by Callie Rae
“And you didn’t fucking tell me?!” she yells.
“Like you told me about all this?” I throw back, gesturing to the detective.
She scoffs. “Oh, please, Jesse. You’ve been hiding everything from me since the accident.”
“To. Protect. You!”
She closes her mouth into a thin line and glares at me, but doesn’t say anything.
“You’ve made your point. What now?” I ask the detective.
“I need a location. Something concrete I can nail him down with,” Cruise says.
I nod. “I can help with that.”
“Jesse, I don’t know about that…” Fallon says. “Besides, we’re just kids.”
“You’re both eighteen. You’re legal adults. If he wants to take the risk, he can sign the paperwork to release us of liability.”
“Then give me the paperwork. I’ll sign it, but only on one condition.”
“Jesse.”
“Fallon, you’ve been working with them for how long? Do you really expect me to sit here and let you walk into any kind of danger alone?” I turn back to Cruise. “They get no blowback. My family, Fallon, Cason. They are clear of anything that happens from here on out.”
Cruise nods. “We have no reason to believe anyone in your family has been involved. We can do that.”
“Fine. Then you have a deal. I get the location, and you leave all the people I care about out of this.”
“Bring it in,” Cruise tells the mirror.
Not long after, the door opens again. The next person to walk into this room shocks me even more.
“Mrs. Tate?” I say, incredulous.
I look at Fallon, who is not the least bit surprised.
“Hi, Jesse.” She smiles and then looks over to Fallon. “Hello, dear. How are you?”
“I’m okay,” Fallon says.
“I know this is a lot. But it will be over soon.”
“Wait. You’re our school secretary?” I asked.
She nods. “We’ve been investigating James for a long time. I was put in place to keep an eye on you. But detective Cruise came on scene and stirred the investigation up. Now here we are.”
She walks over to the table and sits down next to me. She reaches across the table to pat Fallon on the hand before pulling out what I assume is the paperwork from a file. She slides it over to me.
“Sign on the dotted line. This states that you are aware of the risks of being an informant and you accept them. Should injury or death occur, neither you nor your family will have the right to sue.”
She then hands over a pen. I take it and sign on the line.
I drop the pen down on the paper and look up at Cruise. “How long do I have?”
“Preferably the next shipment. Get me a date, a location, and a time.”
I nod. “Okay. Can we leave now?”
He gathers up the paperwork and the file with the photos and shuffles them into a neat pile. “Yes, you’re free to go. Tate will escort you out.”
“Come on. I’m sure you’re hungry. Let’s get you out of here.”
Fallon and I follow her out of the stark white room into the hustle and bustle of the station.
What did I just get myself into?
Chapter 31
Fallon
I hurt them. I get it. But would I go back and change anything if I could? Probably not.
I don’t want to hurt the people I care about the most. I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to rip their hearts out and stomp on them.
But it does put everything Jesse has done into perspective. This is exactly why he’s made every move he has: to protect those he cares about. If the consequence is losing them, then he will accept it…so long as they are safe.
I guess we’re the same in that way. Willing to lose everything to protect our people. But the rules never change. We always work better as a team, and yet when it comes to each other, we each continuously put ourselves into the line of fire to protect the other.
Maybe it’s time to change the game.
When we walk through the guarded door, neither Cason nor Jade looks up at me. They simply stand and file out of the police station. The sun sits high in the sky and beats down on us as we trudge back to the parking lot.
We pile into the Jeep in silence. I follow Jade into the backseat. Cason drives off with far less urgency than he had on the way over.
We ride in a silence so absolute you could hear a pin drop.
Before I know it, we’re parking behind Jesse’s car along the curb.
Cason finally speaks to Jesse. “You good, man?”
Jesse gets out, but then turns around and pops his head back in. He glares directly at me. He looks pissed.
“Get in my fucking car, Fallon.”
I don’t argue; I slowly unbuckle my seatbelt and open the door. I meet Cason’s eyes in the mirror. I see pain, because I’ve hurt him, but also pity. Like he knew this wouldn’t be good for me.
Jesse is already behind the steering wheel waiting when I exit the Jeep. He knew I was coming. I slide into the passenger seat of the SUV and close the door. Jesse pulls off the side of the road before my seatbelt is in place, spinning his tires a bit. I buckle and squeeze the belt tight across my chest.
He doesn’t say anything. He’s gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles are white. His speed is fine at first, but his foot gets heavier because we’ve surpassed the speed limit by ten miles. I keep a grip on the belt as the speedometer continues to rise.
The moment we hit eighty miles per hour, panic sets in. He isn’t going to stop.
I grip onto the handle on the roof.
“Jesse, I think you need to slow down,” I say as calmly as I can.
This only sets him off. We’re suddenly careening along at one hundred miles per hour. This vehicle is too large to handle these curves like his Charger would. If he keeps it up, we’re going to wreck.
Wreck.
We’re going to…I gulp.
A flash of light passes before my eyes, and I squeeze them shut. “Jesse, slow down.”
The vehicle feels like it’s flying.
“Jesse!” I yell out.
Crunch.
I scream. My chest caves. I hunch over in my seat.
