by C. D. Gill
His breaths were coming in short bursts. Keeping his eye on the car, he called Officer Calfi.
“I think I’m in being followed by someone. Possibly a gang member,” Xander said when he’d explained who he was and what Barley and Calfi had visited him for.
“Drive on over to our headquarters. When you get here, we’ll take the description and plates if you have them,” Calfi said.
He texted Linc’s phone to tell him he was stopping by the police headquarters quickly, but would return with breakfast for them.
Crime didn’t stop on Christmas Eve Day.
He zoomed out of his parking space, not bothering to follow the rules of the road too closely. The guy in the gray car behind him was equally as careless. Xander grinned as he turned into the police headquarters parking lot and the gray car drove past slowly as if debating following him in.
He walked in to the headquarters, filed a report, and waited for Calfi at the front desk.
“Come on back, Xander.” Calfi led him to an office with a window. Someone in plain clothes sat behind the desk.
“This is Detective Mayfield who is leading the investigation. He is a gang unit specialist. Have a seat, if you will,” Calfi said, sitting in the seat next to Xander.
Mayfield was thin with thick-framed glasses and a sharp nose. Not the detective show’s stereotype of a gang unit specialist.
He nodded to Xander. “Thanks for coming in to answer a few questions for us.”
Xander blinked. He hadn’t. He’d come to report being followed. “What kind of questions?”
The office was a real office as opposed to an interrogation room, but Calfi sat in the chair closest to the door as if guarding it. Xander couldn’t easily walk out of the room if he needed to.
His hair raised a fraction. Panic started at a low simmer in his chest.
“Can I get some water, please?” His voice sounded hoarse. Calfi gave him a strange look as he rose to get the water. Xander took a few steadying breaths.
The path to the doorway was clear. Run now and take his chances with whoever was in that car? Or sit in the police headquarters while they tried to build a case against him and imprison him again?
Maybe they wouldn’t. But dare he take that chance? He had no idea what he was involved in. Same problem as before and everyone knows how that ended for him.
“Do you have a room with more windows and more space? I’m claustrophobic and have panic attacks,” Xander said. Part of that was true, but most people dismissed his panic attacks as nothing so including a reason for the attacks made it more permissible to some. A reason other than the truth of what happened to him in the prison yard, of course.
Mayfield nodded and walked him to an upstairs lobby area with comfortable seats next to a wall of windows. He pulled three chairs close together.
Better.
If he were a suspect, there wasn’t a chance in the world they would have accommodated his request. Calfi followed them from the kitchen area to the seats. As they sank into the chairs, Mayfield extracted a pad of paper from his pocket.
“As Calfi said, I’m the detective in charge of gang unit movement. I see the big picture of gang activities and movement—why they hit certain places, what their long-term goals are, what do their actions mean, and who are they going after. This is to make sure they are staying in their lane, if you will, and not making power plays for the public that we didn’t see coming.” Mayfield peered over his thick glasses at Xander.
The strategist.
Mayfield was the puppeteer tucked safely away inside the castle, moving pieces of the board game around to understand and predict the future.
“What I didn’t understand for a while was what your involvement was.” Mayfield tapped his pen against his paper, his head tilted toward the ceiling. “You have no prior gang involvement. And it’s well documented that prison gangs do not line up with external gangs and their allegiances. However, you didn’t join a gang in prison. You chose to be a free man.”
The brown of Mayfield’s widened eyes almost sparkled. This was like a game to him. Perhaps he was the one who had been keeping tabs on Xander and sending notes about what was happening.
He opened his mouth to ask but stopped himself. The gamemaster would reveal it all in due time.
“So why are you being singled out and harassed? You’re a soccer coach. You don’t have ties to any industry that gangs might be interested in,” Mayfield said. “Calfi has told me that you were interested in personal protection which means you know just how dangerous a position you are in, being sought out by gangs. Why don’t you tell me what you know?”
Xander stared at him. Mayfield wouldn’t be asking if he were the one calling the shots. He’d know what Xander knew already. His mind reeled, assessing the angles. How much would he regret revealing what he knew, now or in the future? This guy seemed to hold his cards to his chest. He probably wouldn’t reveal the big picture to a peon like Xander.
“I was sent anonymous letters explaining that I was being targeted. Something was happening that the gangs didn’t like. The person sending the letters said they merely had to do what was advised and all would be well. The latest one that ended up on my car at the mall said they were getting closer than the person had anticipated, so he was pulling the safety cord which would keep me free and clear of the mess happening. No one gave me names. I still don’t understand what is going on or the information that is being released that the gangs don’t want released.”
Calfi didn’t say anything as he stared at his hands, but Mayfield nodded as if what Xander said made sense. At least one of them thought so.
“Any ideas of what the safety cord was?” Mayfield said, leaning forward.
“Information on a chip.”
Mayfield’s eyes narrowed. “A chip?”
“For the computer?”
“How did you come by this chip? Was it given to you in a letter and asked for you to do something with it?”
“It was buried under my skin.”
Mayfield hissed. Calfi looked up sharply.
