by Doyle, S
His father ended the call and Garrett stood in his basement, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now.
* * *
Sinead walked through the gate toward the courtyard at Shady Oaks. She glanced at the empty pool, but she wouldn’t let herself think about it. Think about how she saw it only last night.
Last night was gone. From this moment forward she lived in today’s world.
She’d been suspended. Of course. She’d allowed a personal relationship to compromise her professional judgment. Although technically the personal relationship came after he conned her into believing he belonged in the house.
That was what she struggled with the most. She got the play. Hot guy, sweet accent, flirty funny manner. Certainly not a threat. Not a burglar. Work the naïve female cop and get her to call the security company rather than take him to the police station.
Logically Sinead understood what he had done. What she couldn’t understand was why he’d asked for her number. Why he’d dated her. She would have left that night without looking back. There was no reason to play the long con with her. It gained him nothing, unless he thought there would be a problem with the alarm company again.
Of course it occurred to her only now, that he never had re-engaged it. Anytime they came home after a date they’d usually been desperate to get their clothes off. Sinead had never registered that he hadn’t stopped and taken the time to key the security code. Nope, he would just unlock the door and the only thing on her mind would be how he was going to make her feel.
Stupid. Oblivious. Addicted.
Played.
Each step up to the second floor felt weighted. Like she’d gained a hundred pounds and aged a hundred years. She felt sucked dry even though she hadn’t once shed a tear.
She hadn’t cried a lot when her mom died either. She’d thought it would make her dad less sad if she didn’t. That hadn’t worked.
When she opened the door he was sitting in his usual spot. This time there was a baseball game on the TV.
She’d watched baseball with David. He’d purposefully picked seats away from everyone so he could kiss her.
Why had he done that?
“You look like shit.”
She turned toward him and wondered if there had ever been a time, before her mom died, that her father had hugged her close. Kissed her boo-boos. Made a bad dream go away. Checked under her bed for monsters.
He must have. What father wouldn’t do that for his little girl?
“Did you ever love me?” she asked him.
“What?”
“When I was a little girl, did you love me?”
“What the fuck…”
“Just. Answer. The. Question.”
He scowled at her. “Yes, I loved you. Love you now. I’m your father, for pete’s sake.”
Sinead nodded. “Then you need to understand me right now. If you ever loved me, if you ever cared if something bad happened to me, then I need you to be my dad right now.”
He stood and Sinead was reminded of her father’s size. Bill O’Hara was a big man. Older but still thick through the chest, big beefy arms. It was how he got people to give him money.
Bill O’Hara was the very definition of … or else.
“The Dress Guy hurt you?” he growled.
“Yeah, he hurt me.”
“You need me to take care of him?”
She smiled, something she didn’t think she would ever do again. But her dad was standing in front of her, asking her if she wanted him to go beat up David Whitmore. Then she had the bizarre thought that it would please David to know her father was sticking up for her.
“No. You were right. Something that looks too good to be true… is.”
“Fucking asshole. Seriously, tell me where he is and we’ll have words.”
“He’s gone. He’s in the wind.”
Her father nodded.
“I’m suspended,” she said. “Probably going to get fired.”
“He played you?” her father asked, clearly surprised.
She shook her head. “No. He played me.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
Do? There was nothing to do. This whole time she knew the pain was coming. But she thought it would be a poignant pain. A heart-aching pain. Something that would eventually melt into fond memories and the nostalgia of a good time in her life.
She didn’t think it would be this.
Emptiness underneath anger.
“I’m going to go to bed.”
For a few days. Weeks. Months. Then she would see about the rest of her life.
Her dad grunted and sat down again, his eyes turned to the TV again. “If it were me and I got played and lost my job because of it? I would do something about it.”
“Good night, Dad. And… thanks.”
“Yep.”
Sinead made her way back to her bedroom, left her clothes behind and crawled under the covers.
Do something about it.
If she could do something about it, what would she want to do?
Pain. She would want to inflict the pain she was feeling on David.
She would want to see his suffering and know she was the one who caused it. The anger inside her burned. A blue flame of heat that flickered.
Chapter 11
Sinead walked up to the counter in the dress department, a garment bag over her shoulder.
“Hi, I need to return this dress.”
Sinead handed the receipt to the girl behind the counter at Nieman Marcus. The girl took it and started working the return.
“I can’t even remember what card this was on,” Sinead said casually. “Can you tell which one it was based on the receipt?”
“Uh yeah. It was your Amex.” The girl raised her eyebrows. “The Black Card.”
“Are you kidding me? I told my husband to put it on my card! He’s sweet like that. Just buys things for me all the time. Is it under his name, David Whitmore?”
“Actually it looks like a company. The Tricorp Group?”
