by Brook Wilder
“Laura, where the hell have you been?” he asked when he answered. There was no malice in his voice, no sound of a reprimand. It was all concern.
“Sorry. Things got complicated. Fast,” she said, crossing the street at the signal.
“Yes, and I would know all about it if you checked in when you were scheduled to,” he said.
“I know, I’m sorry,” she said. “What has Isabelle Withers told you so far?”
“She certainly paints a very biased picture. You’d think she was a Caracal herself with the way she talks,” he said. “She had a litany of things to say about the Hell Hussars, about Roarke Withers, specifically.”
She had been afraid of that. Before she knew what was going on it would have been easy to just assume that Isabelle was bluffing, stalling until she got a response.
“What are you going to do with it?” she asked, afraid of the answer.
“Not sure yet. We’re not moving forward with anything yet. I was waiting to hear from you.”
“Will you meet with us? Roarke, I mean. I’ve been trying for days to get him to agree to working with the police and this might be the final push he needs for it,” she said.
“That’s the fastest way to blow your cover,” he said.
“I’ll think of an excuse. We need to be aligned on this.”
“This doesn’t mean I’m giving him some kind of plea bargain, not yet anyway.”
She knew Roarke would probably ask for one, or even demand one. But she could deal with that down the road. They had present, pressing issues to deal with and she’d force him to play nice until then.
“That’s fine. We just need to sit down and talk. Come out of uniform, it won’t really make a difference but it make him slightly less hostile.”
“Give me the where and when.”
They picked a date and time. She rattled off the address and reminded him several times to come alone, no matter what his instincts were telling him. She insisted that he trust her. He agreed, begrudgingly, but she knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t break his word.
When she hung up the phone and got back in her apartment, she rifled through the bag from the corner store, putting away the milk and feeling the box of pregnancy tests staring at her from where she left them on the counter.
Chapter 5
The day Hanna’s parents left her forever, she was still Laura in her own head. Maybe that’s part of why it was so easy to shed Laura. She had bad memories, bad feelings. Laura remembered and felt the pain of losing her parents all too well. She also knew the pain of being around them as well, all the problems they caused.
They were drug addicts, the both of them. That’s how they met. They were in the same alley, buying from the same dealer, and ended up in bed together later that night, high out of their minds. Hanna didn’t know how many times they fucked in random motels and public restrooms, hyped up on whatever drug du jour was in their system. One of those exhibitionist trysts resulted in her. She was the product of a blacked out hook up and illegal drugs in the system. That was the extent of it.
Her parents never married, though her father did sign her birth certificate when her addict mother somehow miraculously carried her to term and gave birth. The only home she really remembered was the apartment on San Carlos Street. It smelled of dirt and weed, constantly. There were cracks in the walls and places where the paint didn’t match in shades, covering up marks on the wall. The stove rarely worked and the refrigerator was filled more often than not with beer and barbecue sauce.
It didn’t take long for someone to make a phone call, for the state police to arrive. Her memories after that were all of James. She couldn’t even remember what her parents looked like, though she imagined James must have shared some features with her mother. He said she looked like her, but never said it often. It was a sore subject, to be compared to her. But he raised her and fed her and protected her and, in exchange, she gave him her unwavering trust.
This was the first time in her life she feared she might actually not be able to completely trust him. She didn’t think he would double cross her, but there was no way he would trust Roarke implicitly on Hanna’s word. And he no idea of the level of personal connect that had developed there. This was a powder keg of a situation and she tried not to fear the worst in it.
“How do you know this guy, again?” Roarke asked as he sat antsy at a bar stool.
They’d cleared out the bar, didn’t tell a single member of the gang, not even Robert, that the meeting was happening. It would keep things civil and was the easiest way not to cause some kind of civil war.
“He’s a family friend,” she said, hoping he wasn’t good at spotting familial similarities in faces.
“That sounds a little alarming,” he said.
“Your grandfather was a cop,” she countered and he shrugged.
She’d told Roarke he’d been a friend of her father’s. She downplayed how well she knew him, how often she saw him. She played it out like he was some kind of contact she had in the police station, that he was a dirty cop. James was the farthest thing from a dirty cop that anyone could ever find. But she hoped he was good at playing the part, just for a few minutes.
“He’s late,” he said.
“It’s two minutes past six, calm down,” she said.
She was getting nervous too, though. She didn’t trust Rick, she also didn’t trust him not to linger. He didn’t like being out of the loop and she knew he didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her. His trust in Roarke was now fading fast, as well. She was to blame for that, and felt a little bad.
“You sure you don’t want a beer?’ Roarke asked.
