The Ringer

by Amber Malloy

  Confused, she opened her mouth but promptly closed it. If things made any sense, she wouldn’t be here in the first place. Instead, she decided to let things happen. In time, the story would unravel whether she had any say about it or not. She pushed in her iPod ear buds and allowed the strange topography of Colorado to seduce her.

  “Lane!” Jax called her name in some far off place. They were running through a meadow but the thunder of gunshots disturbed their playful peace. Birds flew all around them covered in blood, and everything went dark.

  Jarred into reality, her body shook and the darkness waned, she opened her eyes. Big man, sexy grin. Jax stared down on her. “We’re here.” he helped her out of the truck

  A cloud-covered sun splayed bright rays over his shoulder. Crisp, cool air filled her lungs and whipped her cheeks.

  “This is beautiful.” She breathed a foggy breath of awe into the atmosphere. Already amazed by the peaceful beauty and general untouched nature, she was even more surprised by the looming cabin behind them.

  Scattered beams from the sun bounced off of the three solid stories of glass and wood. Shocked by the natural opulence, Lane’s mouth fell open so wide her jaw nearly unhinged.

  “Christmas retreat,” he told her. “The best skiing in the country is a good ten miles away in any given direction.”

  “I don’t see any neighbors.” Surrounded by the vast nature of Douglas firs and Ponderosa pines, they appeared isolated from the outside world.

  “Yeah, my pops didn’t want to use this place for networking. Business is business, he always told us, but family is family.”

  Lane wondered what his childhood must have been like. Not once had she gotten a whiff of any privileged kid antics from him, unlike Parker, who had spoiled brat written on his forehead. It was too bad she’d had blinders on. Otherwise she’d seen what she needed to with Parker Lockland, not what she wanted to.

  “Jackson!”

  She turned toward the pert, feminine voice filled with pure adulation. A dead ringer for Raquel Welch, with a Coke-bottle body and auburn hair, approached them in a graceful pony. Reminiscent of every pin-up girl she’d ever seen, Jax’s mother was stacked better than one of those girls in a pervy magazine.

  “Mom!” She intercepted them. “I didn’t expect you here,” he mumbled into the woman’s full embrace.

  Lane stood back in the sidelines.

  “Surprise,” his mother cried. “Let me look at you.” She made Jax turn around. “From where I’m standing, it doesn’t look like you’re in any trouble to me.”

  “Never let ’em see ya sweat, someone great taught me that,” he bragged.

  With a hearty laugh, his mother punched him in the arm. “Not one drop, boyo.”

  The myopic scope of this meeting hadn’t included her yet, which Lane didn’t mind. She lived for the fly-on-the-wall perspective.

  “Did you have a good trip?” A man joined them, dropping a load of cut lumber at his feet. “This light snow is just a preview. In a couple of days, it will be full white-out conditions,” he said before hugging Jax.

  Lane assumed he was Jax’s dad. Every man in the Thornbird family resembled one another. Big broad shoulders and dark hair…sexy men. She admired them from her vantage spot behind the youngest Thornbird, the one she had begun to fall in love with.

  “The flight wasn’t bad,” Jax admitted. “Look, guys, I’ve got someone I want you to meet.” He moved aside for everyone to get a good look at her. “My mom, Dottie, and my dad, Truman, this is Lane—”

  “Garrett,” she offered up her maiden name before he could give out the wrong one. The ink on her divorce papers may have just dried, but she hadn’t been married long enough to get used to the Lockland name attached to hers.

  “Welcome, Lane, our casa es su casa,” Dottie greeted her.

  She ran her palms down the front of her jeans before she shook his parents’ hands. Even though she was on the run with their fugitive son, she didn’t want the Thornbirds to get the wrong impression.

  “So.” he nodded. “What’s this?”

  “What?” both of them asked.

  “This.” He wagged his finger between them.

  His parents looked at one another in confusion before his father relented. “Oh, hell, son, it’s not like you have another brother or sister on the way. Your mother and I are spending some time together.”

