In fact, they’re all deadweights. Every last one of these morons I deal with. Everyone who’s enjoying the abundant cash—or the secrecy they’ve been willing to pay top dollar for.
It all got out of control when we had to use Jim Pace’s camp house. I didn’t expect him to show up. A smarter man would have stayed home and let us take care of it, but there he was, trying to micromanage me. I knew when I saw him tonight that we were going to have to do something drastic.
I hate drastic. Drastic is a place you never want to be, a place that means you’re failing, that you have to run a Hail Mary. Drastic means you’re not on top, and I have to be on top or the engine leaves the tracks.
Jim had to know who we had in the back room, then he had to talk to him. At that point, he was the walking dead already.
When Dylan threw Brent’s death up to Jim, he came back out, livid over the betrayal, like he had any right to confront me. We had to put a stop to Jim’s melodramatic rant, but it was a bloody mess and I wish we’d done it differently. And how was I to know that Casey Cox was already there, waiting for a chance to go in? It’s almost like we invited her.
Stupid, stupid mistake.
If I hadn’t had Phillips there, angsting over his pressed trousers and his pristine reputation and negotiating for more cash for his next election to offset his heavy conscience, I would have been faster on my feet and my wits would have been sharper.
The human conscience. It’s always a hindrance. It’s what makes all my buddies second-guess what we do, until more cash calms them. But no amount of cash would have stopped the madness that happened tonight.
And Dylan and Casey Cox got away. It’s unfathomable to me. Unforgivable.
In the back of my head I hear my father’s gruff voice. Why don’t we see if we can improve that judgment of yours a little bit?
My dad’s favorite sport was rigging me up to the top floor of the barn and letting me hang there with ropes around my arms until my cartilage strained in the sockets and blisters rubbed on my skin. He would leave me hanging there for nine hours, ten sometimes, and one time he did it overnight. I couldn’t breathe, the pain was so great. And my mother would let him do it. I don’t know if she ever asked him where I was. She knew he was dealing with me. That’s all she needed to know.
Then came the time that he miscalculated, and I got the best of him. And that was the end of that.
I drive through town, looking at every motel parking lot, trying to discover where Dylan and the Cox girl may have parked for the night. I have the others out combing other sections of town, but no one has found anything yet.
I slam the steering wheel. How could anybody be that evasive? Casey Cox can’t be that smart, and neither can Dylan Roberts.
They’ve gotten lucky a couple of times, but they’re about to lose their luck.
I’m creeping past my tenth hotel when I realize we’ve got no way to stop them from talking to the press. They’ve probably called a dozen reporters by now.
It’s going to be bad.
If Casey got to the media and they report this, my path just got narrower. I won’t be able to get to my plane or my Jaguar in Dallas or Candace or my yacht . . .
I have to get out of town now. I make a U-turn and turn on the blue lights installed under my grill. As fast as I can drive through traffic, I make my way to my house. I open the garage with my remote, pull in, and close it behind me. I leave the car running and jog inside.
Gail comes out of the bedroom in her robe. “Gordon, finally! I’ve been trying to call you.”
I go into the bedroom, grab some clothes, and stuff them into a bag. “Gotta take a trip,” I say.
“A trip? Gordon! Where are you going? Is it about Sy’s murder?”
When I ignore her, she grasps my arm. “Gordon, answer me!”
“I don’t have time for this!” I shake her off, push her away from me.
She doesn’t cry often, but she clouds up now. “What have you done? It’s like you’re making an escape. Packing a bag and taking off, just like that, in the middle of the night?”
I can’t tell her more, and even if I could I don’t want to. I go to the back of our closet to the safe I have behind my clothes, and I punch in the combination and open it. I take a bag from the top shelf and start shoving in the cash from the safe.
She stands at the door behind me, unable to see what I’m getting.
“When will you be back? What about Kurt’s wedding? It’s coming up!”
I don’t even answer her as I grab my shaving kit and stuff it full of things I’ll need, then throw it into the bag. When I’m almost to the front door with her trailing behind, chattering her little annoying pleas, I turn back to her. “If anybody asks, you didn’t see me, got it?”
She doesn’t like that. “Gordon, you’ve got to tell me—”
“I don’t have to tell you anything! Now get out of my way.”
When she tries to grab me again, I swing my arm so hard that it knocks her to the floor. I go out the door, back into the garage. I throw my duffel bag in over the driver’s seat, and it bounces on the passenger side. I head to the airport where my Cessna is tied down.
But then I think better of it. I have to go back to the Paces’ camp house and get Jim’s body. I didn’t bury it, and now I can’t leave him there. Dylan is sure to have the place crawling with cops by morning, if they’re not there already.
I drive like Dale Earnhardt, my blue lights flashing. There aren’t any cops around at the turnoff. I switch off my lights and creep up the dirt road the way Casey must have. Still no one here. I go all the way to the house and pop the trunk.
I take my flashlight and go into the woods to the grave we were digging. Jim’s body is still there, slumped where we left him. I get him under the arms and drag him to my car, lift him into the trunk. Then I go back and shovel the grave full of dirt, kick leaves over it.
