by Diane Capri
And then he seemed to slouch and just give up the fight. Maybe for Claire. Maybe because he knew Jordan wouldn’t quit anyway so he’d be better off spinning things his way. She’d sort out his motivation later. She strained forward to be sure she heard every word.
Speaking in an urgent whisper, he said, “Flynn was at the Casino. He’s stalking me.”
Claire said, “What?”
Sal reached an arm around her now, pulling her closer. “He wants me to do favors I’ve refused to do.”
“What kind of favors?” Jordan asked.
He bowed his head and Jordan could no longer see his face, but the color had drained from Claire’s. She whispered, “What kind of favors, Sal?”
He looked up, took a deep breath, stalled. Jordan and Claire both waited.
“Hire his shrimp boat captains. Corrupt guys. Drug runners. So they can meet up with cartel members or whatever in the Gulf at night and bring drugs to shore in my boats.” He turned to Claire, whose horrified expression said everything about how she felt. Maybe she didn’t even realize she’d backed away from Sal’s embrace. He turned to Claire. “I wanted to tell you. But I wanted to keep you out of Flynn’s way even more. And now look what I’ve done.”
Jordan hesitated to believe his story too quickly. After all, why would he suddenly confess now? Yeah, she’d pushed him, but he broke fast. She’d like to believe she was that good, but she didn’t have the best track record at getting people to talk. “So the body in the tank…”
“A threat. To me. Flynn told me to hire his captains, and after I told him no on Wednesday, the next day that body appeared. Flynn was sending me a message.”
Jordan kept pushing, testing. “Ted Garfield. Did you know him?”
Sal cringed and nodded.
Claire leaned in, her forehead puckered. “You knew the decapitated guy?”
“He was my high school soccer coach,” Sal said, his voice nearly hoarse now. “A friend back then.”
“But why would they kill your soccer coach?” Claire asked. “High school was a long time ago.”
Jordan was glad Claire was getting involved now. Maybe the shock had passed a little.
Sal said, “To send a warning. Prove they know who my friends are, who I’m close to, but not scare me into doing something crazy like go to the DEA or something. I guess they’ll work their way even closer to me if I kept saying no.”
Claire’s nostrils flared like she was going to be sick.
“Kelly Barnes,” Jordan said. “Related?”
Sal nodded. “It’s gotta be, right? I don’t know how to prove it, but I’m sure that was another threat from Flynn. A little closer to home since I refused to budge.” His voice quivered. “A lot closer to home actually. I feel like I killed Kelly.”
He looked at Claire, hugged her, and buried his face in her shoulder for a moment.
The server passed by and flashed a sympathetic expression.
Jordan said, “He’ll be okay.” The waiter nodded and walked on.
“Will I, Jordan? Will I?” Sal’s angry tone belied fear, Jordan guessed. “Do you know why Flynn was in my office just now? He demanded again, for the third day in a row, that I hire his captains. And I said no. And now he’s seen Claire. And you. I should’ve said yes, dammit.” He gritted his teeth, nostrils flared, and said, “I can’t risk your lives anymore.”
Claire stared at him as if she’d never met him before.
“Why don’t you tell the police? That’s the best thing, isn’t it?” Jordan asked.
He cocked his head and exhaled. “It’s a major drug cartel. They’ve got resources. Killing Garfield and Kelly proves how much they know or can find out and what they’re willing to do.”
“Yes, but the police are trained for this. It’s their job, not yours,” Jordan said.
Sal leveled a steady gaze directly into Jordan’s and spoke clearly. “They threatened me, too. They said if I tell anyone, including the police, they’ll immediately kill Claire and my family. All in the same day. Before anyone can stop them. It’s not a chance I’m willing to take. Would you?”
CHAPTER 5
Jordan hadn’t answered Sal’s question because she couldn’t. No one could. It was an impossible choice. They’d pushed the food around on their plates a while and then Jordan left for work. At least Claire knew everything now, so she could make informed decisions about staying with Sal. As for the rest, Jordan had serious thinking to do and the responsibility felt too heavy. She wasn’t sure where she’d land. So she put her head down and stayed at the assignment desk, grateful for an uneventful shift.
