by Luna Wild
It would be, for all intents and purposes, completely painless for both of them. Because the truth was that the marriage didn't matter, either. The only thing that mattered was Ava.
The only thing that mattered was Ava, and nothing else—not 'the right thing,' not 'love,' not 'justice'—none of it was going to get in the way of raising her daughter.
Anna slips a little quilt out of the chest in the corner. It's almost hard to notice it. It was a wonderful idea to put them around the house. They provide an excellent opportunity for her to feed Ava without embarrassing Mitch and having to endure another nagging lecture.
She slips the blanket over her shoulder and unbuttons her blouse a little way, enough to free a breast, and a moment later Ava's drinking her fill.
Anna lays back against the sofa, keeping Ava cradled against her as she feeds. A voice comes in from somewhere in the house. The entire ventilation system is connected, and the walls vary wildly in thickness.
Some, you would struggle to hear someone making violent sex on the other side, no matter how loudly they voiced their pleasure.
Others, you could barely have a whispered conversation without the entire house hearing. And it seems that whoever was talking had wandered into one of those rooms, because Anna could hear them plainly, though they must have believed themselves to be speaking in strict confidence.
"The preparations, they're made?" A woman's voice.
"Suppose they are," the man growls. "Where's my money?"
"You'll get your money when the woman's back out of the picture. Just like he said you would."
"Well, maybe I don't trust him. Maybe I want something up front."
"There's no money up front. You knew that."
They're speaking in hushed voices. It can't have been very far, but with the labyrinthine ventilation system… it could have been the next room over, or perhaps the one above or below. Impossible to say with certainty.
Anna doesn't want to listen, but now her curiosity is piqued. Her ears strain to catch any hint of noise.
"I didn't say, 'I want money up front,' did I?"
The woman's voice suggests that she's very amused by his suggestion, whatever it might be. Anna has an idea of what he's talking about, though, and evidently so does the woman, whose voice Anna can't recognize.
"No," she pauses and sounds as if she's laughing just a little bit. "I suppose you didn't."
The voices go quiet, now. They don't say another word, but it's not hard to imagine that they likely haven't left wherever they were. If he got his way—a groan carries itself up. Barely audible over the noises of the house.
It seems, then, that he did. Anna's cheeks flush. It's tempting to think that they were talking about her. It's equally tempting to try to tell herself that she's being melodramatic, that she's just reading into things.
She might be, after all. There's plenty to read into.
But then again, she may not be making things up at all. Out of the picture, though… that sounded ominous. She doesn't like ominous. Not when it comes to her future, and when it comes to her baby.
Because even if it were for Ava's own good, she's not going to let herself be separated from her daughter again. Not in a thousand years.
Chapter Thirty-Six
There's a very specific meaning to the phrase 'this conversation never happened.' It seems like permission, and in a certain very real sense, that's exactly what it is. And yet, in another sense, it isn't that at all.
Permission means defense. Permission means that when he gets himself into trouble, the Captain will be there to dig him out. She knows what he's up to, and she knows what he's doing, and she's given him the okay to keep doing it.
When she tells him she's not going to stop him, what she means is that if he gets fucked by this plan, and he almost certainly will, then he's on his own.
But, other than that, she does agree with his judgment, more or less. He's right that there's something funky going on, she's just not going to stick her neck out for him.
In this case, it's hard to blame her. She'd be sticking her neck out awful damn far, for awful little evidence. With the way things were looking, they probably weren't going to get much evidence, either.
Not without bringing someone in and talking to them. Josh pulls the phone out of his pocket and dials up a number.
"Yeah, hey. It's me."
"Aren't you on suspension?"
"Sure, but that doesn't mean I'm not working."
Jeffries always was a spoil-sport, but that didn't mean that he wasn't willing to listen for a minute. Which is the only in that Detective Meadows is going to need, really.
"I've been looking into this bank job, the one you asked me to look into?"
"The safety deposit boxes, yeah. Give me a second, let me grab my files."
"Don't worry about that. I've got an idea for you. It's not much, but you might get something out of it."
"I'm listening."
The real suggestion is to muscle the hell out of this guy… Josh looks down at the page. Roy Weissman. Muscle the ever-loving shit out of him, tell him he's going back to jail, this time for good.
Tell him there's no light at the end of the tunnel, this time. That he's completely fucked and that there's as much evidence against him as there was against Tim McVeigh, and that son of a bitch confessed.
Then hope to hell he cracks. He cracked the first time. He'll crack again, because he doesn't hold up under interrogation.
There are only two guys on the staff that could have done the bank job, even if they wanted to. The problem was, the list of boxes. Why those boxes? Not one of them makes sense or has much connection to Mitch or Al Queen.
Nor do they have any connection to any of the other cases that Josh can think of off the top of his head. Answers like that will come with time. They're not really set in stone yet. But when the time comes, things will come together, because they have to.
"Yeah, I had a talk with this guy the other day, when I was working the Witt kidnapping."