  “For how long?” He asked. Cop hat, Lane quickly noted by his tone; he was in full interrogation mode.

  “We’ll talk about this later, boo bear,” his mother said in a sweet singsong voice. “You guys must be exhausted. Let’s get you guys inside by the fire.” Dottie rubbed his arm with motherly compassion, but Jax didn’t budge.

  “Oh, for goodness sake. We’ve been seeing each other for a little while, now get in the house,” his father exploded. “Lane is freezing!” One raised eyebrow from his son was all the senior Thornbird received in return. Even if her big toe had fallen off from hypothermia, she wouldn’t have interrupted the drama.

  “Huh?” Jax asked. “I didn’t quite catch what you said.” When his father mumbled out an answer.

  “Quit torturing your father, Jackson,” Dottie scolded him. “We’ve been together for a while.”

  “Since I was eight, admit it,” he demanded. “You two.” He pointed at the both of them. “Kissing at the Christmas party in 1986. I announced to the whole party you guys were getting back together, and you told everyone I was plastered off of eggnog!”

  Attacked by a bad case of the giggles, she tried to stifle her laughter but couldn’t.

  “Honestly, Jackson, you pounded them back left and right that night,” Dottie said.

  “And Aunt Gloria has always been crazy, heavy-handed with the rum,” his father added.

  “Eight,” he hollered.

  Truman put his arm around Dottie, showing a united front. “Let’s just call this even-steven and go inside to figure out what to do about your, ah…dilemma.”

  “As soon as you admit whatever this is has been going on for more than twenty-six years?”

  “Fine, it’s been damn near three decades. Are we square, or should I start shilling out the bucks for a therapist right this minute?” his father yelled. “Now get your ass in the house, so we can sort out this mess with the Chicago PD.”

  Lane almost toppled over with laughter from his father’s admission.

  “What happened to you being on my side,” he muttered from the corner of his mouth.

  “Great, now your friend thinks we’re a bunch of loons. On behalf of all the Thornbirds, I apologize.”

  “Too late, Dad,” Jax said. “She met Maxie.”

  “Well, I tried.” His father threw up his hands in defeat while his mother looped her arm through Lane’s.

  “Didn’t you find Maxie downright lovely?” she spoke in a hushed whisper. “If you ignore her penchant for grand theft auto, she’s a doll.” Dottie led Lane toward the big cabin and waxed poetic about Maxie as if she were a disobedient child instead of a convicted criminal. “Do you like waffles, sweetie? I make a hell of a banana nut. “We’re going to have so much fun together.”

  Lane peeked over her shoulder at Jax and tried to stop her second attack of giggles. The murderous expression on his face was priceless. “I do believe, Ms. Thornbird, this will be fun.”

  “Please, sweetie, call me Dottie,” his mother said. “Mrs. Thornbird reminds me of my ex-mother-in-law, and I refuse to think about that crusty bat longer than I have to.”

  “Nice, Dot,” Truman complained.

  “Just speaking the truth, dear. The whole truth and nothing but.” Dottie pushed open the cabin door and encouraged her to enter.

  Whatever apprehensions she had about his parents were long gone. Wealthy or not, these people were plain ol’ nuts. They would all get along quite nicely.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Finished with breakfast, they cleared the table. An hour ago, they had sat down with a smorgasbord
of waffles, omelets, toast, sausage, and bagels.

  As they filled their stomachs, peaceful camaraderie embraced the room. Impressed by the Thornbirds’ love for one another, Lane realized her own family dynamic had been fractured and disjointed until the day her father died.

  To weigh the worse experiences of her life, she put the foster system right up there with her marriage, empty and soulless. Nothing compared to the quagmire of manipulation, backstabbing, psychological warfare, and downright favoritism cursing the wealthy clan. If more than two of the Locklands were near, a sticky film of ick blanketed her.

  “Hey,” Jax said. He rubbed the side of her arm. “Are you okay?”

  She shook off the malaise of her time with Parker and gave him a wink of reassurance. In return, he kissed the tip of her nose before leading her through the wide-open space of the cabin.

