Consequence

by Rachel Higginson

  “Can I have a drink?” Juliet cut through my concern and reminded me that there was somebody else in this apartment. And she wasn’t going to be ignored while I had an honest conversation with her father about his childhood.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sad, Mommy?”

  I picked her up and dropped her on a bar stool. “Me? No. Of course not! I just got my baby girl back. These are happy tears.”

  “Were Daddy’s tears happy too?”

  My chin trembled as I valiantly tried not to crumble on the floor and weep for Sayer. “Yep,” I hiccupped unsuccessfully. “Those were definitely happy tears.”

  And probably a mixture of gruesome memories, disappointment, regret, hope, and new life, and that indescribably beautiful, weighted, purposeful feeling of being a parent.

  A dinging noise drew my attention to the counter. My phone sat on the edge of the island where I hadn’t noticed it last night. I’d just gotten a text message that somehow felt strange in light of everything happening around me.

  Glancing at the closed bathroom, I ignored the ominous feeling snaking through my stomach and walked over to check who was messaging me.

  Praying it would be Mags, I pushed the button so the screen would light up.

  I know you’re in town. Meet me. Same time. Same place. ~M.

  Son of a bitch.

  Mason Payne. After all these years, how did he get my phone number? A sinking feeling tugged at my arms and legs, urging me to sit down and absorb the weight of this news. I fought it, choosing to face the newest development in this horrible twist of fate on my feet, ready to run.

  How the hell had the fucking FBI found me already?

  Oh, right. The damn sign in sheet at Central Detention— one more reason to loathe Atticus Usenko.

  Chapter Twelve

  The warehouse was as dank and ugly as I remembered. It smelled like rusted metal and wet earth. And it still gave me anxiety.

  I wanted to be anywhere but here—like always.

  For as long as I’d known Mason Payne, he’d been a thorn in my side, but never more so than now. I didn’t have time to deal with him today. Or ever. I didn’t have the patience to play his mind games.

  And I really didn’t want to deal with being arrested if that was his game plan.

  Except by the look of things, he’d come alone. In the past, there had always been agents strategically placed by the exits. Today there was only him. I wondered if he was squirming as much as I was without his security blanket of backup surrounding us.

  Or were they waiting outside? Was this only the illusion of a private meeting?

  The entire place was probably bugged and wired.

  Sweat broke out along my hairline and lower back. I’d debated whether or not to come for a long time this morning. In the end, not showing up would only delay the meeting. If Mason knew I was in town, he was going to hunt me down no matter what. At least if I showed up to the meeting, he wouldn’t have the element of surprise on his side.

  I’d left Juliet with Frankie and told them I needed to go for a walk. Juliet hadn’t been thrilled about being separated again so soon, but Frankie had promised she bought fingernail polish at the store so they could paint each other’s toes.

  Sayer had stepped out too, so I didn’t have a chance to tell him where I was going. He’d said he needed to run a few errands and usually I would have been totally skeptical of his motives. But the truth was, he had never totally recovered from meeting Juliet. He’d spent most of the morning watching us silently as we ate donuts and binged Netflix from his computer. I tried not to make a big deal of his emotional state, but the man was clearly undone with the entrance of his daughter in his life. When he said he needed to get some air, I believed him.

  I probably should have brought Cage with me, just in case I ran into someone from my old life or Mason actually tried to arrest me. But I hadn’t been able to confess this meeting to anyone. It felt too close to my past, too reminiscent of the girl I used to be. This was a walk down memory lane that had spikes and sharp teeth and warning signs all along the way.

  And here I was anyway.

  “It’s been a long time,” Mason said by way of greeting as he strolled leisurely toward the center of the warehouse. Like Sayer, like me, like everybody from my past, Mason had aged in the last five years. And just like the Volkov, he’d become more attractive with age.

  What was with men that every year seemed to chisel out better features, and added grace and elegance to their boyish features? How was it fair that women fought gravity like the Battle of Gettysburg—both sides losing mass casualties—and men proudly stepped into each new year, putting on age as though it were a well-tailored suit.

  It kind of made me hate older men. Just a little bit. At least the older men I knew.

  Mason was broader as well and he’d upgraded his suits from cheap and tacky to designer and well cut. He wore agency-approved black with a red tie over his crisp white oxford. His shoes were even fancy, and I would bet ten bucks that his haircut cost more than mine.

  He was all glossy, plastic FBI now. The kind you found on TV interviews and testifying in courtrooms for big trials.

  Trials like bringing the entire DC Russian mafia syndicate to their knees.

  “Did Sayer buy you that pay raise?” I asked, getting my jab in early.

  His squarer, firmer-than-I-remembered jaw ticked with irritation. Bullseye. It was hard to be this good, but I managed somehow.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he returned.

  I gestured at the torn up concrete floor. “Like, here here.” I waved my hand in a floppy circle. “Or the general, metaphysical here? I’m not sure what you mean.”

  His eyes danced with restrained mirth. “Still a smart ass.”

  I gave into a small smile. “Still a good guy.”

  He looked away, his face pulling tight with the haunting look of a man that didn’t always like his job, or his life, or the things he’d done to get where he was. “Yeah, some of the time.”

