Hidden Miles: The Miles Family Book 4

by Kingsley, Claire

  I swung my legs around and stretched before getting up to use the bathroom. My hair was a mess, but I didn’t care. I went back out and sat on the couch to drink my coffee.

  Jace was sitting in the armchair next to the couch, his ankle crossed over his knee. He had his phone in one hand, his coffee in the other. His eyes flicked up to me as I took my mug from the table, then went back to his phone.

  “We have that wedding this weekend,” he said. “Do you have something to wear?”

  It took some effort not to groan like a kid who’d just been told to do their chores. His cousin was getting married and I had no interest in being there. But I didn’t want to start an argument. It was easier to just go along with it.

  “Yeah, I can wear my black dress.”

  He glanced at me again. “The one with sleeves?”

  I took a sip of coffee before answering so I wouldn’t say something snarky. He wanted me to wear sleeves so my tattoos wouldn’t show. “Yes, the one with sleeves.”

  “Okay.”

  “What time do you have to work?”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “You know my schedule.”

  “I’ve just been busy with clients lately. I lost track.”

  “Jesus, Hannah, you’re a smart girl. You should be able to remember my schedule. I’m on at two.”

  “All right, got it.”

  “Why don’t you go shopping and get a new dress,” he said, his voice suddenly softer. “You’ve been working really hard. You deserve it.”

  I blinked at him a few times. “I don’t really have any extra—”

  “Don’t worry about it, babe,” he said, pulling out his wallet. “It’s my cousin getting married. The least I can do is make sure you have something nice to wear.”

  He took out some cash and held it out.

  Confusion and fear swirled through me. I didn’t want to take it, but if I refused, he’d get mad. Probably yell at me for being ungrateful. But why was he suddenly being nice to me? He’d yelled at me yesterday because his uniform was wrinkled and he couldn’t find the socks he wanted. He’d come home to me sleeping on the couch—again—and now he wanted to buy me clothes?

  “Thanks,” I said, taking the cash. Maybe if I did what he wanted, we’d have one day—just one—where we didn’t fight.

  He nodded, then went back to whatever YouTube video he’d been watching on his phone.

  I put the cash next to my laptop, then settled back on the couch, cradling my hot coffee. Moments like this were almost as tense as when we argued—for me, at least. Jace seemed perfectly content. But the calm and quiet left me on edge. We sat in the living room, drinking coffee as if the silence between us was comfortable. As if we hadn’t been in a yelling match last week that had the neighbors coming to see if I was okay.

  I’d lied and said I was fine. I’d fallen all over myself apologizing. Taking the blame.

  I hated that I’d done that. It made me feel weak. Maybe that was why I liked gaming so much. When I was gaming, I could be the badass warrior I wished I was in real life. My gaming friends probably thought I was. They probably figured I was confident and successful. Gigz was. Gigz was amazing. She was self-assured and strong. A sassy killing machine.

  But I wasn’t Gigz. Not really. I was Hannah Tate, and I didn’t like her nearly as much.

  Three

  Leo

  I stared at the text from Cooper. The shortness of it was enough to tell me he wasn’t kidding. No jokes, no rambling. Just two words. It’s today.

  He didn’t need to explain. We all knew it was coming. But the lack of surprise didn’t stop the sick feeling from spreading through my gut. Glancing at the time—it was just after seven in the morning—I groaned and rolled out of bed.

  The DEA was moving in on the opium poppy-growing operation my dad was trying to run on our land.

  Dad had roped Cooper into helping him, claiming he was growing cannabis. He’d said that he’d sell the crop and, once he cashed in, drop his demands on the property and grant Mom her divorce. Cooper hadn’t liked it, but he’d thought it was the only way to get Dad to cooperate and save the land for our family.

  Only Dad hadn’t been growing cannabis. His crop was a strain of poppy used for making high-potency heroin.

  At first, I’d been baffled by his plan. He couldn’t possibly make enough money to set himself up with one crop.

