Resisting Redemption

by Amabel Daniels

  Come to think of it… She typed a quick email to Chris and attached the video. Better safe than sorry. One dash blinked on her battery supply, and she hoped the email was backed up, so to say, to the only other person Grant would trust with such evidence.

  Her fast dash to the office to collect their things was the last chore she intended to complete before she went home. Already 6:30, she was past her intended finish time, and she bet Grant would be hopping around like crazy when she shared her news.

  With her eyes closed as she waited for the elevator to make its way up, Roxie leaned her back to the wall and sighed. She came to the floor and went to the office. After unlocking the door and closing it behind her, she walked to the couch where her laptop case sat.

  Maybe it was fatigue, or overwrought nerves from the letdown of the adrenaline rush earlier, but Roxie failed to hear the door open and close. One second she was standing, the next, she was thrown to the couch, her knees smacking the coffee table and skidding it aside.

  “What the—”

  Her hair was yanked back and her scalp singed with fire.

  Son of a bitch!

  Swatting at the hand gripping her, Roxie let momentum aid her fall and she tumbled to the furniture, twisting to face her growling assailant. Blonde tresses flew in the whir of action.

  “Where is it?” Tara screamed.

  Roxie didn’t know and didn’t care to reply. Roxie’s exhaustion disappeared as fury rose She’d had enough of the woman foiling the case. Sacrificing the strands of hair Tara refused to release, Roxie kneed her in the stomach, elbowed her in the boob, and smashed her foot on Tara’s knee at the same time she thrust her palm up at Tara’s nose.

  Blood spurted from the woman’s nostrils. She sucked in air and screeched like a wounded animal. Injured animals, those were Roxie’s specialty. Putting a greyhound in a body hold, easy. Forcing a woman into a headlock—it took her a minute, but Roxie manipulated her into a submissive pose. Tara was down, her stomach on the ground. Roxie’s knee pushed on the small of Tara’s back and Roxie twisted the blonde’s arms behind her.

  “What the”—Roxie shot out a breath of air from the struggle—“fuck is your problem?” She slammed Tara’s face to the carpet again. Wrestling dogs and horses gave her skills she’d never anticipated using on hoity-toity lawyers.

  Thank you, Rory, for teaching me all those self-defense tricks.

  “Get off me!”

  Roxie wrenched her arms into a tighter bend until she squealed.

  “Where’s the video?” Tara demanded.

  Who was on top of who, Roxie wanted to retort. How the hell does she know about the video? Was Chris’s email hacked? Stuart, he’s monitoring Chris, too? “Why are you doing this? To Ben? To Grant? What is wrong with you?”

  Tara coughed and sniffled blood. “Give me the video—”

  Roxie slammed her face down again.

  “—if you don’t want your daughter hurt.”

  Blackmail? Again? Fear iced Roxie’s blood. But it wasn’t possible. She wasn’t falling for it. Grant was with Lucy. She was safe. Instead of facing a threat alone this time, she had a man, a partner, a rock to depend on to keep her daughter safe.

  “You will never touch a hair on my child, so help me God.”

  “Not me.” Tara wriggled to get free. “I don’t want that snotty brat near me. Stuart will handle her.”

  Over my dead body. “It’s over, Tara, it’s all over for you.”

  “You give me the video, I won’t let Stuart hurt the kid.”

  “Grant won’t let anyone touch her.”

  “Oh. Grant’s with her? They’re already on their way there to handle him.”

  They who?

  “Grant wouldn’t have lasted, you know. He cares about his career, not your fucking kid. He’ll forget you as soon as this passes. Sure, he says he wants some brat in his life.” Tara tried to laugh. “It wouldn’t last. He’s made for this job. For greater things. He was.”

  A manic giggle gurgled with the blood from her nose Roxie had busted. “Greater things than you. Some stupid middle-class bitch from nowhere. You think he’s going to choose you and your brat over his career? He’s a fool! All this power at the tips of his fingers.”

  “Power such as yours to two-time the system?”

  “He was nothing but a poor kid from a normal family. Everyone fucking loves him. He had the charm, the guile, the finesse to never lose a case. Never lost a case until I told him I was knocked up with his brat! Everyone wanted to fuck him. They all wanted him. He could’ve gone anywhere. Like golden goddamn Midas!”

  “Jealous?”

  Tara growled and squirmed to get free. Roxie pulled her arm tighter.

  “He was supposed to keep going. He could have been in congress already. As young and sexy as he is. He should have moved up. He never loses at anything.”

  Tara wanted power. So what, she’d planned for her not-so-malleable ex-husband to be in politics? Roxie snorted in disbelief.

  “Except you. Then again, he gladly ditched you,” Roxie said.

  Tara coughed. “Then fuck him. I’ve found a new winner.”

  Her new man? Henry, the old DA? How was he a winner? He was losing this case pronto with the incriminating video she possessed. Winner of what? He was losing this race, this competition.

