He ran the smooth chain through his fingers. One way or another, this was the kind of thing he needed to tell them in person.
“So your civilian is Grace Finch?” Trent asked.
Jacob sat up straight. “How do you—?”
“Call display,” Trent said. “Not that I didn’t trace the number as well before I called it. She’s the reporter from Torchlight News, right? The one you get all tongue-tied and red-faced around?”
Jacob had forgotten Trent had been at a handful of the crime scenes when Grace had approached him, and didn’t much like his brother describing his reaction as either red-faced or tongue-tied.
“She’s a brave and brilliant woman,” Jacob said. With a softer heart than he’d imagined.
“And?” Trent pressed.
“And I should go find her.” Jacob scanned the trees. He hadn’t laid eyes on her in almost five minutes and that was long enough. “I’ll call you from the helicopter or as soon as I can after we land.”
“Wait,” Trent said. “There’s something I need to tell you. And I was going to wait until you got back, but it doesn’t feel right.”
Yeah, Jacob kind of knew the feeling. “What’s up?”
Trent took a deep breath, like he was debating how to put what he needed to say.
“Liam Bearsmith got made,” Trent said. “Somehow his cover got blown. He went to meet you, obviously you weren’t there, something went wrong and he was shot in the parking lot.”
Jacob took in a sharp breath. Lord, I should’ve been there.
“He’s alive,” Trent added. “But he’s in a coma. The bullet went into his skull and doctors don’t know if he’s ever going to wake up again.”
A weight, huge and invisible, seemed to press against Jacob’s chest. Liam had risked his life to tell Jacob what he’d discovered about Faith. And now he was fighting for his life.
Lord, please have mercy on Liam. Spare his life.
“Whatever evidence he might’ve been carrying about Faith’s attacker’s DNA has been lost,” Trent said. “Police and paramedics didn’t find anything on him. Not a wallet, a laptop, a thumb drive or a phone. He was considered a John Doe for almost an hour before police figured out he was one of ours.”
“How...how was his cover blown?” Jacob demanded. Lord, is this my fault?
“No idea,” Trent said. “But for now it seems our only lead to what happened to Faith is gone.”
The locket sat heavier in Jacob’s pocket. No, not the only lead. “Trent, I’m sorry to do this to you the day before your wedding, but there’s something I’ve got to tell you too...”
Then he heard the muffled cry coming from the woods behind the cabin, like someone had tried to shout only to be silenced.
* * *
“Don’t move and don’t scream, kiddo, I’m not going to hurt you.” The voice in Grace’s ear was rough, low and all too familiar. She wasn’t sure how her father had gotten the jump on her from behind, but there was no doubt whose hand it was clamped over her mouth. “I’m not going to hurt you, kiddo. I promise. I just want to talk.”
Everything inside her recoiled. He had no right to call her kiddo once, let alone twice, and she knew just how little his promises were worth. Her father’s arm around her was both familiar and foreign at once. Growing up, his hugs had always felt awkward and uncomfortable, and yet she’d craved them as if somehow, if they just shared the right hug, at the right time, everything would be fixed and they’d start having a normal father-and-daughter relationship. Then he went to jail and there was nothing but radio silence for so long that her father became a footnote in her life. Then came his first letter and his second, until finally she found herself sitting across from him again, talking to him through Plexiglas.
Something sharp pressed against her throat from behind. A knife? A piece of glass? She didn’t know. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a gun. Did that mean he didn’t have one and he hadn’t been the one who’d fired off his gun in the cabin the night before?
Her hands itched to grab her own gun.
“Grace? Hey, Grace?” She could hear Jacob’s voice coming from somewhere behind her. “You okay?”
No, Jacob couldn’t find her like this. She needed to fix this. She needed to sort this out. Then once she got her head around what was going on, she’d tell Jacob everything.
“Tell him you’re fine,” her father said.
“Give me a minute!” she shouted back. “I’m...” I’m fine! The words hovered on her lips and she barely kept herself from saying them. No, she wasn’t going to lie to Jacob. Not now. Not after everything they’d been through. “I’m just taking care of something.”
Could the fear and tension she was feeling show?
“Enough of this,” she said, her voice feeling as cold and dull as metal. “Let me go. Now.”
“I’d love to, kiddo, but I can’t do that just yet,” her dad said. “Because there’s some really important stuff I need to tell you. Now, you’ve got to promise not to yell.”
No, he was done being the one giving the orders.
“Really? And what are you going to do if I scream? Choke me? Strangle me? Is that the kind of thing you do?” The words flew from her lips as sharp and sudden as a whip’s crack, and she felt his grip weaken from their impact. She grabbed the hand at her throat with both of hers, pealing the sharp object away from her skin and kicking back hard. He let go. She spun around to face him.
It had been how many years since her last prison visit? A handful? He looked older than she remembered. His beard was scraggly and the last of his hair had gone from a mix of red and gray to white. His skin was paler too, with almost a translucent quality to it that made his blue eyes stand out even more. He was still as tall and broad as he’d ever been, but now his shoulders were hunched like a vulture’s. A rolled up wool hat sat low over his hair. If she yanked off his hat, would she see the wound her flashlight had made on whoever had charged at her in the room last night?