“Let me see,” Mayfield said.
Xander glanced around and raised his shirt to expose the bandage under his arm.
Mayfield assessed his side with interest. “Do explain all of this.”
Xander repeated a short version of what happened and that someone had explained the chip was inserted while he was cut open.
“Who explained this to you recently?” Mayfield scribbled on his notepad, his legs crossed much how the therapist Xander saw one time a few months ago had looked.
“The veterinarian tasked with extracting the chip.” At Xander’s answer, Mayfield’s agitation grew, but still he didn’t offer the extra information.
“Give me the whole story, Mr. Reinerman. I don’t want to have to keep asking questions to get small pieces to the puzzle. I am a big picture kind of guy.”
Xander smiled. He wanted to have the upper hand in this questioning, not be another cog in Mayfield’s information wheel. “I received a letter saying that I needed to go see a veterinarian to clear this whole mess up. The vet knew who I was and where the chip was located on my body. He took it out, inserted it into a computer, and told me that the right people had the information now. That is all I know.”
“Vet’s name?”
“Dr. Ben Kirkles in Kittridge.”
Mayfield stared at him. “Give us what the doctor ordered. Could this be what they were referring to?”
“I was hoping you’d be able to tell me, sir,” Xander said.
Mayfield narrowed his eyes, startled from his deep focus. “I think that is all the information we can get from today. I’ll be in touch, Mr. Reinerman. Please let me know if you get any more of these mysterious letters.”
Xander stood, nodded his head, and started towards the stairs. If they kept him any longer, they might find a reason to not let him go at all. As he descended the stairs, he looked at the place they’d been sitting.
&nb
sp; Calfi was gone, but Mayfield sat there staring at him, an unreadable expression on his face.
How much did Mayfield know that he wasn’t sharing? How much of that information would cost Xander his life? An ache grew in the pit of his stomach.
He felt like he was on the edge of a precipice that, once he fell, he’d never come back from.
Chapter 23
Christmas Eve Day Gia awoke early despite the late night. The force of her problems slammed into her, evaporating her chance of going back to sleep.
Cara was in the hospital, fighting for her life.
Xander wasn’t answering his phone or calling her back. Their relationship was in serious danger right now.
The churning returned in her stomach. She ran to the bathroom and heaved into the toilet. She didn’t want to face today. The cost could be far too great. She didn’t want to lose Xander or Cara.
Summoning what little strength she had, she dressed and went downstairs. Her cousins weren’t up yet, but her uncles and aunts sat around the table with Daddy and Avó talking quietly.
“What if she came back to Brazil with us? There’s a number of great rehabilitation centers in Rio. She’d be around family, have a fresh start, a change of scene without the reminders of what she’s lost,” Tia Neves said.
“She can get a free education at our college if she lives with us. Might give her a new path to go down if she never regains the use of her hand again,” Uncle Roberto said.
If.
Cara had potentially lost the use of her hands? How would she mentally recover from that in addition to everything else she had lost? Gia swallowed hard against the lump swelling in her throat. It would be so hard for Joey if Cara moved to Rio, but if it was the best thing for Cara, no one would argue it.
“She’s welcome to work in my shop with me,” Tia Judita said.
“That girl is as stubborn as her father. I don’t think she’s going to move out of the country even if it was the best thing for her,” Avó said with a hearty humph.
“We can present the ideas to her once she is off the drugs and has a better idea of what her future physical capabilities will be,” Daddy said. “Anyone have any thoughts about when we should tell Joey what is going on?”
Gia couldn’t stay. The guilt was overwhelming her. If she had been transparent about her drug recovery years ago, would this have ever happened? Had she been the reason Cara was driven to end her life?
She grabbed a protein bar on her way to her car in case her stomach calmed down enough to be hungry. On her way to the hospital, she dialed Xander’s number and this time it rang.
Voicemail.
She left him a message telling him to call her when he got the chance. Short of her flying out and showing up in her own house out there, she wasn’t confident she would hear from him.
At the hospital, she stopped at the desk for Cara’s room number and made her way up to the third floor. Ma was stepping out of the en suite bathroom when she knocked softly and stole inside.
Ma gave her a tired smile, then glanced at Cara who lay asleep on her bed. Her skin was pale in the window’s lighting. Her bound wrists lay elevated on pillows. The machines beeped and whirred as her heart rate and blood pressure monitors measured her vitals.
Gia could hear her own heartbeat in her ears.
“I’m going to grab some breakfast from the cafeteria,” Ma said, running her fingertips along Gia’s arm. Her expression was soft and pained, as if she wanted to add to her words but didn’t know what to say.
With a nod, Gia sat in Ma’s chair next to the bed. The quiet breaths didn’t soothe her as she thought they would.
“I am so sorry if I had any part in making you feel that this life was not worth living. You are so loved. You are needed.” Her voice cracked with her halted speech.
“Gia,” Cara breathed.
Gia jerked her head up. “You’re awake. I’m so glad. I’m so happy to see you.”