Then I feel the pull of the car stopping. I try breathing in through my nose and out my mouth.
The skid of the gravel lacing the side of the road is a welcome sound. I continue to try to focus on my breathing. It’s coming in fast, hard, and unforgiving as I try to remind myself that I’m not in that truck. I’m not wrecking. Jesse isn’t Marcus.
“Get out.”
I turn my head toward him, but all I see is his back as he jumps down and slams the door shut. I unclick my seatbelt, open my door, and slowly slide out of my seat onto the gravel covering the ground.
Jesse walks out into the grass a few paces before turning back to me. Cars slow down to pass, but no one stops as they watch two kids on the side of the road stand there, staring at each other.
“You fucking lied to me,” he growls.
I nod. My breathing is still haggard.
“You said no more lies. No more hiding shit from each other. You weren’t talking about me, were you?”
I shake my head.
“Why?” he asks point-blank.
“Why do either of us do anything? To protect those we love. I was protecting you. All of you.”
“Did you know who he was?” Jesse asks.
I nod my head again. “I figured it out pretty quick. It’s hard to miss.”
“We have to tell him,” Jesse says.
He growls and grabs at his hair again. It’s something I’ve noticed him doing since I came back.
“Fuck, Fallon. This isn’t some high school bullshit that we fix by throwing our weight around. It’s not some dumbass thug like Jax. This is real shit.”
I nod. “It became real the moment Marcus kidnapped me.”
He shakes his head. “We’ve n
ever dealt with this level of shit. We could all get hurt. There is a real threat here. I can’t deal with something happening to one of us again. I just can’t.”
I take the few steps between us and reach for him. But before I can, Cason’s Jeep comes sliding in behind Jesse’s SUV.
Cason throws open the door and stomps over to Jesse, grabbing him by the collar and shaking him. “Yo, are you fucking crazy? Don’t you know we almost lost her in an accident? What the fuck were you thinking?”
“Cason, stop!” I yell.
“Don’t I know? Huh?” Jesse screams back. “How could I possibly forget? I was there. I was the one that dragged her out of the vehicle. I was the one who gave her CPR on the side of the road.”
“I know you’re mad at her, brother. But this is not how you need to handle it. You could’ve gotten hurt. You could have hurt both of you.” Cason grips Jesse’s shirt tighter.
“Isn’t that what she wants?” Jesse asks.
My stomach drops. I was hoping I was wrong. That he didn’t mean what I think he did. But then Jesse looks at me, and I see it.
He knows.
“It wasn’t an accident, Fallon, was it?” he rasps.
“What?” Cason asks, dropping Jesse’s shirt and stumbling back a few steps. “What…what do you mean? Of course it was.”
I look from Jesse to Cason, then back to Jesse.
“I’ve read the police reports. I remember the vehicle, the way it was wrapped around the pole. It wasn’t an accident; it doesn’t add up. You need to tell them.” Jesse stalks toward me, but keeps walking right past me, leaving Cason staring at me.
“What is he saying?” Jade’s small voice shocks me back to reality.
She’s been standing next to the hood of the Jeep watching all of us as the drama unfolded. Cason looks back at his sister and then steps in front of her. I gasp a bit and then take a few steps back when I realize he is protecting her…
From me.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Cason growls out.
“It’s not what you think. I just…I thought…”
“What are we supposed to think, Fallon? You thought what? That any of us would be okay after that?” Jesse growls from behind me.
I turn sideways to be able to see both him and Cason.
“I had no idea you could be so selfish. I didn’t want to believe it. But then today, sitting in that room with you, I realized you really thought you were helping us.” He doesn’t look at me; he looks up towards Cason. “She caused the wreck. Not Marcus. She thought leaving us would be the answer.”
Cason swallows and steps toward Jesse, who raises a hand.
“Don’t.” He steps back and climbs back into the driver’s seat of his Jeep.
I look at Jade. Her eyes soften with the same pity Cason gave me earlier as she backs up and gets in the passenger seat.
I stand there and watch as two of the people I care about most in this world drive away hating me.
I turn back to Jesse. “Did you really need to do that? Do you understand what that did to him?”
Jesse’s tone is venomous. “The same fucking thing it did to me the moment I realized you didn’t want to be here anymore. With me. You’ve been fucking lying to us since you woke up.”
“What do you want from me, Jesse? You didn’t go through it like I did. You weren’t kidnapped. You weren’t beaten and starved. You didn’t lose hope with every failed attempt to escape. I was chained to a wall for days. I propped myself on top of a toilet that I couldn’t even sit on and watched as piss ran down my legs. And you have the fucking audacity to stand in front of me right now and judge me for seeing a way out for us all and taking it? Is this what you want to hear? That, in that second, I wanted to die? Yes, I did. I wanted to die, but all I was thinking about was you! How much better all of your lives would be if I hadn’t shown up!” I scream at him. I scream, and my chest tears open right here on the side of the road.
Jesse watches me, swallowing hard. He watches me bleed out my emotions in front of him. His fists clench. He looks down at the ground.
“Who is it you keep seeing?” he asks quietly.
I look up quickly from my slow death. “Really? That’s what you want to know?”