"The one that ended in you knocking the hell out of the Queen kid?"
"You know me so well," Josh says. He smiles, and hopes it translates into his voice. "Yeah, that one. He's an older guy. Did some work back in the early 2000s. Just got out of prison a few years ago, but he seemed sharp as a tack. Maybe you talk to him and he has a few ideas about how it could've been done, and who could have done it."
"You're not trying to get me to bully some guy for you, are you, Meadows?"
"I've got a hunch, but no. Not for me. Just trying to find an angle on this that you might not have thought of. A couple of red flags at the Queen house, thought you might want to bring the guy in to talk."
"Just to talk, not to man-handle and break the guy's front teeth."
"No, nothing crazy like that. Look, maybe you scare him a little. Get him talkative. Then back it off, and see what he has to say about the other guys in the business. Is that so bad? No, that's fine. All above board. No problems."
"This better not be a load of shit, Meadows. I will come down on you so fucking hard your grand-kids will still be feeling it, if you are sending me on a wild damn goose chase."
"Like I said. Guy knows his trade. He did three or four jobs that we know of, between '02 and '05, and those are just the ones we know he did. There are a few solid question marks that nobody can prove, and with a guy like this, there will be jobs that we can't even tie to the guy. Shit we don't even know about. So at the very least, he could give you a solid lead."
The conversation dies slow, but it does die, in the end. Meadows is glad when it does. Now he'll have to wait. If he can tie one crime down, it will at least prove his little theory has something to it.
There hasn't been much press the past day or two about Al Queen. That's a little weird. A little spooky. If they had him, they'd be blasting it all over everything.
If they were in negotiations, then he'd have heard something solid through something.
&nb
sp; Almost a week with no word, though… tomorrow, he'd be giving his little apology speech. It still sounded like shit. He'd managed to polish it until it almost sounded like he might mean some of it, but that wasn't near good enough, and nobody was going to be fooled by such a feeble damn attempt.
That doesn't matter much, though. Not if Jeffries gets through to this Roy Weissman. He'd have to hurry, of course. But with a little luck, they can get Weissman turned around real quick, they can dig a little more into the deposit boxes, and they can turn around solid evidence on Mitch Queen.
Which in the end is about all that matters, really.
Josh takes a breath. He has to wait a few hours. The waiting is always the worst. But he'll do it, because he has to. When the dam finally breaks, it will break hard. Until then, it's just thinking up new theories and trying to throw them at the wall as fast as you can to see what will stick and what won't.
This angle with Weissman is the closest thing that Josh has gotten so far to finding anything connecting Al Queen or his son to any active and open cases. By the end of the afternoon tomorrow, with a little luck, he'll have his badge and his gun back.
Until then, he's got a lot of waiting to do, a little hoping, and not a whole hell of a lot else.
There's nothing else that he can do, though. Not for another day.
Then he'll be back on the job, and he'll be able to get at the old files and see why in the hell Al Queen decided he needed to have an old-time knee-breaker so prominently positioned as his head of security.
There were certain advantages to going with the old-school guys. Loyal, and they don't ask too many questions.
On the other hand, they have their problems. They're no spring chickens, for one thing, and for another, they're rarely as up-to-date as you'd like them to be. There's a reason most don't choose to go that way.
But Al Queen did, and now Maybe-Detective Meadows needs to figure out why. The wedding makes a hard deadline, because crook or not, married is married.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Anna's found it hard to breathe for a long time now. She can't sleep and she barely can eat. It can't be good for Ava, so she forces the food down anyways and hopes it stays.
There's nothing else to be done, after all. Even if she thinks she knows what that conversation meant, even if she thinks she knows what it was about…
The best-case is that she's imagining things. It will mean nothing in the end. She'll look a little foolish. She'd rather look paranoid in life than look stupid in death. Because those are, in the end, her only two options, really.
She shuts her eyes for a moment and hopes to hell that things can't somehow get worse than they already are. They can't possibly, she knows. They're already as bad as anything could possibly get.
In a sense, it's a blessing in disguise. Looking around every corner, wondering if there's going to be another wild explosion of men with guns… it's really put a fire in her butt. It's really helped to remind her of what she's risking for Ava's sake.
Colors are more colorful, the lights a little brighter. Not an equal trade, but it helps a little bit.
The problem is just not knowing. If only she could… somehow. Just see it coming a little bit. If only she had someone she could turn to, or something that she could do to keep herself safe from harm.
But she doesn't. She can't. That's just the reality of the situation, like it or not. She doesn't like it one bit. Josh would have helped. He wouldn't have stopped for anything.
Not if the way that he'd acted when Ava was missing was any indicator. Not with the way that he'd put himself and his career at risk so many times for her.
Anna swallows hard. He's not here this time, though. So she's going to have to figure out how to keep herself alive on her own. The wedding is the first hurdle.
If she makes it that far, then that will be something. After that, she'll be able to figure something else out, maybe. What, she can't say. Maybe a move out to the countryside.
