A Necessary Lie

by Lucy Farago

  “Oh, I’ll do more than that.”

  “Fair enough, but right now let’s focus on getting her back.” Hell, if he could he’d punch himself. “We need to understand why she was taken.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” the senator said. “Even if my father suspected your daughter was here to find Jessie’s killer, she had no proof.”

  “What did he think she knew?” Cowboy said.

  “And why is it important to him?” Irvine said.

  There was one thing important to Lyle.

  The officer with the lock cutter returned. “Chief, the car is there. Front end bashed up, just like you said.”

  “Sir,” said another, returning from the back hall that led to Lily’s room. In his hand he held the notebook in a clear evidence bag.

  “Good. The two of you search the rest of the house.”

  “Is that Jessie’s notebook?” Stanton asked.

  “Grace and I think Lily knew about the hit and run,” Cowboy said, not bothering to answer the senator.

  “Oh, Lily knew all right,” Irvine said. “Someone deposited a large sum of money into her back account. Care to guess who?”

  “My father? All this to cover for my wife?”

  “He wants you in the White House. Guess he figured the lives of two young women don’t matter.” But he’d be damned if he gave him a third. “Senator, do you know who Regina Lewis is?”

  “No,” he said without hesitation. “Should I?”

  “She has your grandchild.”

  He shook his head. “My grandkids are with their mother.”

  “Two of them. The other, your first grandchild, Edward’s son, is with his parents in a safe house, far away from Lyle’s reach. That’s why he took Grace.”

  “Now I’m the one who doesn’t understand.” Irvine didn’t look very happy about it.

  Cowboy proceeded to explain the who, the what, and the why, and as he spoke he silently asked Regina Lewis to forgive him. This was her secret, but Grace’s life was more important. For her, he opened himself up to be discovered. Yes, his secret had died with Jessie, but telling Stanton how his son was killed could lead to the case being reopened. Right now, it didn’t matter. He had to get Grace safely home. If he had to change his identity again, he knew Ryan would help him, but either way he’d have to walk out of her life and force himself to never look back.

  Stanton turned sheet white and slumped down on the couch. “Oh my God,” he said horrified and shocked. “Oh my God.”

  “So you think Lyle is trying to cover up Edward’s crime?” Irvine asked Cowboy.

  “Would you vote for a man whose kid was a serial rapist?”

  “That’s not it,” Stanton said, covering his face with his hands. “That’s not it.”

  “Then tell. Please, senator,” Irvine said, his temper flaring. “Tell me why someone covers up the murder of one girl, kills another, stalks a poor woman, a victim herself of this bullshit family, and threatens the life of my daughter if not to get your sorry ass in the White House. What the fuck could be sooo important that he destroys the lives of so many people?”

  The senator sat up a little straighter. “My father is an evil man, but he loves his great granddaughter.”

  “Ella? He did all this for Ella? Why?” Cowboy couldn’t believe that excuse.

  “We kept it out of the paper. We even had her treated at a private hospital. We didn’t want a media circus surrounding her. If we were going to lose her…” he said, his voice breaking, “we were going to give her as much of a normal life as we could. Ella… Ella has cancer. We thought she’d beaten it. She’s been in remission for twelve years. John was her first donor. He died of heart complications two years later. Then last year her cancer came back. My father, in his fucked-up way, is searching for a bone marrow donor.”

  “I’m sorry, Senator, but Lyle doesn’t strike me as a loving family man. There has to be more to this,” Irvine said.

  Irvine was concerned for his daughter. Cowboy understood that. And maybe he was right and there was more to this than they knew, but a sixteen-year-old was dying of cancer. He couldn’t help but feel for the man… and for Ella.

  “I don’t know what to tell you. Only that he has been determined to find her a donor. If what you say is correct, about the Lewis family, he’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants. You have to find her before you have a third victim.”

  “When did Lyle leave?” Cowboy asked Stanton.

  “I don’t know. When I went to bed he was here.”

  “Call your security. See when he left.” It would at least give them a time frame.

  As expected, when Stanton went to make the call, Irvine laid in to Cowboy about not being told about Regina Lewis.

  “Why did you bring me in?” Cowboy asked the man.

  “To protect my daughter. Which, might I point out, you failed to do. In fact, if it wasn’t for you, she’d never have met Regina Lewis.”

  He had him there and couldn’t, wouldn’t, argue with the man. “You hired me because I can do things you can’t. You have a leak in your department. You know it. I know it. Grace knows it. If I’d told you about Regina, you’d have had no choice but to demand to talk her. She was motive for Lyle wanting Jessie dead. I wouldn’t have told what you wanted to know, but maybe you’d have guilted your daughter into cracking. How long before Lyle got to Isaiah? No, Chief, they were better off with you not knowing. At least until we had proof.”

  “You know about my leak?”

  He nodded. “It’s obvious.”

  “Do you who it is?”

  “Do you want to me find out?” His wouldn’t be the first station they’d investigated.

  “No one can know.”

  “Know what?” he said. It was the least he could do for the man.

  “He left the house at one a.m.,” Stanton said as he returned. “Rick, my foreman, was with him. I called down to the bunkhouse. All his stuff is missing.”