  But I’d done some digging, and the opioid crisis in this country was fueling demand for more potent strains of heroin. And changes in border protection had made it more difficult for drug operations to import their product. They were increasingly looking to domestic growers to get what they needed. With the demand for these drugs at an all-time high, they were willing to pay good money.

  It still surprised me that he’d gone this far. His decades of unfaithfulness to my mom certainly highlighted his low moral code. But drug trafficking was serious shit.

  His life had gone on a downward spiral in the last couple of years, and I wondered what was behind the fall. Had it started when my mom had kicked him out? Or before? What else did we not know?

  The rest of my family wasn’t interested in finding those answers. It was easier for them to see it as black and white. Dad was a cheating bastard—which was true—and a criminal—also true. He deserved everything he had coming to him.

  And yeah, he did. I wasn’t going to dispute that. I was furious for what he’d done to my mom. For how he’d threatened our land and put our home in jeopardy. I didn’t know if I could ever forgive him for the long list of ways he’d been a shit human being.

  So why did I have mixed feelings today? Why did I have pangs of sympathy for the father who’d rejected our entire family? I was sure my siblings didn’t feel the same.

  It was easier for my brothers. Dad had always been hard on them. He and Roland had butted heads for as long as I could remember. They were too much alike, but instead of Dad recognizing their similarities and using that to connect with his oldest son, he’d been harsh and demanding. Setting expectations Roland could never meet.

  I’d been pissed at Roland for moving away—for not being here, especially when I was deployed. But when he’d come back last year and I’d seen him dealing with Dad, it had hit me how shitty Dad had always been to him. I felt like an ass for not seeing it before. Roland hadn’t distanced himself because he didn’t care about his family. He’d done it because Dad had driven him away.

  Cooper, on the other hand, was as tied to this land as a person could be. He loved his vineyards too much to leave, so he’d dealt with Dad by avoiding him. That, and partying his ass off with Chase. Dad hadn’t set the same high expectations for Cooper. He hadn’t set any. It was like he’d given up on Coop. Written him off as a screw-up.

  I wasn’t sure what was worse. A demanding father you could never please, or a father who thought you were too far gone to matter.

  I checked the security cameras I’d set up where Dad was growing his crop. They were well-hidden—I knew what I was doing—and they’d been recording for the last several weeks. I’d provided the footage to Agent Rawlins with the DEA—an old friend of Ben’s who’d been working the case. Between the footage and the other shit they had on my dad, they had enough to move in on him. And put him away for a very long time.

  He was out here, now. Standing in the field, giving directions to the crew he’d brought to harvest the poppies. With no idea he was about to be arrested.

  My relationship with Dad was… complicated. My brothers had mostly bad memories of him. Brynn probably didn’t have many memories of him at all. With her, he’d been distant. Gone too much to be a big presence in her life.

  But he and I had gotten along. Maybe it was a personality thing, or the fact that I was a middle child. He hadn’t subjected me to the same pressure he had Roland, or blown me off like Cooper. He hadn’t exactly been a nurturing father, but my memories of him were different. Better.

  And it was hard to put aside everything he’
d done for me when I’d come home after my medical discharge from the Army. I’d been a disaster. I still was, but at least now I was a semi-functional disaster. In those days, I’d barely been sane.

  He and Mom had given me a safe place to land. Helped me through those first horrible months when I’d still been in so much pain I’d wanted to die. He’d calmly talked me through panic attacks and found me a therapist who would see me remotely.

  It didn’t excuse the things he’d done. I was not only angry with him, I was hurt and betrayed. But I was still having a hard time reconciling the Lawrence Miles who was about to be arrested for drug trafficking with the father I’d thought I’d known.

  Apparently I hadn’t known him very well after all.

  I took a quick shower and threw on some clothes, then walked the short distance to my mom’s house. Mom’s car was gone. She must have gone to Roland and Zoe’s already. She’d protested our plan to get her off-property when we heard shit was about to go down, until Zoe had brought out the big guns: Hudson. Mom couldn’t say no to time with her grandson.