  “Is that why we’re here? You’re getting more comfortable with breaking the rules?”

  He gave me the big brother glare I had come to dread when I was younger. Mason thought we had a relationship—friendship in the middle of our war. He thought he could trust me and that I wouldn’t stab him in the back because of the rapport he’d built with me.

  Hadn’t I already proven to him I would jump ship without a second’s hesitation or word of warning?

  What was all this misplaced affection?

  “Your freedom was procured a long time ago, Caro.” He took a dramatic pause and let that sink in. Then he added, “Besides, I’m about to close the book on this case. I don’t have a whole lot of use for you right now.”

  I worked my bottom lip between my teeth and debated what to say next. “What are we doing here? I know this is about more than old time’s sake. What’s up?”

  He stepped closer and dropped his voice. “Did Sayer find you?”

  “Do you think I would be here right now if he hadn’t?”

  “Did you get your daughter back?”

  “How much do you know exactly?”

  This time he let his smile loose and the small expression transformed his entire face. Gone was the cold, hard government agent and in his place was a shockingly handsome could-be model. “You still think we’re bumbling idiots, don’t you?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t take it personally. I feel that way about ninety-nine percent of the population.”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets, pulling his jacket back far enough to reveal the butt of his sidearm. “People think they can go off the grid these days. They think they have privacy. But the truth is, we live in a day and age where every single thing is recorded. We’re watching everything. Not even on purpose. Do you realize that TV remotes have voice activated command functions now? The population has plastered their houses with surveillance equipment and then they’re surprised when we listen.
They don’t even realize they’ve done the work for us.”

  “Is that supposed to comfort me, or are you actively trying to get me to leave the country?”

  He smiled again. “I told you not to leave before.”

  I let out a long sigh. “Yeah, I remember.”

  “I don’t think I was the only one either.”

  I met his intuitive gaze and wondered if he’d had my apartment bugged back then, before voice-activated TV remotes. “What can I say? I’m a terrible listener.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” he repeated my earlier statement.

  Holding my hands at my sides, I searched for answers on his perfect face. “What do you want, Payne? What am I doing here?”

  He couldn’t meet my gaze for a minute. The quiet inside the warehouse tightened the air, pushed on my lungs and wrapped tight fingers around my throat. When he finally lifted his head, I saw the apology already there.

  “I know what you’re trying to do, Caro. I know why you’re back.”

  “The only reason I’m in this godforsaken town is to get my daughter and bring her back home.”

  He made an annoyed sound. “Come on. Aren’t we past this? Neither of us has the time for games.”

  Well, he was wrong about that. When it came to law enforcement, there was always time for misdirection. There had to be.

  “Mason, for the love of everything holy, spit it out already.” I was pretty sure I’d said that to him before too. This guy was king of dragging shit out.

  “It’s a mistake,” he finally said, conviction turning his voice to steel. “Clearing the Volkov would be a huge fucking mistake.”

  Did he really think I didn’t know that? “I suppose you’re going to threaten me with jail time?”

  “This isn’t a joke, Caro. I will not go easy on you. I will not spare you the punishment you bring down on yourself. This is a huge case for us. Not just because we’d be cleaning up the streets from some of the worst criminals this city’s ever seen, but because we’ll be sending a clear message to the remaining families. Thirty years ago, we didn’t have to deal with organized crime. It didn’t exist here. Then the Italians moved in. Then the Irish. Then the Russians. And now we’re in an all-out war. If you, by a miracle of God, clear the Volkov, there will be mayhem. Anarchy in the streets and rivers of blood kind of chaos. Are you willing to be responsible for that? For innocent people dying? For the drugs, the sex trafficking, the guns?”

  I held his gaze, unafraid of his judgment. “I will do whatever it takes to protect my daughter.” I stepped closer to him, pointing an accusatory finger at his chest. “Don’t make the mistake of assuming I’ll lay down my life for the greater good. I’m not a martyr, Mason. I never have been.”

  His upper lip pulled back, baring teeth. “You never wanted this life. From the very beginning you knew it was wrong. You tried to get out since day one.”

  No, he was wrong. I said I wanted out. I paid good lip service to better morals and clean conscience, but I never made substantial changes until Juliet. I’d never even put up a fight. At first, it was for my dad. But later, it was for Sayer. I was willing to sell my soul just to be with him.

  “Yeah, but none of that mattered until I got pregnant,” I told him. “None of the girls, drugs, or guns were enough to get me out. It was my daughter that saved me. And you’re delusional if you think I would even consider letting them near her again.”

  “It’s true then,” Mason murmured. “They did ask you to get them out.”

  Well hell, he’d caught me. I saw the trap too late. He knew I was in town, maybe he’d heard about Juliet, but he’d been speculating up until now. He’d been putting pieces together, but he hadn’t had a definitive answer.

  I shook my head and stepped back. “It doesn’t matter what they asked, it’s impossible.”

  And it was. I’d been playing it over and over in my head, but I didn’t even know where to start.

  “Why do you think they called you in?” His gaze hit mine again, all hard honesty and genuine respect. “They needed the best, Caro. And there was one way to get you here, one way to get you back in the game.”