I return to the car, toss the shovels in on top of the body, and slam the trunk. I’ll find a place to dump him before I leave town. No, I don’t have time. I can’t waste any more time on him.
I’ll just leave him in my trunk and take off in my plane.
If I don’t follow a flight plan and I don’t sign in with the tower, I can go wherever I want and they can’t find me. I can do this. Flying at night, I can disappear.
My mind races. Where will I go?
Maybe Ecuador, where no one will look for me and there’s no extradition treaty. I’ll be leaving behind everything I own and most of the cash, but this should be enough to get me going. Rollins always said it would come to an end at some point, and it made me livid because I didn’t want to hear it. I never believed it.
It occurs to me that he had quite a bit of cash stashed away as well. And I know where he kept it. I head toward his house. The police have removed the crime scene tape by now, and I know where he had a key. I find it over the back door, and I go in. Idiot.
I see where the investigators have gone through his things, and I begin to worry. But when I go to the fake wall in his back bedroom, I realize they never found it. I move the things that are in the way, hiding it, and get to his safe.
I don’t know the combination, but if I know Rollins, he wouldn’t have trusted his memory. He has it written down somewhere around here. I just have to find it.
I look around, trying to think like he would think, and then I see a series of numbers on the underside of his closet shelf, written in pencil.
I laugh out loud, then punch in the numbers, and I hear a click. There it is, all his cash, in stacks of hundred-dollar bills. This is too good to be true.
I stuff the piles of cash into an old, dirty suitcase that’s sitting against the wall. Then I carry it out to my car.
This is going to work. When I get to Ecuador I can access my cash in my offshore bank accounts. I can buy a little house on the water and start completely over. And if by some chance they’ve located my accounts, I can live for a long time on this cash.
I laugh hard as I drive to the private airport. Dylan Roberts doesn’t have what it takes to bring this old man down. And neither does Casey Cox.
43
CASEY
We park a block away and walk to the motel. The place is musty, but it’ll do. Our room has one king-size bed and a sitting area with a couch.
Dylan immediately crosses the room and looks out the window to make sure there’s no one on the other side of the building.
When he turns back, it’s suddenly awkward. “I’ll sleep on the couch again,” he says, “but I don’t think I’ll be doing that much sleeping anyway.”
“You have to sleep,” I say. “After all that’s happened to you, you need to rest. You still have burns . . .”
“Trust me, more has happened to you. Your gunshot wound still isn’t healed. Your wrists. Your face is even still bruised.”
Laughter suddenly rises up in my throat, and I abandon myself to the mild hysteria. I drop onto the small couch as gales of giggles blow over me. It’s contagious, and he starts laughing too.
When I can finally find my voice, I whisper, “We’re such a pair. Gunshot wounds, burns . . . What couple could say those things?”
The laughter is sweet relief, stress cascading on uncontrollable giggles. Finally, mine subsides, and I listen to the way he laughs. I haven’t heard that before. I like the sound of it. His misty gaze tells me he likes mine too.
Wiping our eyes and calming our breathing, we turn on the TV to KTAL, where Macy Weatherow works. Some sitcom I’ve never seen before is playing. “Nothing yet,” Dylan says.
“What do you think is taking so long?”
“She’s confirming things,” he says. “Getting quotes from officials. I guarantee you Chief Gates knows it’s about to blow up by now.”
“What if he’s involved and he covers himself?” I ask him.
“I think we’ll be able to tell by his reaction,” he says. “If he demands an investigation, goes after Keegan and Phillips, suspends Keegan from the force, and contacts the AG, I think we can conclude that he’s clean.”
“If he doesn’t?”
“If he’s involved, he’ll defend the force and say that the stories are patently untrue and that they can’t listen to you because you’re a known killer.”
That makes me shiver.
“If he does that, it doesn’t mean no one’s going to believe you. You’re very persuasive, and your story is true. The press can verify a lot of it. Believe me, the rest of the press will go crazy with it. It’ll be a mushroom cloud.”
I try to imagine what the news cycle will look like tomorrow.
“Go to bed,” he whispers. “Tomorrow’s going to be a hard day. I want you to sleep.”
I nod and say, “I want that for you too.”
“There’ll be time for me to sleep later. Truth is, I’m not that great of a sleeper anyway.”
I look at him. “Dreams?”
“Yeah. The joys of my condition. I sleep with a patch that stimulates my brain waves or something. It helps. It’s part of a clinical study I signed up for.”
I grow somber and stare at the TV screen. “I think you were right about me having PTSD. I have bad dreams too. And sometimes in dangerous situations, I flash back to . . . other things.”
“We have a lot in common. But I feel like I’m getting better.”
“Maybe I’ll get better too, now that I understand what it is.”
“I have a great shrink I can recommend.”
I take my purse into the bathroom and dig for a toothbrush I keep there. I don’t have much else. I’m still wearing the same clothes I bought at the convenience store after escaping from Keegan. I haven’t had a moment to think about buying something new.
I take off my outer T-shirt and check my stitches. They’re puckering red. I probably need antibiotics. I wish I could have gotten back to my car and my emergency bag in Memphis.