  The kid was pretty damn cute. He was almost three months old, and he already had the entire family wrapped around his tiny finger. Someone else in this family needed to get busy having babies, or Huddy was going to end up spoiled from all the attention.

  The rest of my family—and Ben—were all here. Roland, Brynn, and Chase sat at the dining table. Roland’s sleeves were rolled up, his brow furrowed with tension. Chase had a protective arm around Brynn.

  Ben leaned against the doorway to the kitchen, a mug of coffee in his hand. He frowned through his salt-and-pepper beard. Although he looked calm—like he was just here quietly observing—I could see the tension in his stance. In the set of his feet and the tightness in his forehead. I couldn’t remember a time when Ben hadn’t been at Salishan. He was as deeply ingrained in this place as any of us.

  I was also pretty sure he was in love with my mother.

  If I’d realized that a few years ago, I would have been uncomfortable with it. Ben was a good guy, but thinking he’d stuck around all these years to ogle a married woman would have pissed me off.

  But that wasn’t Ben, and I knew it. He might have had feelings for my mom for a long time, but he’d never acted on them. In fact, I didn’t understand why Ben had stayed. None of us had known my dad was a cheating asshole. Why had Ben tortured himself by staying here, watching her raise a family with another man?

  I’d probably never know. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could just ask a guy.

  Regardless of his reasons, he was here, and I was damn grateful.

  I expected to see Cooper pacing around the room, but instead, he was on the couch with his girlfriend, Amelia. She was nestled against him, rubbing his ear between her thumb and forefinger. I had no idea how she did it, but Amelia was the one person in the world who could keep Cooper calm. He still looked stressed—no surprise there; we all were—but he wasn’t bouncing off the walls, talking a mile a minute.

  I really liked Amelia.

  “Any word yet?” I asked.

  “Nothing new,” Cooper said. “Dad’s crew should have started arriving about an hour ago to start the harvest. I convinced him to be there in person.”

  “Yeah, he’s out there,” I said. “Nice work.”

  Cooper just shrugged. He looked tired.

  “Leo’s right, Coop,” Roland said. “You’ve handled this whole thing really well. Thank you.”

  He twined his fingers with Amelia’s and nodded. “Thanks, bro. I’ll just be glad when this shit is over.”

  “How’s Mom?” I asked.

  “You know her,” Brynn said. “She’s basically the queen of making the best of things. She tried to cook us breakfast when we got here.”

  Roland cracked a smile. “I bet she’ll spend half the day baking cookies at our house.”

  “Cookies?” Cooper asked. “I know where we’re going later.”

  “So what’s the plan today?” I asked.

  “The DEA are using the back entrance, so I’m hopeful this won’t impact guests,” Roland said. “If we’re lucky, most of it will be over before we open. But I still think some of us should be over at the Big House in case we get police activity when guests are here.”

  “We’ll be there,” Chase said, and Brynn nodded.

  “Thanks,” Roland said. “Ben, if you could make the rounds on this end of the property, that would be great. And when we get the all clear, can you go check on Zoe and Mom?”

  “Will do,” Ben said.

  “Can I drive out there and watch?” Cooper asked. “I want to see this go down.”

  “No,” Roland and I said at the same time.

  “Come on, Coop, you don’t really want to see that, do you?” Chase asked.

  Cooper leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Hell yes, I do. And I want that fucker to know it was me who helped set him up.”

  “We’re supposed to stay back,” Roland said. “And it’s best if we cooperate. Leo, the cameras are still running, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah. You can’t see everything, but I have pretty decent coverage.”

  Cooper sat back, crossing his arms.

  “It’s okay,” Amelia said softly to Cooper, reaching up to rub his ear again. He visibly relaxed, melting into the couch next to her. She whispered something I couldn’t hear, then shushed him again.