  Skylights, bay windows, and pane-glassed patio doors flooded the house with the natural beauty of the woods all around them. So far, out of all the places they had visited, the small shack in the woods was hands-down her favorite.

  He guided her across the first floor while he rubbed the back of her neck. Lane melted into his strong touch. Ushered away from the main part of the house and into a den full of boxes, she sighed. Along with his parents, a massive amount of work waited for them.

  Their makeshift command center held three to four hundred files. The idea of studying paperwork full of legal jargon made her want to pass out for the rest of the day.

  “Everyone grab a box,” Jax announced to the room.

  “What are we looking for?” his mother asked.

  “I’m not sure, but anything familiar has already been boxed. At this point, we need to go through the rest of these and find a needle in the hay stack.”

  A few hours into their search, they found nothing different. Most of Lane’s paperwork was about missing homeless men, and several reports were about suspicious deaths the cops didn’t consider suspicious or worth looking into. A frustrated groan from someone in the den broke her concentration. When she glanced up, the office had gotten a lot darker.

  “Let me see if I got this straight,” Truman groused in his corner of the room. “You’ve been set up by someone on the force because of something you may or may not have come across in one of these files?”

  Everyone stared at Jax, waiting for an answer. He dragged his hand across his face. “In a nut shell,” he said, “I have no real clue what we’re looking for, but it will appear a bit off from the rest of the police reports. Maybe someone who wouldn’t be on the street.” He shrugged.

  “Perfect,” Truman snapped before he flung his file across the mahogany desk. “Your mother and I are going for a walk.” Dottie nearly tripped over her feet in her rush to get out of the door.

  “I can use a break,” Dottie sung over her shoulder. In a matter of seconds, the couple had their coats in hand. Truman and Dottie abandoned her. Lane watched from the window as they grabbed and giggled their way into the woods.

  “Maybe they’ll come back after they get some air.” Jax snaked his hand around her shoulder with a sweet familiarity and joined her at the window.

  “I’m thinking they’ll be back after they get done having sex in the woods—”

  “Oh, God!” He gagged. “Don’t ever,” Jax scolded, leaning over his knees in a dramatic fashion, “put sex and my parents in the same sentence.” He gave a few mock dry heaves.

  “Fine. They’ll be back after their break.” She threw up the air quotes. “Or they’re going to take a nap because they will be too exhausted after their break and will need one.”

  “You—” He pointed at her. “—are going to get it!” He made a lunge for her, but she faked left to dodge his grab. “Oh, after one session with Maxie you’ve got skillz.”

  “Please.” She waved him off. “I had these types of skillz way—”

  Jax was on top of her before she could finish. Lane curled into a ball as he worked his hands under her shirt. He committed one of the worse transgressions to her body one could ever imagine.

  Jackson Thornbird tickled her sides. She wiggled and moved but could not out-maneuver the dexterity of his nimble fingers. Close to giving up Lane heard the Skype alarm go off on his laptop. A reprieve. She slipped from beneath his weight. Gasping for breath, she fought the urge to pass out. “Later,” he threatened as he twisted her over the desk and hit accept on his laptop.

  “Jax.”

  “Raff,” he called out, still under the spell of laughter. “Talk to me.”

  “You’re in a good mood,” his partner responded dryly.

  “Would you prefer if I were cradling a box of Kleenex and rocking back and forth?” he asked once he got his humor under control. She half listened to the detectives’ conversation while she began to categorize the files they had gone through.

  “I’ve got something,” Raff said. “Johnny Mac, the one who got shot in front of Lane, his name was Joseph Morgan, a former oncologist.”

  “Why former?” he asked.

  “The board revoked his license to practice medicine. It appears Johnny fell in love with his morphine and couldn’t have cared less about his end-stage cancer patients.”

  “But who would want him dead, I mean besides his wife?”