  “Would he help to do something like this?”

  “Take your daughter?” He shook his head. “He’s not that stupid. Dwayne, on the other hand… dumb as doorknob. You know, my father was outside with everyone else when Lily fell—or was pushed. I don’t recall Dwayne being with us when Ella’s cake was rolled out.”

  “Do you have any idea where he may have taken her?” Lily was dead. He didn’t want Grace to meet the same fate.

  “No, sorry,” Stanton said.

  “I thought you had a GPS in her purse?” Irvine said.

  “I did. She had it on her. It’s one of those cross-body things. That’s how I knew to come here. But then the device went dead some five miles west of here.”

  “Why would it do that?”

  “Maybe it was damaged. Maybe he found it. Or she or it could be somewhere the signal couldn’t project to the satellite. Metal can cause interference.”

  Stanton had been silently watching their exchange with curiosity. Cowboy could see it on his face when it finally clicked. “You’ve been working with the police this entire time.”

  “I don’t work for the police. I was hired to find Jessie. When the chief here found out, he asked if I would keep an eye on his daughter. And no, I’m not telling you who hired me.”

  The phone interrupted them. “That’s security. I’ll be right back.” Stanton picked up the line in the kitchen.

  Irvine walked over to the patio doors and opened them, letting in the cool, late summer breeze. “She’s my only daughter. If he hurts her….”

  “He’s not going to hurt her.” And he was starting to believe it, had to believe it, because the alternative was not an option. “He needs her alive. And you didn’t raise her to roll over and die. She may not have liked all those classes you forced on her, but they’ll come in handy now.”

  “What do you mean she didn’t like the classes I forced on her? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You raised a soldier, not a little girl.” He held up his hand when
the man opened his mouth to object. “Hey, right now, I couldn’t be more grateful. Take this up with her. When we find her.”

  “Gentlemen,” Stanton said, “I have alarms going off. There’s been some cattle rustling in the last year so I had the more accessible acres wired to monitor.”

  “Does Lyle know about the alarm system?” Irvine asked.

  “No. This is my ranch. Not his. And he’s not involved in its daily running, not after my mother cut him out of her will. She caught the bastard cheating.”

  Yeah, that’s what he figured.

  “Let’s go then.” Irvine turned to leave.

  “It’s not that easy. This is the third time this month this has happened… but never in two locations.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll show you on the monitor.” He followed him into his office.

  At his desk, he keyed some numbers, and a map of Stanton land popped open on the computer screen. Two red dots blinked. Cowboy knew the ranch well enough to know they were at least a hundred miles apart. One north of the house, one west. It was the one west that intrigued him the most. It sat kitty-corner to his mother’s ranch.

  “What’s out there?” Irvine asked.

  “The north location has a hunting cabin. Good roads going in and out but well hidden. The other borders my neighbor, and as far as I remember, there’s nothing out there.”

  He was wrong. Cowboy remembered the old cabin, had hid out in that old cabin.

  “How far are they? Could he have traveled that far?”

  “It’s doable,” Cowboy said, standing. “You take the hunting cabin. I’ll take the other.”

  “The cabin makes more sense,” Irvine argued as they walked out the front door.

  “And that’s why you’re going there and I’m not.”

  “What are you going to do if he’s there? You can’t just walk up to him. He’s not stupid. If he took her because he thinks she knows something, then he might suspect you do too.”

  Cowboy opened his car door. “You let me worry about that. Besides, like you said, odds are he’s at the cabin.”

  Cowboy knew what he had to do. And as much as he didn’t like it, getting Grace back unharmed was more important.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Grace woke up tied, gagged, and with a bag over her head. One minute she’d been trying to get into the hotel room and the next she was in a moving car. She told herself not to panic. Slumped over, she tried to right herself when she felt a cold hand wrap around her bicep. Immediately repelled she slid in the opposite direction, putting as much distance as she could between her and her kidnapper.

  “It’s about time. I was beginning to think Dwayne really screwed up.” Lyle removed the hood covering her head. “Especially when it took so long to call and tell me he had you.”

  She squinted, trying to focus, the rising sun outside the car window nearly blinding her. They were on a dirt road, Lyle and her in the backseat of an SUV. The bald guy from the party, who she now knew was Dwayne, was driving. What made her heart go into overdrive was the rifle on Lyle’s lap, the rifle aimed at her.

  She jumped as he reached over and yanked the tape off her mouth. It stung. “I know what you did,” Grace said to Lyle.

  “Really? What is it you think you know, Ms. Irvine?”

  “The police know too.” If he thought the cops were on to him, maybe he wouldn’t kill her. “Your Cadillac killed Jessie.”

  The son of bitch laughed. He laughed. “Poor woman. Drinking got the better of her, but I’m sure with the right help, she’ll beat this.”

  So they’d guessed right. Stanton’s drunk wife had killed Jessie. “How does one beat vehicular manslaughter while impaired? That’s a serious offense.”

  He shrugged. The prick shrugged, as if killing an innocent woman meant nothing. “It’s a good thing my son filed for divorce three weeks ago then.”