She stepped back, her hands instinctively rising to strike, as her fingers tightened on the object she’d wrenched from his hand. It was smooth and felt like plastic. Her hand shook. “Tell me, Dad, what exactly are you going to do if I don’t cooperate? Shoot at me like you did last night?”
“Hey! No need for all that! I wasn’t going to try anything. I promise!” His now-empty hands rose, palms up. Right, like he’d promised if she’d just deposit five thousand dollars into a joint bank account he’d set up and didn’t ask where the money went, he wouldn’t ask for any more. Then he asked for another thousand, and another, and another, and told her that if she stopped paying, he’d leak to the press that Canada’s top crime reporter was secretly the daughter of a criminally convicted dirty cop. “And I don’t even have a gun. I promise.”
He didn’t? It was only then she actually stopped and looked down at the item she was holding. It was a plastic toothbrush sharpened to a fine point. She’d given him that toothbrush, in one of the care packages he’d asked her for because he said his teeth were sensitive because he was getting old. Then he’d turned it into a weapon and held it to her throat.
“Hey, Grace!” Jacob’s voice grew louder and more urgent. Seemed he’d climbed down off the cabin roof and was coming her way. “Where are you?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, as she stared down at the shiv, a rush of anger swept over and through her heart, and it took all the self-control in her body not to physically reach out and hit him.
“Did you kill Faith Henry?” her voice seethed. “Did you actually kill a girl? Is that why you lured me here? Is that why her locket was in the cabin? Is that what you wanted me to find? She was my age! She was innocent! She had nothing to do with your drug enterprise, and your corruption, whatever illegal and underhanded schemes you had for making money!”
“Are you out of your mind?” He leaped back. His vo
ice rose so loud she was worried Jacob would hear him. “Of course I didn’t kill a girl! I didn’t kill anybody! Ever! I told you! I was—”
“Framed!” She finished the sentence before he could. “By The Elders, a group no one has ever had any proof existed. I know, my poor, poor innocent good cop father who never did anything wrong. Whose bank account was full of dirty money, whose partner and informant got shot and whose DNA just happened to show up on the murder weapon because people were out to get him!”
Her hand hovered as if to push him back. His hand hovered as if to pull her closer. But neither moved.
“Yeah!” he said, his eyes wide, with that innocent look that might’ve once fooled her mother but not a jury of his peers. “I am innocent of everything. Everything. I was framed!” Like almost every other criminal whose trial she’d sat through. “I definitely didn’t kill any girl!”
“Grace! Where are you?” Worry filled Jacob’s voice.
“That’s a cop, isn’t it?” Her father’s voice quickened, his limbs shaking with that old familiar agitation of a man who was itching to run. “You can’t trust the cops, kiddo. You can’t. That’s what I’m here trying to tell you. The same cops who framed me, did those crimes and shot those people are coming after you now. Because they don’t like the stories you’ve been writing. They’re very high up, they’re very connected and they’re coming for you. They’re behind all of this and they’re going to kill you!”
EIGHT
Had her father, the criminal, just stood there after escaping prison and insisted that not only had he been framed by some dirty cops, over twenty years ago, they were now out to kill her? Was that the best he could come up with? Then another sound filled her ears, a low and steady thrum, like thunder filling a blue and cloudless sky. A Search and Rescue helicopter was coming.
“Come on,” she said. “You’re going to come with me and turn yourself in, and we’re going to get on that helicopter and get out of these woods.”
“You can’t!” His head shook. “You step foot on that helicopter, they’ll kill you. They’ll frame you for crimes after you’re gone and frame somebody you care about for your death.”
She had to go. Jacob was looking for her.
“Stop it!” she said. “Why did you really lure me to this cabin?”
“I didn’t!” Turner said. “I promise! A friend of mine, a guard who does me favors in exchange for things, passed me a letter from someone anonymous telling me The Elders were going to lure you here and kill you, unless I got here to stop it!”
“And where’s the letter now?” she asked.
“I destroyed it!”
“Of course you did.”
“It told me all about the prison van break,” he said. “When it would happen, where guns had been hidden in the van, what I should do, where to go once the van crashed and that I should pass the information on to Cutter and Driver so they’d be prepared. It even told me to bring a shiv and that I wouldn’t be searched. They told me how to find this cabin. They planned it all!”
“Who? The secret people who framed you? You’ve given me no proof they exist!”
“Grace! Answer me! Please!” Jacob’s voice called. She heard him coming through the trees toward them.
“Jacob! I’m here!”
All this foolishness ended now. Let Turner tell his ridiculous story to Jacob.
And keep her secret? Or expose it?
Either way, he’d never look at her the same again...
Her father turned as if to run. In an instant, she snapped the gun from her belt, held it aloft and trained it on him.
“Stop! Right there! Or I’ll shoot you.”
Her father turned back. His hands were half raised. “You won’t shoot me, kiddo. You’re too weak-hearted like your mother.”
“Are you sure about that?” Was she? She’d never aimed a gun at anyone before, let alone shot anyone before. “Tell me, did you kill that girl?”