I shower, put my clothes back on, and blow my hair dry, wishing I could get rid of the black and go back to my original blonde before I’m blasted all over the media.
When I finally come out, Dylan has the leg of his jeans pulled up, and he’s checking the burns on his calves. As if he doesn’t want me to see them, he mashes the tape back down.
He’s watching an Andy Griffith rerun now. “Still nothing?” I ask.
“No. I’m getting impatient.”
“What’s taking them so long?”
“Maybe they’re waiting till morning.”
I sigh. “What if they don’t run it? I’m starting to think maybe somebody got to them.”
“They will. Trust me.” He gets up, walks to the window, and peers out again. “Can you imagine what Keegan’s going through right now?”
“Somebody else is going to have to die,” I whisper. “He wants it to be us.”
“But this time he has no choice,” Dylan says. “He’s out of options. If I were him, I’d probably take off. Disappear. There’ll be a manhunt for him like there was for you.”
“Well, we know where his favorite haunts are.”
Dylan goes into the bathroom, then returns still fully clothed and sits on the couch as I get under the covers on the bed. He dozes first. His head is rolled back on the sofa, and I smile at the sound of his rhythmic, comforting breathing. I try to forget that my future depends on this night, and that our freedom may be taken from both of us tomorrow.
I drift off to the sound of his sleep, and the dreams I dream are of him and me folding laundry—and laughing like we did earlier tonight. I hang on to it as long as I can.
44
KEEGAN
I drive out to the tarmac, and I’m getting my stuff out of my car and loading it into my plane when Phillips appears out of the shadows.
I jump. “What are you doing?” I ask. “You almost gave me a coronary.”
“I knew you’d come here. You have to take me with you. We have to get out of town.”
“I’m not taking you,” I say. “You’re on your own. Every man for himself.” I load my bags of cash into the cargo bay, then throw my bag of clothes in.
“I’m only in this because of you,” he says. “You owe me.”
I swing around and grab him by the throat and slam him against another plane. “I don’t owe you anything,” I bite out. “I got you elected. I brought down chaos on your opponents, and my money financed your campaign.” I want to choke him, but I throw him down.
He scrambles to his feet and comes at me, and I kick his legs out from under him. As he falls, I kick him in the ribs. He grunts and tries to fight back, but he doesn’t have the skills. He’s worked in an office his whole life. He thinks he’s going to take me on?
Suddenly lights over the runway and tarmac come on. Either someone is coming in for a landing and activated the lights, or someone in the tower has spotted the fight going on at my plane.
This isn’t how I expected this to go.
I may not be able to fly now. I can’t very well expect to get clearance with Phillips lying there, and by now they may be looking for me.
I grab my bags out of my cargo bay and throw them back into my car. I get behind the wheel and consider what to do about Phillips. I quell the instinct to run over him. That won’t help.
And leaving him behind won’t help either, if someone in the tower saw our brawl. I get back out and lift Phillips. He struggles, but I put him in the passenger seat of my car and slam his door. Then I get back into my seat.
“What are you doing, Gordon?” he says, still clutching his ribs. “Where are you taking me?”
“To your car. I don’t want you calling attention to us by bleeding on the tarmac.”
“I need a plan, Gordon. Tell me what to do. I’m not going to prison.”
“You’re the big lawyer. Figure it out.”
“What’s your plan?” he demands.
“Getting rid of you!” I bellow.
“Fine,” he says. “Just shoot me. Bury me like yo
u did Sy.”
Though it sounds like a great idea, I don’t have time for it. I can’t fit another body in my trunk. I find my way to his Mercedes and stop there. I lean across and open his door. “Get out.”
“Seriously?” he says. “Gordon, you’ve gotta help me!”
“Out!” I yell in his ear. “Now!”
He stumbles out of the car, his arm around his rib cage, and I don’t even bother to close his door. I just step on the accelerator and take off. The thrust makes the door close by itself. I drive out of the airport, scared I’m going to be surrounded by a SWAT team any minute now. I drive through neighborhoods and back roads, stopping only once to steal a license plate to put on my car. If there’s a BOLO for me, there must be about a thousand cars that look like mine out on the road.
The tag will give me some cover to get out of town.
I don’t know where I’ll go.
45
CASEY
Dylan and I doze off and on. Several times throughout the night, I rouse out of my sleep and sit up in bed and look across the room. Sometimes he’s up, pacing back and forth, and other times he’s lying on the couch wrapped in his blanket. The TV still plays in the background, but no one has reported our news yet, at least not while I’ve been awake. Finally, I see the sun beginning to peek through the bottom of the blinds, and I know it’s almost morning. The theme music of the morning news show on Channel 6 plays.
I sit up in bed and look over at Dylan. He’s asleep, so I don’t want to disturb him. Instead of the usual morning anchor, I see Macy Weatherow. I suck in a breath and sit up.
She looks deliberate, intense. I know this is it. “Dylan,” I say.
He looks up at me with sleepy eyes.
“She’s about to report it.”
He sits up and jerks his cover off of him.
I turn up the volume as the music stops playing. The camera zooms in on Macy. “We have breaking news this morning regarding the Casey Cox case.”
If I Live Page 17
