All That Remains (Lancaster Falls Book 3)

by RJ Scott

  “If they find out—”

  “I want you to know that the last contract I took was my final one.” I spoke over him desperately.

  “Shit, Josh, if the FBI finds out I’m… sleeping with someone spending time on the dark web, compromising cases, getting me involved… ”

  “You’re nothing to do with it! Anyway, when the feds were working on dismantling the dark web drug trade, they had cybersecurity geeks just like me infiltrating networks.”

  “That’s different.”

  “It’s not. We’re doing the same thing.”

  “The official teams destroyed a drug ring—”

  “No, they just pushed it to one side. But it’s already rebuilding, new vendors are out there filling the void, and it’s not just drugs. Hell, I could show you right now, users leaving goddamn five-star reviews for a ten-dollar oxycodone purchase. It’s a pit of people who exchange knowledge, and that includes hackers into security systems for banks, national departments. I was one of the people who tested the Homeland Security network. It doesn’t matter if these groups sense law enforcement closing in or that the FBI is part of a multiagency law enforcement task force devoted to stemming opioid sales. The dark web will always be there. But I won’t be anymore.”

  “You’re probably on an FBI watch list—”

  “They haven’t caught me yet, and they won’t now, because I’m done.”

  I stepped closer to him, took in the confusion on his face, the mistrust that I’d created, and I wanted to get back to sex and kissing and laughing in the middle of the night over how many marshmallows we could balance on a hot chocolate.

  I didn’t want him to be looking at me with such suspicion. I cradled his face. “Talk to me, Lucas.”

  “I thought you owned a hotel, that you were a devoted dad. I trusted you.”

  “I’m all that, and you can trust me. I’m done with this, and if I’m honest, I was done a long time ago, but this hotel has suffered some bad years and left Harry and me vulnerable.”

  He softened then, just enough for me to count that as a small win.

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  “You’re one of the good guys, Lucas. I am too.”

  For the longest time we stared at each other, and I ran my thumbs along his cheekbones, looking into his light gray eyes.

  “I need to report this.”

  “I know.”

  “And if I do that… Fuck, Josh,” he muttered.

  “What if they pull me in and get me to reveal all my contacts. Will this change us?”

  “You want there to be an us?”

  I smiled at him because he wasn’t saying no, although he was still confused. I could tell by the frown marring his forehead.

  “I’d like there to be an us.” I reached over and pressed the button to close the screens, and then tilted the blinds so we weren’t standing in the shadows, although we still couldn’t be seen from outside. “Even if it does mean that I get a few days in a sweat tank being interrogated.”

  “Have you ever… could you be arrested… What am I…?”

  I knew what he was asking. “I’ve never knowingly broken the law unless accessing the dark web has suddenly become illegal.”

  “You know it’s not, but ethically—”

  “What made you join the FBI?”

  “How did you come to own a hotel?” he asked, hooking his fingers into my belt hoops and tugging me close.

  “You first.”

  He kissed me then, a deep kiss that had me pressing against him, hard and needy, but after a while, he gently pushed me away.

  “No, you first. Why a hotel and why the hacking?”

  Great, we were still on that, but I needed to explain everything he had questions about. I owed him that if we were taking this any further.

  “It’s a stupid-ass story, really. I was left a small inheritance, big enough to buy something real for me and Harry, and when the money hit the bank, Joe Dwyer was all over it, asking if I wanted to buy the hotel that was part of his holdings. It was old and battered and hadn’t been open in a year, and it was cheap. I got a mortgage from a bank in West Falls, used my inheritance, and spent six months scrubbing and rebuilding. People helped. Sawyer and his brother practically lived here on the weekends, and it was enough that it was home for Harry and me. At first we did okay, had tourists staying when they were vacationing. Then, then there was a recession, the furnace broke, and the stove quit. Our heating meant we had to close rooms. The roof has issues, and we lost our Christmas trade last year because we couldn’t open. We’ve been hurting ever since. I think…”

  “What?” he prompted me and took the time to enjoy another breath-stealing kiss.

  “I’m going to pack up and sell if I can. I have someone who wants to…”

  “What?”

  “Shit, that is actually the first time I’ve said that out loud. I should talk to Harry.”

  “Good call,” Lucas murmured into a kiss. Our tongues tangled languidly, and I curled my fingers into his soft hair. This kiss was want and need more than sex, and he widened his legs so I slotted between them. I could’ve kissed Lucas every day for the rest of my life.

  “Now it’s your turn. Why the FBI?”

  “Grandpa Toby.”

  “You have to expand on that,” I smiled and kissed him again.

  “He was a special agent like me, my mom was a parole officer, and my dad was a cop. I learned from a young age to have respect for the justice system and wanted to be part of it. Checks and balances, that kind of thing, second chances, people turning their lives around. But I also wanted to solve crimes. I wanted to fix puzzles. I was fast-tracked into supporting teams, but this case, this is different.”

  That sounded as if he had as many secrets as I did.

  “Different, how?”