When Jordan got home, she was tired and sick at heart. She wanted sleep and plenty of it. After that, maybe she could think clearly.
She drew a glass of water at the sink and as she drank, she noticed a package on the kitchen table. A medium-sized brown box about the size she often received containing books from an online retailer. She brought the water and walked over to check it out.
The label was addressed to her. But it was Sunday. Mail on a Sunday? She’d tried once, and it was way expensive. Unless the contents required urgency for some reason. Like medicines or something, maybe? For her dad?
Upon closer inspection of the box, she noticed it not was not only addressed to her, the return address was hers, too: 4523 Thompson Street. The label was stamped: RETURN TO SENDER.
She’d never sent this package. But this was the kind of thing Paul might have done once upon a time. Back when they were inseparable. Before he dumped her. Before she hated him. What was he up to, exactly?
Jordan pulled the scissors out of a kitchen drawer and flipped the package upside down. She started cutting the tape along the lengthwise slit, when she heard a noise from the back of the house.
“Jordan?” her dad’s voice called.
“Dad?”
He was never awake at this hour. She must have disturbed him clunking around. Or he might need something. She flipped on the hallway light and hurried back to his room. He was propped up in bed in the dark.
“What are you doing up?” she asked.
“I thought I heard a noise outside. I guess it was you.”
“Yeah. Sorry. I’ll try to be quieter next time.” She stepped forward and straightened her dad’s wheelchair into place. “Hey, I saw a package on the table for me.”
“I should’ve texted you when it was delivered. At first I thought it was urgent, being Sunday. But then I noticed it had our return address, so I figured it was some kind of mistake.”
Jordan shook her head in slow motion. Now, she had a really bad feeling about this. Maybe it was Sal’s warning that was setting off tingling alarms all over her body. Or maybe she was just exhausted. Could go either way.
She tried to remain calm. She couldn’t risk upsetting her dad over what might be nothing. Please let it be nothing. “Did you happen to see who dropped it off?”
“Yep. I had to sign for it.”
The generalized alarm she’d felt ratcheted up on her internal Richter scale five or six levels. If this was about Sal, the guy had come way too close to the dearest person in Jordan’s world.
He shifted against his pillows. Jordan thought he looked exhausted, but right now she was focused on something else.
“What’d he look like?” She heard low level panic in her voice, but her dad must have been too tired to notice.
His voice was a little weaker and his eyelids began to droop. “Oh, he was kind of tall, thick build, middle age. Maybe older.”
Jordan stepped closer and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “What else can you remember? Beer belly?”
He didn’t open his eyes. He seemed worn out. “I don’t know, honey. He had crazy blonde hair…a hideous green tattoo on his neck…”
Chester Flynn had a green tattoo on his neck. Jordan struggled to inhale, swallowed the gulp in her throat, gave his shoulder a squeeze and squeaked out the words, “I’ll be right back.”
She patted h
er side to be sure she still had her sling bag across her body. Her phone was in there, along with the camera she’d used at the docks this morning and just about everything else she couldn’t live without. She felt irrationally sure now. Whatever was in this package somehow came from Chester Flynn. It could be another one of his warnings to Sal. A warning closer than Ted Garfield or Kelly Barnes. Flynn and his crew should already be on police radar, but, because of Salvador’s fear, they weren’t.
But she couldn’t call police based on tingles and guesses and get Sal into worse trouble if she was wrong. She had to open the package to be sure she wasn’t overreacting. She ran to the kitchen and finished the cut she had started. As she pulled the tape apart, she squinted, gagging as her imagination conjured Ted Garfield’s dead eyes staring back at her.
She lifted the flaps and opened the box.
Instead of a human head, a mess of metal and wires stared her in the face. For a moment, she simply stared back.
What was it? A bomb?