  “That bitch kills my friend and you’re concerned about your son’s career? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “That bitch has been a problem for years. Her drinking was easy to excuse after my grandson was killed. She was a mourning mother. But that excuse wore thin after a while.”

  Had he missed the part about killing Jessie? Did he really think a drunk’s problem with the bottle was more important?

  “Keeping her on a short leash became more and more burdensome. Well,” he waved his fingers in front of her face, “you saw what happened when she wasn’t being watched. She’s just lucky I have friends who knew how to deal with her little joy rides.”

  “She was caught twice before hitting that tree.”

  “Oh, she was caught a lot more than three times, Ms. Irvine. Like I said, I have friends.”

  Crooked cops. Her father had been right.

  “That last incident was hard to sweep under the rug. She’d done it in broad daylight—with witnesses,” Grace said. “And how are you going to explain covering up what she’s done this time? The police aren’t going to let that slide, no matter who you bribe.”

  “I didn’t cover it up. Our foreman did.”

  “And he’s going to take the fall for you?”

  “They’ll have to find him first, won’t they? And that’s not going to happen. No, Rick is probably on some forgotten tropical island without extradition rights, living the life of a king.”

  The son of a… She stopped herself. Lyle Stanton’s parentage had nothing to do with this. No, this was all on him and he was going to get away with it. “You paid him off?”

  “You’d have a hard time proving that, so I wouldn’t go around slandering my good name.”

  Did that mean he was going to let her go? After he’d brought her here by force? Then again, as he’d implied, who would believe her? Shit, her purse was missing with her cell phone inside. It wasn’t on the floorboard.

  Lyle yawned. “I hate getting up early.” He yawned a second time. She took the opportunity to look in the rear cargo, and there was her purse among some tools. What were the chances of her getting to it?

  “Now for the real reason we’re together. I have some questions and apparently, you have the answers.”

  “Me?”

  “You and Mr. Bailey. But considering my options, I chose you.” He snapped his fingers and the driver passed him a file folder over his shoulder. Lyle withdrew a piece of paper and turned it around for her to look at.

  Not a piece of paper. A picture of her going to Regina’s Lewis’s workplace.

  “It’s odd how many times you showed up in my surveillance photos. Here you are going into the IRC home office building.”

  They were right. He was after Regina and her family.

  He pulled out another picture. “Habitat for Humanity.” And then another. “New York County Public Defender Services’ office on Broadway.”

  She made a sour face at the last one. “That’s a terrible shot. I look at least ten pounds heavier.” No way could he know they’d moved the family.

  “This is funny to you?”

  “That you’re stalking me? No, it’s not funny at all. Are you so worried I’ll bash your son in the paper that you’re having me followed?”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Pictures say otherwise.”

  He shook his head condescendingly. “I’d say I admire your sense of humor, but I don’t. Why were you at all these places?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Ms. Irvine, I’m losing my patience with you.”

  She’d be inclined to go the smartass route, but considering it was two against one, she opted to tone it down. “Research. I’m thinking about doing an article on humanitarian aid in the United States. How far are Americans willing to go to for their fellow man? Don’t worry—you’re not part of the story.”

  “I see. Well you’re nothing if not imaginative.”

  “I’m also a good reporter. I have the awards to prove it.” Did he believe her?

  “Do they give awards to liars
? Because you’re good at that too.”

  They went over a particularly bumpy road, and without a seatbelt on, she had to brace herself to keep from falling over. She glanced outside the window and realized they were on a dirt road headed into the hills. “What have I lied about?” She wasn’t admitting to anything.

  “Stop the bullshit, Ms. Irvine. Why were you looking for Regina Lewis?”

  She furrowed her brow. “Who?”

  She wouldn’t have thought an old fart like him could hit hard, but he proved her wrong. She underestimated the prick’s speed or she’d have had more time to turn her face; as it was his hand caught the left side of her cheek, making her ear ring. Several things went through her mind at the same time. He wasn’t kidding, Jessie had been right to be concerned about Isaiah’s welfare, and she wasn’t going to get out of this alive, not unless she kept her wits about her and didn’t panic.

  “Now let’s try that again, shall we?”

  She could try to play stupid, but what would be the point? Lyle wouldn’t believe her. Instead she tried another lie. “Her name featured prominently in Jessie’s notes. I figured she was a clue to her whereabouts. Then…” She swallowed, not having to pretend how hard this was for her. “Then when Jessie’s body was found, I thought Regina Lewis might have an idea who killed her.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “And what did you find out?”

  “Nothing that could lead me to her killer. At first I suspected they were involved or that they were running from whoever had killed Jessie. But in hindsight I guess their employers had been right. The Lewis family went on an extended vacation.”

  “And were you able to find out where they’d gone?”

  She’d hoped he’d believe her lie and that it would be the end of it. But she now knew he was looking for them. And that wasn’t good. “Nearest I could figure out, Canada.” The least she could do is keep him as far away from them as possible.

  “Canada? How did you come to that conclusion?”

  “One of her coworkers said Regina often talked of visiting and in her last week in the office she’d bought a French dictionary.”

  “Maybe she went to France.”