  “Look, this is almost over,” Roland said. “They’ll make their arrests and we’ll go from there. Mom’s lawyer has everything ready to take the next step with the divorce. Even if he still decides to be a prick about it, he won’t have a leg to stand on anymore.”

  “What about Grace?” Cooper asked.

  “I texted her,” Brynn said. “She’s with her mom and Elijah today. I’ll let them know when it’s over.”

  Grace was our half-sister, the product of my dad’s affair with her mother, Naomi. We hadn’t known that Grace, or my dad’s youngest son, Elijah, even existed until last summer. Since then, they’d become part of the family. Given what my dad had done, it was a testament to my mother’s character that she’d embraced them.

  But Brynn was right. Mom was the queen of making the best of things. Even Dad’s affair.

  I glanced at Cooper. I understood his desire to see Dad get what was coming to him.

  “Hey, Coop. Why don’t you come back to my place with me. We’ll probably be able to see most of it on the security feed.”

  Cooper’s eyes were uncharacteristically hard. “Good.”

  We left, and Cooper and Amelia followed me back to my place. I grabbed a couple of folding chairs I had in a closet and set them up in front of my desk. Amelia took one and Cooper scooted her over so she’d be right next to him.

  I sat and brought up the surveillance cameras I’d set up out on that end of the property. One didn’t show anything—just plants fluttering in the breeze. The next one winked to life on another monitor. Still nothing. The third showed some workers busy harvesting the poppies. In the fourth, you could see Dad.

  Cooper growled and Amelia rubbed her hand up and down his back.

  We didn’t have long to wait. About ten minutes later, unmarked cars pulled into view and the DEA agents poured out, pointing guns at the workers. And at Dad. There was no sound, so we couldn’t hear what anyone was saying. But he froze in place, putting his arms up.

  The resolution was just clear enough to see his expression. I’d expected him to get angry, for his face to redden and that vein in his neck to stick out. But he didn’t. His shoulders slumped and his head dropped. He didn’t look mad. He looked defeated.

  One of the agents came toward him, gun still pointed at his chest. Dad dropped to the ground with his hands behind his head. More agents swarmed in and, one by one, everyone was put in handcuffs. Including my father.

  I watched with an odd sense of detachment as a DEA agent led him to a waiting car and shoved him in the back seat. It was over. Lawrence Miles arrested
. He’d go to prison for this. Between Cooper’s testimony and the footage I’d gathered from my surveillance cameras, it would be an open and shut case.

  Would he survive prison? I honestly had no idea.

  “Fuck,” Cooper muttered. He rose from his seat and paced across the room, toward the front window. “Where are we allowed to go? Can I go out to the south vineyard? I need to get the fuck out of here.”

  “Yeah, you should be fine in the south vineyard,” I said.

  “I’ll go with him.” Amelia rose from her chair and adjusted her sweater. “He’ll be okay.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Cooper grabbed Amelia’s hand and led her outside, shutting the door behind them.

  I leaned back in my chair and let out a long breath. Before Amelia, I would have followed Cooper. Tracked him without him knowing, just to make sure he didn’t do something crazy. Most likely, he just needed to get outside. He always walked in his vineyards when he was stressed. But knowing Amelia was with him took some of the weight off my shoulders.

  Knowing none of my siblings were alone made this whole thing easier. Roland would go home to his wife and son. Brynn had Chase, and there wasn’t a more loyal guy than him. Grace and her mom had each other to lean on. Elijah didn’t know what was happening with his father; his mom had shielded him from the worst of it. No doubt he’d have some shit to work through when he got older, but at least he had a family to help him sort it out.

  I rewound the video and watched the last few minutes again. My father with his hands up in the air. Getting down on the ground so they could cuff him. The DEA agent leading him to the car.

  He deserved it. Justice would be done. But I still felt like shit.

  Clicking away from the security footage, I logged into the game Gigz and I had been playing last night. She rarely played in the morning, but I thought I’d check to see if she was logged in, just in case.

  No luck. She was offline.

  I clicked the window closed, the hollow space in my chest threatening to swallow me whole.