A bomb that began making noise the instant she had pulled open the package. She knew enough about letter bombs to know the countdown had already started.
Jordan sprinted back to her dad’s bedroom in what seemed like three giant leaps. “Dad, get in your chair NOW!”
Jordan flung herself through his doorway, finished rolling him out of bed, pushed him into his seat, and hoisted the two of them out the back door and down the ramp that led to outside. Jordan hopped on the back of the chair as they rolled across the paved patio. She looked back over her shoulder.
BOOM!
The explosion rocked through Jordan’s body as if her heart had exploded. She saw the entire front half of the house jump apart and burst into hot licks of fire and smoke and a deafening cacophony of sound. Debris flew everywhere. She held onto the wheelchair so she wouldn’t collapse into a puddle of screams.
Her shaking started immediately. She felt tears streaming down her cheeks without realizing she cried. Her body operated of its own volition, with no control from her mind. Pieces of her body should have been in that mess of splinters. And Flynn had delivered the package directly to Nelson. He knew Nelson was in a wheelchair and wouldn’t be able to save himself. Flynn wanted to kill them both.
Jordan felt her face streaked with sweat and tears. She swiped and smeared with her shirt. She knelt down in front of her dad and held his cheeks in both her hands. His mouth hung open and his eyes sagged. A single tear ran down each cheek.
“Daddy. Daddy.” She hugged him, crying now, and not trying to stop. He was alive. That was all that mattered. They were both alive. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I met the wrong guy. I—oh my God, Dad.” She sniffled now, wiping her nose with her shirt and making an effort to control herself. For him. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“What the hell is all this about?” he finally asked weakly, desperately. “My house.”
She could barely think of an adequate response so she just wrapped her arms around him and squeezed as tight as she could. For a moment, she forgot about Sal and Claire and Chester Flynn. She saw her bewildered and disabled father now homeless, helpless. She was a filthy mess, barely able to breathe, certainly not thinking straight. The job she had taken to get justice for her mother’s murderer had almost gotten them both killed. Guilt piled on too rapidly to ignore. She couldn’t, wouldn’t risk losing her dad again. But what about her mom’s killers? Who would find them if she didn’t? What should she do?
The noise of the raging fire brought her attention back to the present. She released her dad and asked, “Do you have your phone?”
Without waiting for an answer, she reached into the pocket that hung from the side of his wheelchair, where he normally kept it parked beside his bed overnight, and grabbed his cell phone.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“Our house just exploded. We need fire and police to 4523 Thompson Street. And do you have a bomb squad?”
After she hung up, she squatted to eye level with her dad. “I’ll be right back, Dad. I want to shoot some video for the police. It might help them find whoever did this and put the bastard away forever. You’ll be okay here. I’ll watch out for you.” She reached into her bag and pulled out her ancient phone. She pressed 911. Then she handed it to him. “If anything else happens, press this send button right here. Tell the emergency operator. Okay?”
He said nothing, but he took the phone and nodded and continued to stare at his home in flames.
Her dad’s phone took better video than hers did. She flicked his phone to video mode. She was planning to get evidence of more than the house on fire. She might be able to catch Flynn hanging around, too.
Flynn showed up at the Aquarium Room to watch the aftermath of his handiwork. He might be lurking somewhere nearby now.
Even if he wasn’t, she needed to try. This was her fault. She caused it and she would fix it.
Jordan cautiously took a lap around the house, documenting the whole thing on camera. The front of her home was blown to smithereens. Flames licked the walls and the roof. Window glass had shattered and strewn everywhere. Most of the damage was to the kitchen. She could see the spot where she’d opened the package on the kitchen table. The table was gone. Everything around it was gone. If she’d been standing there, she’d have been gone, too.
The control she thought she’d mustered collapsed and she broke into sobs no one could possibly hear because of the fire’s noise. Jordan never cried. Ever. And now she’d blubbered like a baby out front and again here. Okay. Get it over with. She cried her tears out once and for all, in the hope they wouldn’t explode like the house at some inappropriate moment.