She could pretend that none of this ever happened, living in a little log cabin on the prairie. Not God damn likely, but it was easy to dream.
She takes a deep breath. No use in fantasies. Not when things could turn ugly any time. She'll have to keep herself under control as long as she can.
Once she's figured everything else out, she can start to imagine what-if scenarios about her romantic life after she's escaped Mitchell's 'clutches.'
She closes her eyes and takes a breath. Somehow she's going to have to figure out a way to give herself some kind of breathing room. Even closing her eyes long enough to do her breathing exercises has been driving her mad.
What if someone were to come in, during those times? What if they were to find her, alone and defenseless, and…
Well, that would be the answer that Mitch would like best, no doubt about that. he'd like it very much if she just went away and wasn't seen again. If she went quietly into death.
That's not going to happen, not if she has anything to say about it. Her hands tighten up into fists. There's only one thing to do. It's a risk. It's a big risk, but there's no other way.
Anna summons up every ounce of her courage and forces herself to ignore the danger and ignore the fear.
She plasters a smile on her face and starts walking outside. It doesn't take long for her to find him. With Ava swaddled in her arms, it's hard for Terry to stay on his guard for long.
"How's she doing," he says, finally. His body relaxes from the military stiffness that he keeps most of the time.
"She's sleepy. You want to see?"
He leans out and Anna turns her daughter to give him a better look, keeping herself in a position to shade the little girl's eyes.
"What a sweetheart. She's not misbehaving too much, is she? I had a little girl, once. She was just as cute and just as sweet as your little one."
"Oh yeah? What happened to her?"
"I still write, twice a month. She's a, uh. Teacher, down in Mesa."
"In Arizona?"
"Yeah, that one."
"Sounds lovely."
"She really is."
"I'm sorry to bother you, Terry."
"It's not a bother, Miss Anna." He straightens up again, that entire bulk of his body coming into line once more as if by magic.
"I'm worried, though."
He relaxes again. "About the wedding?"
Anna shrugs. The sun must be in Terry's eyes, but he doesn't put up a hand to shield them.
"I heard some talk."
"I wouldn't put any stock in rumors, Miss Anna."
"Not about that. I heard, um. Some very… concerning conversations that suggested that there might be some…"
His face goes a little slack, as if he's trying to decide what response he should give.
"What's that?"
"I think someone's trying to kill me."
Terry's jaw sets itself. It's not hard to see that a man his age… Anna might be the same age as his daughter. She might have a little baby of her own.
"What gives you an idea like that?"
"I heard someone talking about 'getting rid of her again.'"
"You have any idea who it was?"
"I know that he did some things you're not supposed to be doing on duty after the conversation I heard. But no, I don't. There was a man and a woman and they seemed to have some kind of arrangement. But… there's so many women around helping out with wedding planning, you know? I don't know most of them."
Terry's jaw juts off to the side.
"I hear you. I'll look into it."
"I'm sorry to have brought this to you, Terry. I know I'm just making things hard for you."
"Don't worry about it, Miss Anna. You're good people. I wouldn't want anything to happen to you anyways. So don't you worry for a second that I'd be unhappy with looking into something like this for you."
"I really can't thank you enough."
"Well, don't thank me until I've got something done."
"Okay." An
na reaches up on the tips of her toes and presses a kiss to Terry's cheek. He smiles down at her with his leathery, deep-lined face.
"I'm not going to let anything happen to you. I don't think Ava would ever forgive me if I did. Wouldn't want to do anything to piss off a little cutie like that. They can turn on you, you know."
"I know exactly what you mean," Anna says. She smiles at Terry again. "I'll let you get back to work."
"I'll look into that thing for you."
"Thank you again."
"Don't mention it."
He stiffens again. Anna steps back and starts making her way across the lawn, back inside. There's not much she can do. Not on an estate owned by the very man that she knows, deep down, is responsible for whatever is going on.
Not with the entire staff practically worshiping the ground that he walks on. But that doesn't mean that there's nothing she can do, and she's going to have to do what she can.
Because of all the things that could happen, of all the ways that things could go over the next few days before the rushed-job of a wedding goes forward, a death in the family is the one thing she's going to have to avoid.
She can't do it on her own, and the only other man she knows she can trust isn't around any more. Can't be around any more, because of the choices that she'd made for herself and her daughter.
So, for her sins, she's going to have to deal with things as they come, like it or not.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Josh Meadows had wanted little more than to find out that all the evidence was going to turn up at the last minute. He'd wanted to be standing there in his hundred-dollar suit next to Mitch Queen in his thousand-dollar suit.
Next to Anna, whose dress was so nice that what had once been a deeply attractive woman had somehow transformed into a rapturous beauty. Her face was drawn and she looked tired, but it did little to hurt her incredible image, standing there beside Mitch.
It stung deep in Josh's chest. But if that was how it was going to be, then that was how it was going to be.