  Giving up on the pretense of innocence, I shrugged. “Yeah? Well, it worked.”

  “What happens if—when—I send you to prison? What happens to Juliet if you go away for the rest of her childhood, hell, maybe the rest of your life?”

  He was only an echo of all of my thoughts. This wasn’t anything I hadn’t thought about, or didn’t know. He wasn’t saying anything profound. “What are my options, Mason? Honestly, I’d love to hear them.” He opened his mouth, but before he could utter a word, I cut him off. “And if you say WITSEC, I will punch you.”

  His mouth closed. He tugged at his tie, pulling it loose around his neck. “We could protect you, Caro. We could protect your daughter. Witness protection could save you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure you could.”

  “You’re really going through with this? You’re going to make me go through with this?”

  Smiling, I waggled my eyebrows. “You’ve been trying to arrest me for ten years. Think of it like I’m doing you a favor. I bet there’s even another raise in it for you.”

  He wasn’t ready to give up. “What does Sayer have to say about everything?”

  Sayer hadn’t said much about anything. But that was a different conversation. Instead, I let a fire that had been simmering for five years boil to the surface. “You’ve got a lot of guts bringing up Sayer to me. After what you did.”

  He looked truly confused. I almost felt sorry for the bumbling idiot. “What do you mean?”

  I threw his earlier words back in his face. “Aren’t we past this? Neither of us has time for games, asshole.” Okay, I added my own flare. “You’re the reason this happened, Mason. You’re the reason any of this happened. Or don’t you remember giving me a warning? And then lying to me? You were all, warn Sayer, talk to Sayer, convince Sayer, blah, blah, blah. But you arrested him anyway. And then used me to make him break! Only it didn’t work. You screwed up.”

  He raised one arrogant eyebrow and I had to clench my hands into fists to keep from wrapping them around his neck to strangle him. “Are you serious? It didn’t work? The Russians are awaiting trial. The syndicate is stripped down to a handful of useless men. I don’t have to rely on witnesses or circumstantial evidence or exaggerated charges of tax fraud. It worked, Caroline. It worked better and faster than I ever could have hoped.”

  “Did you say faster?”

  Mason grinned, but it was less sure than before. “Come on, you can’t be surprised. You had to know I was going to do whatever it took to take them down. I will do whatever it takes.”

  “Fuck you.”

  His expression flashed with impatience. “Don’t be petty. This is bigger than you, Caroline. This is bigger than your nuclear family.”

  “And what if Sayer hadn’t broken? What if he’d stayed true to the brotherhood?”

  “I hope you don’t think you’re that special.” He let out a laugh, it cut through the air with cruel claws. “I had a backup plan, Caroline. I had more than one. It’s just that you… you made it so easy for me. I couldn’t have orchestrated it better myself. I hadn’t even thought of an unplanned pregnancy.”

  For a full minute I was so angry I couldn’t speak, couldn’t formulate words. There were things he was saying that I knew.

  For instance, I knew he was a good enough agent that I wouldn’t have been his only lead. That wasn’t a compliment. That was truth. It was important to be honest with yourself about the truth. Lying was counterproductive at this point.

  I also knew that his little act of bravado right now, was just that. He was scared out of his mind. He knew I could take him down, clear the Volkov name, upend everything he’d worked so hard for. His arrogance was all overcompensation and laziness.

  But knowing that didn’t piss me off any less.

  A slow smile stretched across my face and I f
olded my arms over my chest so I could stretch my rusty fingers discreetly. “Good thing you’re so good at your job, Mason, because for what I’m about to do, you’ll need to be.”

  Before he could ask me any questions or detain me any longer, I walked out of the warehouse, bumping his shoulder as aggressively as possible in my exit. Our shoulders collided, and I paused long enough to glare him down.

  Oh, and snatch the wallet from his back pocket.

  He spun around to watch me leave, throwing out a needling. “You haven’t changed, Caro. I admire that about you.” Lies obviously. “Of course it means I know exactly what to expect from you. Do you think I’ll be disappointed with how easy you are to catch?”

  I turned around too and took a few backward steps to the exit. I tossed his wallet at him, arching it high in the air. I’d left his cards and work ID alone. It was pointless to even copy them. Even if he didn’t notice his work ID was missing until he got back to headquarters, he would eventually figure it out. Then the entire building would be looking for the thief scanning his ID. If I wanted to snoop around his office, I would have to come up with something different… something inventive. And I would need Gus.

  I settled for snagging his cash and felt like a mature, well-adjusted adult.

  “Let’s hope I haven’t changed,” I told him as he caught his wallet and stared down at it dumbfounded. “I don’t remember you ever being able to catch me before.” I raised a hand and waved at him. “Oh, and do me a favor and get the Frisco PD off my back. Let them know I have Juliet and all is well?”

  He glared at me. “And why would I do that?”

  “Because we both know you’re too morally upright to win with an unfair advantage. Make it an even playing field, Mason. And may the best liar win.”

  His dark chuckle followed me out of the warehouse and I took that as a good sign that he would call Frisco and let them know all was well.