She heard the sirens approaching. Finally. It seemed like hours ago that she’d called 911, but she knew response times were quicker than that.
She took a few long, steadying deep breaths and then smeared her face around with her shirt again to dry her tears as best she could. She must look like a war refugee by now. She shrugged. No matter. That was exactly how she felt.
Jordan stood up and squared her shoulders. She was done. Between Jordan Fox and Chester Flynn? Trying to kill her and her dad most definitely meant war.
When she circled back to her dad, he simply sat, helpless, slumped in his wheelchair, watching the life he’d tried so hard to rebuild for the two of them smolder and burn.
Chester Flynn would pay for that, too.
CHAPTER 6
They all arrived at once. A couple of fire trucks, two police cars, and another vehicle that Jordan couldn’t immediately identify. Two men in uniform moved Jordan and her dad to the corner of the front yard, and then asked a few basic questions which they answered as directly as they could. After that, they sat watching in silence.
A while later, an officer approached, knelt down, and promised Nelson they would do everything possible to find out who was responsible.
“Yeah, that’s what you guys said when my wife was murdered, too, but you never did,” he said.
“Dad!” Jordan started to scold him for the outburst, then stopped. He’d been through enough tonight, and it was all her fault. He had every right to be angry. At the police, at her, and just generally at his entire situation. Besides, he wasn’t wrong about her mother, either.
Jordan said, “I’m a journalist, officer. I’m in this with you. You give us the information and we’ll help publicize it. Maybe we’ll get some good tips from the public. How’s that for a deal?”
“You got it.” He shook her hand. “Bomb squad is going to work on this tonight, and someone will call you tomorrow with an update. Okay?”
Nelson shook the officer’s hand as well.
“Do you two have somewhere you can stay the rest of the night?” the officer asked.
Nelson looked up at Jordan. “You could stay with Claire and I can go to a hotel, I guess.”
“No way. I’m staying with you.” She replied, and then said to the officer, “We’ll go to a hotel tonight. W
e’ll find friends to stay with tomorrow. Thank you.”
Jordan couldn’t risk moving in with Claire. Too easy for Flynn to find and harm them both that way. She wanted Nelson to stay way, way under the radar. If she paid for hotel rooms with cash, Flynn shouldn’t find Nelson right away, at least.
A fire investigator came over next to give them the scoop: Their kitchen essentially didn’t exist anymore, and the front office area was also destroyed. The back bedrooms seemed to be intact, but the house would have to be examined for structural integrity before it could be thoroughly cleaned and someone could sleep there.
Plus, there was no front door.
“Is it safe for us to go in through the back of the house to pack a quick bag?” Jordan asked.
The officers required Jordan wear a mask to go inside. She grabbed two huge duffel bags. She crammed one full of as many of her clothes and shoes as she could fit. She swept the contents of her bathroom counter into a smaller bag and shoved that in the duffel, too. She filled the other duffel bag with a couple of basic outfits for her dad along with his medication. She stopped by her bedroom, gave it one last look, and ran outside.
They agreed on a modest hotel nearby. As a courtesy, probably because it was off-season, the hotel provided two rooms for the price of one. Which was a good thing, because neither Fox could afford to pay for two hotel rooms for as long as they’d have to stay. Jordan needed to make different arrangements and fast, before Nelson’s meager resources were totally depleted. She hoped insurance would cover some of the costs, but who knows when she’d get that worked out.
Nelson required wheelchair accessible accommodations. She helped him settle into his room on the first floor and then took the elevator up one floor to her own room. She dropped her clothes into the trash and showered off the grime. By the time she crawled between crisp white sheets, she was both exhausted and wide awake.
She stared at the ceiling in the dark.
One more Channel 12 day and then she’d have two free days to work with investigators. The official investigation would go through the usual process, but she couldn’t wait for that to happen. She needed faster answers and she needed to be on the inside now, before Flynn did something worse. She’d lived here all her life. Surely, she knew someone on the inside. But who?