  “Ex-wife,” she told him. “The woman left well before Lane got the fake call from Honey Pots. I have no idea who would want to kill this guy. Whoever caught the case made sure to list the victim under his nickname. This might be the reason no one has claimed his body from the morgue.”

  “Or it’s the reason why no one has to claim the body from the morgue,” he told Raff.

  Jax was on to something about her dead mark, but what? At first, she’d determined he was an innocent bystander in all of this, but since he wasn’t married, or innocent, she wasn’t so sure.

  “How about that for research?” Raff bragged.

  “Part of the puzzle I suppose.”

  “How are things going? Or better, how’s the grenade?” Raff joked.

  Offended by her unofficial title, she stomped over to the computer. “For your information, I am not a grenade. Maxie told me—” The sound of gritty laughter stopped her cold. She couldn’t in good conscience quote a car thief to a cop.

  “A grenade quoting a grenade doesn’t count,” Raff said.

  “Hey, is your brother wearing my clothes?” Jax interrupted Raff’s humor at her expense.

  A man walked behind Raff. He wore an open cotton robe, boxers, and nothing else. Oblivious that everyone could see him, he continued to eat straight out of the ice cream carton.

  She turned around. “Damn it, Ralph!” his partner screamed. “What did I tell you—”

  “My favorite robe,” Jax muttered to no one in particular before the screen went black.

  “Hey,” Lane said. “How about we take a break?” She blocked the laptop screen with her head, managing to finagle a smile out of him. “Kinda like the one your parents are taking?” Out the door with the knowledge the cop was right behind her, she ran faster than she ever had before.

  ***

  Night fell fast in Colorado. Usually autumn brought leaves and cool breezes to most states, but Colorado was different. A phenomenon to visitors, but anyone who made money off of the white season hoped and prayed for snow. The earlier the better.

  After dinner, where his parents had giggled and flirted the whole way through, Jax made sure Lane’s room had everything. She insisted on sleeping separately with his parents around.

  Jax hated to point out he was at least upfront about his relationship. His parents, on the other hand, could be considered ninjas at the art of deception. But regardless, he gave in to her demands, unwilling to push the disagreement any further.

  “Jax,” his father called from the master suite.

  Full-on ambience and romanticism, Jax figured it was exactly what his father had in mind when he’d built the cabin with his brothers.

  “Close the door,” Tr
uman told him. It was the largest bedroom in the house, one of his father’s designs. He walked by the priceless, custom pine bed placed opposite of a crackling fire.

  “What’s up, Pops?” He asked, hopeful his dad had some news.

  Truman hung up his cell phone and slipped off his glasses. “You’ll never guess who just called.”

  “Please don’t make me.” He huffed. Jax had had enough surprises to last him a lifetime, forget the rest of the week. He took a seat in one of the overstuffed chairs across from his father.

  “Governor Jones. It appears he had an interesting evening.”

  “Interesting how?” he asked, perking up at the prospect of a good lead.

  “He was at a memorial downtown. It appears the mayor, commissioner, and your captain had a pow-wow with a journalist.”

  “About?” The hairs on the back of his neck rose.

  “The governor watched Julian go up to the cigar room, and after a few minutes, the journalist came down. Being nosey but affable, they chatted for a while. Eventually, the reporter got around to asking about you,” his dad told him.

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, he got a good tip from a source about you, so he tried to put the squeeze on your captain.”

  “Humph,” he grunted. Jax found the information interesting but not exactly helpful.

  “There’s more.”

  “Building suspense or burying the lead?” he asked his father, who always drew the anticipation out to the very last drop. A great technique when he read them Make It Snow as kids on Christmas Eve, but in this very moment Jax wasn’t impressed.

  “Parker Lockland joined the group a bit thereafter. The journalist had already left by then, and the governor said Parker walked straight into the steakhouse and made a B-line to the cigar room.”

  “So Parker wasn’t lost.” He tried to process everything his father had told him, since nothing added up or made sense. A lot of loose pieces still floated around.

  “I don’t think the key to unlocking this mystery is in any of those boxes downstairs. It’s Lane. What’s her story?”