  “A case my grandpa was working on in the early 80s with a PI, trying to find a college instructor, Carmen Kreuger. Everything led to her coming to this area. She’d worked for a while at West Falls College before she vanished. When they found the bones…” He shrugged as if it wasn’t the most important thing ever.

  “You thought she could have been one of the women in the sinkhole?”

  “I wanted it to be that way.” He paused for a moment and bit his lip. It was as I could see inside him to the code in his head deciding what to tell me. Finally, he sighed, then continued. “My grandpa had an affair with Carmen and she fell pregnant, but lost the baby. He regretted the affair, mourned the loss of the baby, and ended it. Grandma seemed to forgive him, or at least she lived with it. When he’s lucid, he swears that he loved Grandma and that Carmen was something he could never have, and I believed him. But as the Alzheimer’s progresses, it’s not getting any easier to communicate with him. Sometimes I can have a conversation with him. Other times… ”

  We separated and leaned against the desk next to each other. “I’m sorry,” I murmured because I couldn’t imagine anything worse than losing my memories of Harry, my friends, and of Lucas. I wanted to remember everything until my very last breath.

  I laced a hand with his, and we stood like that for a while, and something between us had shifted. I’d told him my secrets, and he’d shared something personal with me that sounded like something he didn’t share with many.

  “Dad! I’m calling Mom!” Harry called out.

  “Cool.”

  Sadie and Harry talked every weekend in the afternoon and would spend at least a couple of hours chatting, with him in his bedroom, about everything and nothing, exchanging stories of what she was getting up to in her new place outside New York and what he was doing in Lancaster Falls.

  “Is he close to his mom?” Lucas asked.

  “Yeah, as it should be.”

  “Do you think he’ll ever go and live with her?”

  “Every time they speak, I worry that he will come out of his room and announce he’s decided he wants to go live with Sadie and her wife.”

  “He lov
es it here, I can tell.”

  “Well, he hasn’t said that he wants to live with his mom, but I’ve never really asked him. Last time he went to visit, it didn’t go well. He came back dazed and wouldn’t stop hugging me.”

  “Should I even ask?”

  “She lives in an artist commune, and it’s chaos and loudness, and according to Harry, too many people walk around half-naked or completely naked. I was on the phone straight away, demanding to know why she was exposing our son to naked residents, but she explained he’d walked into a life drawing class. I swear she thought that was okay.”

  “He’s good at art.”

  I glanced at Lucas, who was staring back at me. “Yeah, he is. One day he might decide that I’m not enough for him and that he wants his mom, but so far, I’ve avoided that scenario. I never actually go into the room with him when he’s talking to her, and we have an honor code that I won’t listen.”

  Another promise made on Jiminy the bug.

  “That makes you a good dad.”

  “Despite the dark web thing?” I was teasing, hoping to get Lucas to smile, but instead, he knocked elbows with me.

  “Even that.” Then he turned to me hopefully. “So, about the office sex thing?”

  Seventeen

  Josh

  We’d progressed from kissing to pulling the blinds fully, just in case, and he had his hand in my pants, but there was one thing guaranteed to get my immediate attention.

  “DAD!” Harry shouted, and the tone of his shout scared the shit out of me. I bolted out of the office after fumbling with the lock and headed up to his room, completely out of breath. But when I reached it, he patted his desk chair for me to sit, and then he turned his laptop so that I could see Sadie’s smiling face with her wife, Lucy, just over her shoulder.

  “Hi, Sadie.” Even over Skype, she was just as beautiful as she had been at seventeen, and even though we’d lasted for all of two weeks that fateful summer when we’d conceived Harry, I still held great affection for her. She’d nearly died giving birth to Harry, and postnatal depression had hit her hard. Free spirit that she was, she’d never wanted to be a mom. She wanted a kind of long-skirted, tousle-haired bohemian freedom, filled with her beloved art and music. It had been her don’t-give-a-fuck attitude that had drawn me to her in the first place.

  She was a butterfly, and she’d flitted from relationship to relationship since leaving town, and in all those years, Harry had been with me, and I never once resented it, nor had I ever worried there would be a custody battle, because Harry was mine, and she wanted a different life. There’d been no official legal documentation in place saying I had sole custody, but then she’d met Lucy, three years ago, and panic had begun to set in. Couched in me redoing my will, she’d signed the document for me to have full custody, and we’d managed that without any mess or fuss.

  We knew if Harry wanted to be with them, it would break my heart, but it would be Harry’s decision.

  “We have fantastic news!” Sadie exclaimed, lifting her hand in salute, and thirty bangles slid down her arm with a tinkling sound.

  Was this it? Was this Harry saying he was moving to New York to be with his mom? Sadie had moved from being a talent agent to living in an artist commune, making a name for herself with her art, approaching her thirties with purpose. In fact, on her thirtieth birthday, she and Lucy had married. Just the two of them, and even though Harry had hidden it well, I knew he’d been disappointed not to be part of it. There was a selfishness to Sadie where she lived in the moment and forgot she had a son. Two people passed behind her, and she turned to smile at them. Nothing was private where she lived now.

  “What news?”

  “I’m pregnant! It worked!”

  I didn’t even know they’d been trying, and all I could feel was abject horror.