Sinead smiled and nodded. “Oh, that’s his company card. Well, if he paid for it, I guess there is no reason to return it, right? Thank you anyway.”
Sinead walked away with the empty garment bag slung back over her shoulder.
* * *
“Tricorp Group?”
“Yes,” Sinead said, then spelled it out over the phone. Google had returned no results. Neither had the Better Business Bureau.
Clearly it was a front, but a lot of times a front might have an office location to make it look more legit. The money he threw around was real. The restaurants, the jet. He didn’t make that happen with pretend money. So going on the theory that he might have actually rented an office space, Sinead had targeted high-end realtors who specialized in Class A professional office space.
She was on her fifth agency.
“Yes, I have a listing for them. They have an office in the Hamilton Building on Pacific. In the Financial District. We just leased the space not… four weeks ago.”
No doubt in case she pressed him on wanting to see where he worked. It had never really occurred to her to question what he did when he was away from her. He always said he was meeting with lawyers, which sounded fairly routine. But to take the precaution of having an office location, whatever the operation was, it was thorough and well funded.
* * *
Sinead parked her father’s car in the underground parking lot and found the elevator. Now that she was without a job and a cruiser, she was going to have to buy her own car. Her dad was actually looking online for her.
He was helping her. Not being dramatic or overly mushy. Just being solid when she needed him to be. When this was behind her, she might try and not look at it as the stupidest mistake she ever made in her life, but the thing that brought her and her father back together.
She made it to the lobby first to check out the companies directory.
Tricorp Group was on the 18th floo
r.
She made her way back to the elevators and hit 18. Immediately her heart started to beat harder. She could feel the sweat on her palms, and rubbed them against her jeans.
It wasn’t likely he was here. She knew that. Con men didn’t stick around after the job was done.
The job? What really had been the job?
Sinead dismissed the thought immediately. She had to focus. Right now the thing in front of her was tracking down David.
The elevator dinged and she walked out into an open atrium building. Elegant, expensive. A place for high-powered law firms and hedge fund financial operators.
And his front corporation.
She turned right and tracked down the suite for the Tricorp Group. When she swung open the door, the space was empty except for a long desk with a phone and a tall, slim blonde woman sitting behind it.
Either the office workers were invisible or this was one really bored receptionist. Sinead approached her. “Excuse me, is this the Tricorp Group?”
The blonde lifted her head and beamed. “Finally!” She opened the top right desk drawer and pulled out a plain white envelope. “Are you Sinead (who spells her name correctly) O’Hara?”
The breath in her lungs froze until finally she had to push the air out so she could speak.
“Yes. I’m her.”
“This is for you. I am out of here.”
The woman reached down to grab her purse and threw it over her shoulder. “Worst temp job ever.”
Sinead stared at the letter in her hand, but the activity of the woman moving distracted her. “Wait, I have questions.”
“Lady, I don’t have any answers. I work for a temp agency who told me I had to come here, sit at this desk from eight to five every day for six weeks or until you showed up. Two weeks in and I’m losing my mind.”
It had taken a few days of feeling sorry for herself, then a few more days to come up with a plan. All things considered, two weeks to track Tricorp down wasn’t that bad.
“What temp agency?”
“Emerson Group. ‘You have holes, we fill them.’ Lame I know, but there it is. Now you have the letter and I’m done. There are only so many Facebook posts you can read in a day without going slightly crazy.”
Sinead watched the woman leave, the glass door closing behind her. It all happened too fast. Sinead should have asked her more questions. She hadn’t even gotten the woman’s name.
Great. If she needed more answers all she had to go on was tall, attractive blonde who works for the Emerson group. It had been the letter. Sinead knew she’d been rattled by it.
The letter that was still sitting in her hand. With nothing left to do, she opened it.
Dear Sinead,
You’re clever. I knew this, so I imagined if you chose to find me you would get this far. Please accept my deepest apologies for the events of these past few weeks. What was done, was something I had to do.
While I accept the irony, please trust me and know I’ve corrected an injustice. Something that you, as an officer of the law, would appreciate. Garrett Huntley is not a good man.
I have also considered the possible ramifications of my actions on your career. I would hope that your department might listen to your story, see your obvious innocence… if lack of judgment, and give you a second chance.
If not, I will know and I will make financial reparations to help you transition to whatever new career path you choose.
You are strong. You are brave. You will survive this.
I purposefully left the dress receipt in the garment bag to give you some closure on what happened. But the path ends here. There are no more trails to follow. No strings to reach for. I know, I’ve cut them all.
If it means anything at all to you, you were someone I did not expect and I very much regret causing you any pain.
Yours,
D.
Sinead had to read the letter a few times to process it. The first through the tears. The second time to really focus on the lack of judgment comment. The third time to truly grasp his appalling condescension.
By the time she was done the fourth read, she thought she was truly cured of any emotional anguish. The anger had gobbled it all up.
