oh, except last time. That one was Mackenzie’s fault, but I don’t see you hurling any blame at him.”

  “You’re not half the man he is,” I cried. “Devlin would never treat me like I’m his fucking property!”

  His jaw clenched. Direct hit.

  “My biggest mistake was not throwing you out on your ass. I should’ve never broken Devlin’s heart.”

  Noisy air huffed through flared nostrils. “Is that so?”

  “Yes. I never ran away from him, did I?”

  “You sure as hell didn’t. Guess that’s how you treat the one you really love, keep him at arm’s length so he doesn’t end up hating you in the end.”

  “I’ve never lied to him, and I never will.”

  “You goddamn well will. You’ll lie to him and everybody else, starting with the FBI first thing in the morning. Then again, maybe a prison delivery isn’t such a bad idea after all. At least I’ll know where you are when you go into labor. No messy custody battle. I’d get the kids hands down. It’s not like the state of New York would let you raise them behind bars.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Test me. See how far you get. It’s time you realized there are limits to what I’ll tolerate, Helen. This far, no farther.”

  I turned away from him as much as possible, leaned my throbbing head against the window and cried myself to sleep.

  Bright lights woke me. I lifted my head and glanced to my left. Alone. Outside, bright overhead glare came from an all night gas station. I widened the field of vision around me trying to orient myself to our current location. How long had I slept?

  Binghamton Gas-n-Shop.

  My eyes skidded to a halt. Binghamton? We were headed east instead of south?

  Johnny opened the door and slid into the seat beside me.

  “We’re going east.”

  “No, really?” he sneered.

  “I thought you were taking me to Washington.”

  “Change of plans,” he said. “I’ve decided that forcing a little bit of honesty from you is a very good idea.”

  “What does that mean?” Suspicious? You bet I was. Johnny’s anger hadn’t begun to cool down to a mere simmer yet. Frankly, it was getting a little old.

  “It means that you still own your parent’s home on Long Island, correct?”

  “Yes… why?”

  “You’re going to tell the truth – partially, which should come easily for you. In fact I’m not sure you’re capable of the whole truth. You escaped your abductors and ran off to hide in the last place you figured anybody would look for you. As for Mr. Fields and the vehicle he rented in D.C., nobody will be the wiser, thanks to your unparalleled skills covering your tracks.”

  I glared. “Certainly not unparalleled. You figured it out. This must be what they mean by pregnancy brain. I have truly slipped to a new low of stupidity. Yours.”

  Johnny reached behind me and jerked my right arm until I turned 90 degrees. I felt him fumble with the handcuffs for a moment before blood rushed back into my numbed hands. I cried out softly.

  “Or I could tell people that you had a hateful change of heart and staged the whole thing, giving yourself a perfect out so you could run home to New York and have our children scraped out of your womb with no one the wiser.” He paused and shook his head. “Come to think of it, that wouldn’t surprise me one bit. You still pregnant, Helen?”

  I burst into tears. “You bastard!”

  “Apparently you are. Well, I guess we’ll just have to stick with the half truth then.”

  “You’d really love it if I did have an abortion, wouldn’t you? Then you could drop the pretenses and send me straight to jail. Saint Johnny of Darkwater Bay would be coddled and pitied by all of his precious city for being duped by the evil outsider.”

  “Don’t tell me the thought never occurred to you. You’ve been, how shall I say, far less than enthusiastic about having children. Or is it simply because they’re my children and not Devlin’s? Are they really mine, Helen? Or did you have a little fun with the man of your dreams before you decided I was a better bet?”

  My hand flew over my belly in an automatic gesture. Protective. Covering their tiny ears if you will. “You know they’re yours. You monster!”

  “Put your seatbelt on. We’re going home.”

  Chapter 16

  I resisted for as long as humanly possible. My stoic posture crumbled and I started squirming.

  “Be still.”

  “I can’t.”

  “What, now I’m guilty of
hurting you? I realize that you can fob off your condition to others in order to appear more delicate, but I know you, Doc. You killed two men with your bare hands a couple of weeks ago. A tumble through the dirt isn’t gonna break your stride.”

  I gritted my teeth. “I have to pee. And don’t call me that.”

  “You should’ve said something back at the gas station.”

  “Well pardon me for not needing to go then.”

  “Ten minutes and suddenly this is an emergency of epic proportion?”

  “You could pull over and let me go on the side of the road.”

  “So you can run off again? No, I don’t think so. You’re just gonna have to hold it until we stop for gas next time.”

  I bit back the hateful words. And shifted in the seat again. And again.

  “For God’s sake, Helen. You can’t possibly have to go that badly.”

  “I have two babies putting pressure on my bladder, Einstein. I most certainly can.”

  Johnny cleared his throat and stared at the highway. “There’s a rest stop up ahead. I’ll pull over.”

  “I should just pee my pants,” I muttered. “That’d serve you right. You could smell it for a couple of hours until we reach our destination.”

  “I said I’d stop. You know, a normal person might actually say thank you.”

  “A normal person might hate you too much to show gratitude for anything you offer.”

  “Ah, the truth at last.”

  “Thank you for conceding that I’m normal.”

  His laughter was cold. “Whatever you say, Doc.”

  “Stop calling me that!”

  “Would you prefer Mrs. Orion? Oh wait. That was probably a lie too. How about if I just call you what you really are? Liar.”

  Johnny stomped on the gas and sped onto the exit for the rest area.

  “Will you be offending the women in the ladies room by following me inside?”

  “No,” clipped words from a man barely controlling his temper. “You’ve got five minutes. Don’t do anything stupid, Helen. You’re walking a fine, thin line here.”

  I hurried inside the rest stop, mostly because despite Johnny’s belief that I was nothing more than a liar, I really did have to go. Urgently. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror. Straw in my wig. Dirt smudges on my face. A river of mascara to complete the utter wreck of an ensemble. I stopped to wash my hands and repaired the damage to my face and the wig, which to my amazement, held up remarkably well. A few of the hairpins I used to hold it to my new short style beneath were dislodged.