  “Isn't that great news, Dad?” Harry began without a single trace of resentment or anger, in direct opposition to what I was feeling at that moment. “I'm going to be a big brother! And I’m going to visit.” He yelped in excitement and did a dramatic forward roll off his bed.

  “When?” I asked, considering how we were going to cover tickets, and what kind of extra work I’d need to take on, or what repairs could wait in the hotel.

  “Let me talk to your dad, sweetheart,” Sadie asked, and Harry sat back on the bed and turned the screen to look at his mom.

  “Are you gonna argue?” he asked.

  “We're not gonna argue. I just want a private talk with your dad.”

  Harry huffed but left the room, shutting the door behind him with a little more force than necessary.

  “Look, Josh, I know you're worried about me,” she started before I even said anything.

  “I’m not worried. I'm pleased for you and Lucy, but won’t you need to come off your meds, and are you really built to have a baby, Sadie?”

  “I have ovaries,” she snapped and then frowned and glanced back at Lucy, who took the hint and wandered away. I didn’t know Lucy at all, but Harry said she was levelheaded and some kind of experimental musician. I knew they were a couple, but this conversation was between me and Harry’s mom because Lucy hadn’t been there when Sadie nearly died and then suffered so badly after with her mental health. I cared for Sadie, and I didn’t want to see her go through that again.

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said with exaggerated patience.

  “This isn’t like when I was a kid, this is Lucy and me, a committed married couple wanting to start a family.”

  I took exception at the way she explained that. “You have a family, Sadie. You have a son.”

  “Don’t twist my words,” she snapped.

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Look, it’s easy. I want to add to my family, and I'd like it if Harry grew up being a big brother. Also, I sold some paintings.” She changed the subject on a dime, but that was Sadie. She never meant any harm in life to anyone, but up until now, she’d dealt with her mental health issues because she could stay on her meds and have counseling. What happened when she was responsible for another baby, when the meds were stopped, and her support groups were missed because she was too tired to attend? Did she not recall what it was like when Harry had been born?

  “You need to look after yourself, Sadie. Tell the health professionals about the pre-eclampsia and the postnatal depression.”

  She waved her hand again, with the clinking bracelets catching the light and sending a rainbow over her face. “I was so young.”

  “PND can hit at any stage in life, Sadie.” I knew that because when she’d begun to sink, I’d researched everything I could. “And it’s so irresponsible coming off your meds. Did the clinic even know about your health issues?”

  “I didn’t use a clinic. We made a baby here in the commune.”

  “How did you…? Do you know who the father is?”

  “Of course I do. Now, I said I sold paintings.”

  “Sadie, for god’s sake—”

  “I deposited a couple of thousand dollars into Harry’s account so he can visit in the spring, after the baby is here.”

  Somehow that sparked a temper that I didn't think I had. “If you’re not right mentally then the last thing Harry needs is to—”

  “Oh, Josh, you wear me out, and I can’t talk to you when you’re in one of your moods,” she snapped and ended the call.

  Fuck.

  I found Harry sitting at the reception desk, scribbling in his art book. He stared up at me with an expression that was half hope and half concern.

  “We didn't argue,” I lied.

  “Yes, you did. I could hear you from down here.”

  “I’m sorry. I'm just worried about her.”

  “You mean the possibility of postnatal depression and the effects of not taking her medicine? I understand what makes her so up and down, even though you think I don’t.”

  I was lost for words when he did anything that was more grown-up than I could ever hope to be, and then he came out
from behind reception and pulled me into a hug.

  “It will all be okay, Dad.”

  “Shouldn’t I be the one saying that to you?”

  “She loves me, and she’ll love the baby. You know that, Dad.”

  “Of course she does, and she’s a grown woman now, and if she feels it’s the right time to have another baby, then it’s not my place to worry. Maybe you should use the money she put in your account, and go and visit her more if you wanted to.”

  “Wait, she put money in my account?”

  “So you could visit.”

  We separated, and he stared up at me with a frown. “What if I don’t want to go?”

  “You mean spend the money on something else?”

  “No, not that, like what if I don't want to go and visit Mom right now, because…”

  “Because?”

  “I know she’s my mom, and I love her, and we Skype, and she writes really funny letters, but it's just hard when I get there and I don’t feel part of that world. It’s a strange place with so many people living in the one house, and there’s chaos and noise, and I love the art, don't get me wrong, but I don't enjoy the chaos that goes with it. I can be creative without standing naked in a field and praying to some goddess of the color blue. No one wants to see their mom naked.”

  “Wait, what? You stand naked in the field and pray to the goddess of blue?”

  He sighed theatrically. “No, Dad, I was making that bit up.”

  “Don't say shit like that.”

  Harry poked me in the chest. “That’s a dollar for the swear jar.” He leaned over the counter and pulled out the old jar and shook it, and I fished a handful of coins out of my pocket and dropped them in. “Anyway, I’ll go and visit them when the baby is born, and I could fly up just for the weekend. Maybe you could come too, and we could stay in a place that wasn’t the commune.”

  “We can do that.”