“I’m fine,” she said, sipping down her water. Her grip on her glass tightened, the offending pregnancy test waiting in her purse. She really shouldn’t be compounding her stressors at the moment but she needed to know, so she brought it along.
The door opened and James walked in, dressed in street clothes. He didn’t put out the aura of a dirty cop, not even close. But Roarke didn’t know him. If she did most of the talking then she could make it work just fine, she was sure.
“Withers,” James said, offering a stiff hand.
Roarke took his hand and gave him an equally stiff shake. They looked at each other, for a brief moment where their hands were still joined. It seemed like an eternity where their hands wouldn’t let go, like a game of chicken or mercy. The first one to let go was the loser. It was a show of masculinity. She almost wanted to roll her eyes but held herself still and silent, afraid to break the tension and cause the gunpowder to go off.
“We’re going to be working together,” James said.
“If that’s what you want to call this.”
They finally released their hands, their knuckles were white from how hard they’d been gripping. Hanna swallowed. They stepped back and James took a seat, without asking. It rubbed Roarke the wrong way, she saw it in his face. His stupid pride was just waiting to tip this over the edge.
“We need a plan,” Hanna said. “We’ve got information.”
“Isabelle Withers had a lot of information, too,” James said and she couldn’t tell if he was playing the part or genuinely threatening Roarke.
“I’d be interested to hear what she had to say, how much of it was true,” Roarke said.
“For now, that’s confidential. We’ll discuss those issues after we talk about the issue at hand--”
“I need a guarantee that you’re not going to stab me in the back.”
The air was set on a simmer but the heat was rising. It would boil soon. She stepped between them.
“Listen, we both need things from each other,” Hanna said. “You need information from us and you need the police to look the other way on whatever it is Isabelle dumped on them.”
“But who needs what more?” James asked, leaning in to narrow his eyes at Roarke.
This wasn’t part of the plan and Hanna could only hope it was part of the act, par
t of whatever James was trying to prove to Roarke. It was about flexing muscles. She knew James would probably never trust him and this was his way of showing fangs early to try and keep Roarke in line. But Roarke took it as a challenge. That much was clear in his eyes, as well. He didn’t do well with authority. She had a personality profile on him as well and it revealed as much. James knew that too, he probably checked his file before coming over. This was James seeing how many buttons he could push.
“We don’t need to be blaming each other,” she said. “We need to work together.”
“I need to know I can trust who I’m working with,” James said.
“You can. We need to move on from that point, you harping on it isn’t going to get these girls rescued,” Hanna said, hearing the venom in her own voice.
James was caught off guard, momentarily, looking at her like a stranger. She felt her heart break at it, just for a moment. Then his face returned and they back to playing parts, though something in the energy there had shifted.
“We know the Caracals are involved. Wherever they’ve put their new bar, we know at least that’s where they kept some of the girls,” Roarke said.
“How do you know this?”
“One of them told us?’
“Can you trust her?”
“Well it took about six hours to get the information out of her and since I’m fairly certain she’s not some highly trained plant, yes.”
“Your instincts on this are clear?”
“His instincts are clear, let’s move on.”
Again James eyed her with suspicion she’d never seen him give her but knew well from watching him working with others. It was a face she saw in the interrogation room and when he was shoving cuffed people into the back of his cars. She desperately hoped it was an act but she knew him. He was watching her now, eyeing her. She needed to remove herself from the situation. She couldn’t risk doing anything else to earn his investigative eye. It was bad enough having to deal with Roarke watching her closely, having her tailed. She didn’t want to defend herself on two fronts, especially when they held opposing views of her.
“Look,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I’m going to go to the bathroom. Please play nice and have some kind of plan by the time I get back.”
She took her purse and walked back to the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. She heard their muffled voices through the door as they talked some more. Her shaky hands pulled the pregnancy test out of her purse and unwrapped it, trying to be as quiet as possible. She almost didn’t want to go through with it. She’d know soon enough anyway. But she couldn’t wait that long. She’d torture herself thinking about it.
So she pulled it out and got to work, feeling her heart pounding.
Chapter 6
“You two seem close,” James said.
Roarke didn’t like the man, not at all. He’d decided he didn’t like him before he even walked in, but this was even worse than he pictured. This was an arrogant, authoritarian cop who was used to getting his way, ordering people around, and looking down his nose at cons. Someone needed to take this guy down a peg and it was a challenge Roarke was willing to accept.
“She’s a good friend,” he said. “You, however, are a stranger. And the only reason I’m talking to you is because I trust her.”
“Just a friend?”
“Don’t start something you won’t be able to finish, old man,” Roarke said dangerously.
“I’m trained to read body language, to read verbal cues.”
“Congratulations. Stay on topic.”