“No!” His head shook. “I promise. I never laid a hand on any child, any woman, ever. I have my faults, but that’s not one of them.”
She believed him on that. But she didn’t know why, and she wasn’t about to trust her gut. The helicopter grew louder.
“Prove it!” she shouted over the sound of the rotors.
“I can’t!” he said.
“Prove you’re innocent. Prove to me that you were set up. Prove The Elders exist!”
“You just gotta believe me!”
How? Based on what? With what evidence? The helicopter kept roaring, mingled with the sound of Jacob calling her name. Jacob sounded so close. In any second he’d find them.
Her father was backing away. His head was shaking. “I gotta go! But don’t get on the helicopter! And don’t trust any cops!”
“Stop!” She raised the weapon. “I can’t let you go!”
“You won’t shoot me in the back, kiddo,” he said. “You’re too good for that.”
Her father turned and ran. She raised her weapon. Tears flooded her gaze. Her finger shook on the trigger. Turner disappeared, deeper and deeper into the woods.
“Grace!” Jacob exploded though the forest beside her. “What happened? Are you all right? Why is your gun out? Didn’t you hear me calling? I told you not to disappear like that!”
She turned to him. Tears spilled down her cheeks. Her father had been there, and she’d let him get away. Was she really that weak?
“What happened?” Jacob’s green eyes searched her face. “Was somebody here? Did somebody hurt you?”
She opened her mouth, but no words came out, instead just hot embarrassing tears were coursing down her cheeks. She had to tell Jacob everything. He had to know. But she had no idea how.
“Come on,” Jacob said. He turned to leave. “We have to go. You can tell me about it when we’re on the helicopter or when we’re grabbing that coffee. We’re almost out of here.”
Once she told Jacob everything about her father—from why she was in the woods to the fact that she’d just seen Turner, to what he’d told her and that she was his child—Jacob would never, ever look at her the same way again. Even if he kept her secret, she’d lose his respect.
Help me, Lord! A prayer, sudden and unexpected, filled her heart. Can I trust him?
“Wait!” She stepped in front of him. Her hand pressed up against his chest. “What we say here stays here, right? That was the deal last night? That’s what we agreed to? That whatever we told each other couldn’t be repeated to anyone?”
She looked up into his face, but the warm, soft, honest and unguarded eyes of last night were gone. Now all she saw were the eyes of a cop, with a job to do.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “What’s going on?”
“We can’t get on that helicopter,” she said. “You can’t signal them, and you can’t call any cops until we’ve talked.”
Not that she believed her father. Not that he had any credibility. But if there was even the tiniest sliver or truth to what her father had said...
“Why?” Jacob’s gaze locked onto hers. “Why can’t we get on that helicopter? What’s going on, Grace?”
She took a deep breath. Was she really about to tell someone the truth about her father? Was she really about to tell someone the secret she’d been keeping about her identity her entire life?
“Somebody told me that this whole thing was set up by a group of dirty cops who are trying to kill me.”
* * *
He would’ve laughed if the whole situation weren’t so deadly serious.
“You mean like The Elders?” He heard his own voice grow colder, deeper and sharper, into what he thought as his cop voice. “What are you talking about, Grace? Who told you that?”
What did she know? What hadn’t she told him? Why did I ever trust her? He felt himself taking a step backward.
“First, you’ve got to promise me that whatever I tell you about myself isn’t going to be reported or repeated...”
“No, I can’t promise you that.”
“But... Please... Jacob, I need you to listen. I need you to understand. I’m taking the biggest risk of my life trusting you...”
Her head was shaking. Her dark eyes were pleading for something he couldn’t give. His heart raced, taking his breath along with it. He knew that tone of voice all too well. It was the type of voice he’d learned to lean in and listen to. It was the voice of someone who knew something they didn’t want him to know. It was a tone that sounded an awful lot like guilt and a bit like dread. Suspicion crawled up inside his core, preparing his ears for whatever confession she was about to make.
His eyes searched the face of the beautiful, incredible, dazzling woman who just hours earlier had seemed to fit so comfortably in his arms.
“Grace?” He felt his voice sharpen, his words dropping as slowly and deliberately as if they were pieces of evidence he was laying out on a witness table in the interrogation room. “Tell me. Now.”
“I never lied to you.” Her chin rose. Gone now were the tears from her eyes, replaced with the focus of a fighter entering the ring. “Everything I’ve told you has been true, even if I haven’t told you everything I know.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he said. His walkie-talkie was buzzing now. The Search and Rescue helicopter was hailing him. He holstered his weapon, told whoever was at the other end that he needed a minute and turned the volume down.
“I was telling the truth when I told you I had no idea about the prison break,” she said. “Because I didn’t. But I wasn’t here by accident either.” She was talking quickly, as if trying to get as many words out as possible before he shut her down. “I got a tip.”
His eyes narrowed. “What kind of tip?” he asked. “From who?”
She swallowed a breath. “Hal Turner.”
Disgust soured the taste at the back of his throat. “A dirty cop and a cop killer.”
Cold Case Secrets Page 9