“Oh no he didn’t,” she said to an empty office.
* * *
“Report,” came the clipped order through her ear buds.
Jillian stood across the street from the Hampton building, her eyes on the target. With the buds in her ears and sneakers on her feet, she looked like any other professional woman waiting for the bus.
Instead, she watched the target drive out of the building. Subtly, Jillian lifted the binoculars to her eyes and watched as Sinead pulled out of the parking lot. The car stopped, she seemed to be shouting to herself, and after a few moments she merged out of the lot and into traffic.
“She received the letter. She read it.”
A beat.
“How could you know that?” he asked.
Jillian smiled. Because she knew it was exactly how she would have looked if she’d gotten a letter like that from a guy who played her. Not that Jillian would ever be played by a guy.
“Because I just saw her and she looked pissed. And if I’m any good at reading lips, she used the words fuck and him… a lot. Like a lot a lot.”
He sighed in her ear. “She’ll get over it.”
“True. I’ve always thought you were forgettable.”
“Finish out the job. I’ll see you when you’re back.”
“Yep.”
Jillian tucked the binoculars in her purse and peeled away from the bus station. There was still work to be done. This mission wasn’t close to being over yet.
She also thought despite what her partner might think, they had not seen the last of Sinead O’Hara.
* * *
Sinead stared at the ranch house she thought never to see again and felt a renewed sense of fury. They had been happy in that house. Those three weeks had been real. He’d made her feel like a treasured woman, a desired woman, and he couldn’t take that back.
After she’d left the Tricorp office, she went home and showed the letter to her father.
“Fucker.”
For the first time in a long time they agreed on something.
“What do you need?” he offered. There was no question that her pursuit of him was not over. No, she was going to find him, catch him and make him pay.
“I need a stash of cash. I have a plan, but I’m going to need to move under the radar. His operation is no joke.”
“Done. I found you a car too. Used. Not a lot of miles. It will take you wherever you need to go.” He handed her the keys and she took them.
“Thanks, Dad.”
He nodded. “I’ll go put together some money.”
Sinead had to consider what this made her. She’d been a cop. Now she was going to take her dad’s illegal gains and use them to do bad things. A sensible woman might take some time to grieve, move on and start a new life. Hell, he’d even offered her money to start over, which knowing him would not be an insignificant amount.
But as her father always used to tell her, when O’Haras fell, they fell hard. And Sinead was very much her father’s daughter.
Which meant if she was going to find him, she was going to have to figure out what his connection to Garrett Huntley, the owner of the house, actually was. Sinead got out of the car and made her way up the driveway. She rang the bell and waited. A second later Huntley answered the door with a scowl on his face.
“What the fuck do you want?”
“I want to know what you had in the safe,” Sinead said as she blew past him into the living room.
“I told you I don’t need the cops. You’ve done enough.”
“I’m not a cop anymore. And you and I have something in common. We both want the guy who took whatever was in that safe. I have my own reasons. You obviously want your shit back. The fact that you don’t want cops investigating tells me that shit is ille
gal. Guns? Drugs?”
His eyes narrowed. “How do I know this isn’t some kind of trap?”
“Check with the department. I didn’t even wait to get fired, just gave them my notice. You from around this area?”
“Yeah.”
“You know the name Bill O’Hara? A former cop.”
He scrunched up his face, which Sinead imagined was his way of thinking. He wasn’t nearly as handsome when he did that. “But a bad cop, right? He was in the news a while back. But that was years ago.”
That was true, but it was one of those stories that lingered in people’s minds because of all the tragedy that surrounded it. Good man turned bad. Brought low by grief.
“That’s my dad. I do not come from a long line of true blue law enforcers. I know the score on both sides of the law. A con that cost what this cost was no small fish. I figure that’s a lot of effort to take something out of your safe. What was it?”
Garrett seemed to consider her. “Pharmaceuticals.”
Sinead snorted. She wondered if she’d been that gullible with David.
Garrett Huntley was certainly an easy target.
“What happens if you don’t get them back?”
The fear in his eyes then was real. “I have to get them back. I can buy a week, maybe two without them knowing I’m back in town. I don’t show with their product, heads are going to roll. Mostly mine.”
“How did he know they were in your safe?”
“Fuck if I know.”
Sinead looked around the living room and her eyes stopped on the wedding pictures on the table by the foyer. She hadn’t bothered to explain why she’d done what she’d done regarding the security system. She didn’t see the point.
“You actually married?”
“Yes.”
Oh didn’t I mention that his wedding was the single best day of their relationship? Every day after that was shit. They recently divorced.
Sinead remembered the picture on Huntley’s dresser in the bedroom. His wife was a petite beautiful blonde. She looked over Garrett’s shoulder to the table in the foyer.