Roarke knew though, he gave the man an answer without meaning to. And it didn’t seem to be the answer the cop wanted to hear. He pushed that aside. He’d deal with the over-interested cop later. What they needed to do was get the plan on the table. Though he was fairly certain this guy would shoot him down, dissect the crap out of the plan, somehow make it his own and take credit for it. He didn’t care. They just needed to get the upper hand back.
“I’m going to lay out a plan,” Roarke said. “And I’d appreciate it if you let me get through it without interrupting me.”
“Only if you say please.”
Roarke might kill him before he even finished talking about the plan. He took a breath, tried to think of Hanna’s insistence, how she’d been right the first time about going to the cops. He needed to grow a pair and get it over with. And play nice for as long as possible.
Chapter 7
Hanna tried not to look too out of sorts when she returned to the table, thinking of the small pink plus sign she’d seen come to life on the window of the pregnancy test. It would forever be burned in her mind. It wasn’t something she could unseen, it wasn’t something she could make go away. It was real, it was happening. This was going to be something she was dealing with between that moment and the next eighteen years. She was kidding herself, this was the rest of her life. Kids didn’t just magically go away when they became adults.
She was going to be a mother. She would be a mother until the day she died and her child cried and laid her to rest and told everyone about how their mother brought them into existence from such a fucked up situation. She hadn’t slept with anyone in a year. There was one explanation for the positive sign on the pregnancy test. Originally she had gotten the test to check. They hadn’t used a condom and she wasn’t on the pill. It was a precaution, just to tell herself she was being responsible.
But now it had turned into something incredibly, painfully real. She felt like throwing up and thought of all the months ahead she would be feeling like this. Morning sickness and a belly she couldn’t hide. She had a small amount of time to figure out what to do about this, how to handle it. Finding out life was growing inside you was supposed to be a moment of joy and happiness and excitement, not fear and anxiety and panic.
The men there with her were talking but it felt like she was in a bubble or looking at them from underwater. It was muffled and silent. She saw their mouths moving, saw them talking, but had nothing she wanted to contribute. Nothing she could truly comprehend. She was in another universe, she was in a place where she was a mother and, whether he knew it or not, Roarke was a father and they would forever be joined by that fact and--
“Hanna,” James said sharply and her attention pulled back. They had somehow popped the bubble.
“Yes? What?” she said, quickly trying to get back into the conversation. She felt Roarke’s eyes lingering on her a little too long but she didn’t dare meet his.
“We have a plan,” Roarke said, a little softer. “We want to run it by you.”
“You finally learned how to play nice with each other,” she said sardonically.
“We learned to play to achieve an end we both want,” James said. “We’re going to stage an accident.”
It already sounded like an awful plan, but she didn’t say anything. She’d let them finish. So far the deceit wasn’t working for anyone. It was only going to snowball into something worse, she was sure. But she stayed silent.
“Amber, whether she likes it or not, is going to get into a motorcycle accident,” Roarke said. “We’ll use some old bike from the shop, bang it up a bit. James will make sure it gets on the news.”
“I’m sure Amber will be thrilled about this.”
“She snuck behind our backs and made this worse for everyone, now she has to play by our rules.”
Hanna nodded and stayed silent, sensing his agitation. They’d come to a tentative truce but that was about it. She wasn’t going to disturb the half peace by poking holes in this plan already.
“I’ve got a contact at the hospital, we’ll get Amber a room, make sure it gets out which hospital she’s in. And when Isabelle comes to visit, we’ll nab her,” Roarke said like it was the simplest thing in the world.
“Why would the news report on this?” Hanna asked, going down the list of possible faults in her head.
“Because she’s the oldest sister of the Hell Hussars’ pre
sident,” James said. “That makes her news. Especially if we spruce up the story with a little bit of violence, some Hell Hussars getting upset that their fearless leader’s sister is wounded. Maybe they tag some graffiti points and light a few dumpsters on fire. At that point we wouldn’t even need to feed the media. They’d do the job for us.”
“Okay, but what makes you think Isabelle will show up to the hospital room?”
“She will,” Roarke said with finality.
Hanna had no choice but to believe him with a tone like that. He was staring daggers into space like he could see her there. Perhaps she did hold the affection for Amber that Roarke seemed to think she did. She would show to see her sister, to make sure she was safe and alive and okay. But was her affection going to outweigh her intelligence? As far as Hanna was concerned, this plan seemed a little too obvious. Isabelle had already proven she has a cunning mind and thinks a little too closely to a snake. She might be able to smell something like this. But perhaps her fear that it might be true, that Amber might be hurt or dying and she wasn’t there to comfort her sister, perhaps that fear would win out.