Cara took a moment to moisten her lips and clear her throat. The sleep was still thick in her expression. “It’s not that I didn’t want to live. It’s that I didn’t want to live this life.”
Her heavy eyelids closed as her chest rose and fell rhythmically. Back to sleep. She remained that way until Ma came back.
“You need to head home and get ready,” Ma said, her tone brooking no argument.
Gia nodded. The tears hadn’t come yet, but they would. Cara hadn’t seen a way out. Gia had been there almost four years ago. It was why she ran away.
The heavy blanket settled over her.
At home, they ate an early lunch and dressed for the Christmas Eve mass at St. Louis Cathedral at noon. Aside from being a notable icon in the French Quarter, it was the oldest Catholic church still in use in the United States. It was more of a Who’s Who event than people wanted to admit since it was church. Ma and Daddy loved the traditional songs and readings from the Catholic church for Christmas Eve whereas normally they preferred their Presbyterian church where Carolena’s funeral had been held.
Gia and her cousins piled into one limo and the adults in the other. The mood had lightened considerably since they left the house. She tried so hard to join the conversation about Christmases past and how this year’s trip had been one for the books. Her cousins didn’t mind that they weren’t in Rio for their typical holiday festivities. They’d packed as much as they could into each day and they would have stories to share when they got home.
Her mind kept going back to that dark place of guilt and grief and blame.
If only…
When they got a few blocks from the church, traffic came to a standstill. The traffic cops did their best to unblock the bottleneck but it wasn’t working. Andy and Daddy knocked on their limo window.
Silva opened the door.
Daddy popped his head in. “We’re going to have to walk the rest of the way if we want to get a seat inside. Stick together. We’ll have security in front and behind. Listen for their instructions.”
Everyone filed out into a huge huddle on the sidewalk. Andy spoke into his earpiece. When he was satisfied security was in place, he offered his arm to Gia to head up the trip to the church.
It was a gentlemanly gesture—one she didn’t care to decline in her current state of mind. She slipped her hand around his bicep and fell into step beside him. “Does this mean they didn’t charge the guy they had in custody?”
Andy shook his head, but didn’t take his eyes off their surroundings. “They charged him with as much as they could. He didn’t admit to much but they found evidence that pins some of it on him like the dead animals and rodents in the office. I’m sure they’ll find more as they keep digging.”
“Do you guys have a lead on the person doing the big damage like the fires and the office destruction?”
Andy grunted. “We’ve got our eyes on a few possibilities, but we have to have clear evidence in order for the police to arrest and then the case stand up in court.”
They crossed a street in a tight clump. Happy laughs from people dressed in holiday colors made her smile. The crisp air reminded her of Colorado’s autumn which she’d missed out on this year. It was strange to think of her other life, waiting for her halfway across the country.
“I didn’t get to thank you properly for your help with Cara at the…house.” She smoothed back her hair. She wanted to beg him to forget everything he heard.
“I’m glad I was there. For your safety and hers. I’m so sorry about her attempt last night. It’s a really tough spot to be in for everyone.” That was an understatement, but she appreciated the sentiment. He squeezed her hand on his arm. “None of what happens while I’m working goes anywhere. I’ve signed a very strict contract that keeps private things private. It protects me and you in different ways. You don’t need to worry about stuff getting out. We’re here to avoid problems. Not make them.”
“I—” The easy dismissal of her feelings was on the tip of her tongue. He’d see right through that.
“I trust you. And thank you. We’ve had a lot of problems keeping our lives private in the past, and the internet hasn’t helped.”
“The internet always has something to say. Speaking of, there are some paparazzi behind the bushes to right. Everyone, stay close,” Andy said over his shoulder.
This heavy weariness wasn’t what she wanted to be feeling today. The renewed spark of danger from the unknown relit the suffocating worry that had accompanied her the last couple of weeks.
The sidewalk opened up to a bigger walkway, allowing Gia to reach back and grab Sara’s arm so they formed a small chain with their arms looped together. If the cameras were going to see something, it was that, as a family, they were living their lives, not intimidated by the stalkers and haters who were convinced of their evil deeds.
The gray spires with crosses loomed in front of them. Andy turned the group so they walked past the garden to the area where cars weren’t allowed. One of the security guys with their group strode up to a cathedral staff member and spoke with her briefly. With a nod, she ushered them to a side door, scanned her badge, and let them inside.
Royal treatment when they had security with them.
They found a hard, wooden pew halfway back that sat them as a group. The daylight filtered in through the windows decorating the painted arched ceiling above, but below the lighting took on a cozier Christmas feel with low lights and candles lit on the sides. She breathed a prayer over the mess of her life.
Here she was again at the verge of the best things in life being taken from her in a heartbeat.
The robed choir started in on a Christmas hymn accompanied by the organ. The familiar readings and the reverent mood soothed her soul. The Baby had been born into a world where nothing was right, yet He brought the peace.
That was what she needed. Peace in the midst of the unthinkable.
Last year, she’d been in Colorado hiding, thinking of how her parents would be sitting alone, listening and praying. This year wasn’t in the least how she’d expected it to be.