“You woke up screaming, ‘She’s not here.’ I’ve heard you talking to yourself several times, and you were screaming at someone at the cemetery.”
The dam breaks and every piece of me falls out into the grass for the taking. I shake my head. I can’t say it.
“It’s Luna, isn’t it?” he asks me. “You’re seeing Luna?”
I gasp for air.
I can’t. I can’t do this. I can’t do it.
His hands find my face, pulling me back from the ledge, and I look up.
My broken heart recognized something familiar in him from the very first moment I laid eyes on him in the school office. Loss. Anguish. He looks at me and his face contorts.
His voice is full of sadness as he whispers, “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I’ve lost control. I don’t know how to help you, and it’s breaking me.”
Jesse and I spend rest of the day at the lake like we used to before I was taken. I don’t know if we need that time together, but I know that we need a place to gather our thoughts. We have to place everything we’re feeling on hold to finish what we started with Detective Cruise. After a while, Jesse calls Cason and Jade to tell them to meet us back at the house.
It takes Jesse a few minutes to convince Cason to be in the same room as me, but he eventually gives in. We're all gathered around talking about what we learned at the police station today. We’re all in my room being as quiet as possible to keep the moms from knowing anything.
“Wait, so you’re telling me that James is smuggling illegal firearms into the country through these ancient artifacts?” Cason asks.
Jesse nods. “That is exactly what he’s doing.”
“And he’s doing it with Vic?”
Jesse nods.
“Vic owns the warehouses,” I say. “James owns the barges. No one would believe the two are working together. It makes sense.”
“Vic doesn’t own the dock or the warehouses,” Jesse states.
“According to this map, there is a dock with a few warehouses a few miles down. I’ve never seen or heard of this place. It’s gotta be at least a mile inland, because I’ve never even seen it from a boat. And if I had to guess, I’d wager it’s not in Vic’s nor James’s name.”
“Then whose?” Cason asks.
Jade finally speaks up. “Jax.”
Jesse nods his agreement. “Yes! If I had to guess, I’d bet the entire property is in Jax’s name.”
“So, what do we need to do?” Cason asks.
“I need to figure out where they are docking to transfer the goods.”
“What if they aren’t transferring it?” Jade says.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Jade points to the map. “Well, the barges come in from this direction, right? So what if they’re just stopping there first and unloading the firearms?” She looks to Jesse. “When we were little, Cason came to stay with us. We used to go out on the boat with Mom and Dad. They would take us inland a bit and we’d watch the birds fly. We’d come in from this direction, and I remember passing a barge anchor off to the side. I asked Dad…er, James…”
Jade shakes her head in an attempt to disassociate from her father. I reach out and grab her hand, and she continues.
“I asked him what it was doing, and he said he wasn’t sure. He turned the boat around after that and we never went back to see the birds again.”
I give her hand a squeeze. This is hard for her. She wants to do the right thing, but he is her father.
“Jade,” Jesse says.
Jade pulls her hand back and wipes her face. “It’s fine. I’m fine.” She takes a deep breath. “So I’m pretty sure he has them anchoring here…” She points to a spot on the map. "…and they carry the firearms into the
warehouses back there. They probably have only a thirty-minute window to stay on schedule.”
Jesse nods. “Okay, so that’s our location. But when?”
“James keeps the barge schedules on his tablet. It’s a fingerprint lock, and I’m almost positive that he keeps it in a locked folder. If we can get the tablet unlocked, I’m pretty sure I could figure out how to access the folder,” Jade tells us.
We all stare at her.
“What?” she says.
Cason looks at her strangely. “Who are you?”
“What do you mean?” she says, taken aback.
“First, you track our phones. Now you’re talking about breaking into James’s tablet? Who do you think you are? Mrs. Smith?” Cason barks.
“There’s more to me than cheerleading, you know?”
“Yeah, I know…frilly, girly stuff like hair, makeup and spending two hours picking an outfit,” he snorts.
I side-eye Cason as I watch Jade sink back into herself. “I think it’s a great idea, Jade. Really. So how do we get your father’s finger to open the tablet?”
“Oh, that part is easy. I got it covered.” She shrugs. “I’m still Daddy's baby girl. He won’t suspect a thing.”
Jesse looks at her incredulously and Cason stares at her again. I’m proud of Jade. She’s finally standing up her brothers and proving to everyone—including herself—that she is an invaluable member of our group.
Jesse nods. “Okay, this is good. But you’re not doing it alone—we’ll all be there. He can’t suspect anything for this to work.”
“He won’t,” Jade says. “Are we done? Can I go back to being a teenager for a little while longer before we lock up our father?”
I sigh, Cason hisses, and Jesse just nods.
Cason gives Jesse a pointed look before he follows Jade out the door. I watch him go. He doesn’t say goodbye to me. He hasn’t made eye contact with me since the police station.
Jesse huffs before looking at me. “I gave James the impression at golf that you and I weren’t together anymore. I need to go back to the house. I need to play the part. I need to stay as close as I can to him.”
He reaches up, placing a hand on my cheek. I lean into the comfort and take a deep breath, breathing him in as much as I can.