  Sophia’s constant commentaries and critiques of politicians running in November nagged her thoughts. Tara found a winner in the DA, not in law, maybe, but in politics? Tara’s next rung of ambition on her slippery ladder of needing more, needing better? From practicing law to politics—it happened all the time.

  Henry’s campaign. It hadn’t gotten much fanfare due to lack of funds. But he was in the pool of too many pompous morons thinking they were the solution to the issues in government.

  But Tara had contributed to his running. Rather, Kaniz had. Coming from money, sure, Tara had helped her new puppet.

  And someone else had recently made a monetary contribution to Henry’s campaign—one of the wealthy VIP guests. It hadn’t made sense when Roxie had written out her charts, the listing and comparison of biographical and financial highlights. It was disguised, labeled as an acronym contribution, not an individual’s contribution.

  Now as Tara’s words sunk in, Roxie saw it for what it was. A payoff. To the DA, a payoff to protect someone from prosecution. Tara was stooping low to frame Ben to protect the killer, all because her new man needed the killer’s money to run for office.

  The door opened, jerking Roxie’s attention from Tara.

  “Roxie?” Chris leaned in, his face a mixture of what seemed like alarm and shock.

  “Call security.”

  She needed to get to Grant and Lucy.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Rox, please, please call me,” Grant said to Roxie’s voicemail. He’d never been one for begging or pleading, used to simply getting his way via demands and holding others to his expectations. But with Roxie, she called the shots for him whether she knew it or not.

  “I’ve been here for a half hour now. Sorry it took me so long to make it home,” he continued.

  Home. Well, it wasn’t her residence. But surely she wouldn’t check in with the escalation of danger. He hadn’t thought to consider she would go to her own apartment.

  “They had some trouble stabilizing Sonny, and I had to stay until I knew more. Please call me, text me.”

  I’m worried.

  He couldn’t vocalize his fear, refusing to give it a face. Now that he’d found her, gotten her to give them a chance…he just couldn’t lose her. Not ready to finish his message to her, he set the phone on the coffee table, leaving it on speaker.

  Get a grip. Shaking his head, he tried to dispel the nervous anxiety screwing with his mind. Sonny being shot didn’t necessarily mean Roxie had to be in danger. He fussed around the great room, picking up scattered toys, blankets, the odds and ends of Lucy’s belongings. When he’d gotten home, he found the place empty,
intensifying his worries even more.

  Kelly had left a note though, on the countertop, explaining her husband, Will, was coming to pick her and Lucy up and take them to their house. She described it as “wanting to give Lucy a chance to play in a real back yard”, but Grant suspected his sister was equally freaked out by the day’s events. And her gut instinct was unflappable.

  She must have taken the tan cloth baby carrier, he noticed, because the hard car seat carrier was still next to his coffee table. Stooping low, he snatched the handle and began tossing Lucy’s toys and blankets into it instead of in a heap on the couch.

  With his back to the front door, he bent down to free the corner of a teething toy-blanket from the side table’s leg. When he heard what seemed like a knock, he spun around to face the door.

  “Ro—”

  The redhead who was stealing his heart didn’t push through the door. Instead he faced a man. A VIP guest he’d researched with Roxie, his lips pressed together and his eyes narrowed with a frightening severity. He aimed the barrel of a handgun, first at Grant’s chest, and then after a glance at the object in his hands, at the car seat.

  “Give me the video, and I won’t shoot it.”

  Grant dropped the toy-blanket and raised his hand in surrender, straightening slowly so as not to spook his trespasser. He thanked God Lucy wasn’t in the carrier in his other hand, but with the hood up and blocking the view into the contraption, it could have seemed like an infant was nestled inside. Not that he’d give that detail away.

  “Easy.”

  “Don’t fucking tell me easy. I’m the boss here. Give me the fucking video.”

  Yeah, Grant bet the asshole was used to being the boss.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Grant stood upright, his right hand up, his left still gripping the car seat. His piece was in its holster, on the couch in front of him. All he needed was a distraction to pick it up and aim. But with only him and the other thoroughly unhappy man in the room, there were slim options for proper distractions.

  “The video. The evidence. The evidence your fucking woman has that can prove Ben didn’t kill Josh.”

  And like that, Grant’s assumptions were validated. Someone had listened in or hacked into her phone. To know that Sonny was to meet her with important information. To know that she’d told Grant she had evidence—the bastard in front of him had even quoted her words verbatim from her call earlier. To know…her exact whereabouts. She was in more danger than she would realize.

  “I don’t have a video,” Grant insisted—telling the truth, simply. He didn’t know what Roxie had dug up. What the hell did Ben tell her?

  Ben had to have explained something. Sonny knew other info enough to be silenced. Roxie needed to speak to Jaydon. Grant couldn’t make the connections, a dot-to-dot puzzle without the superscript numbers to guide him.

  Even with gaps in the picture, he could infer why a gun was pointing at “Lucy”, and why the man holding the weapon needed the video.

  “I’m not walking out of here without that fucking evidence. I’m not”—he cracked his neck, not removing his gaze from Grant’s movements—“going to take the fall for this shit. I’m not!”

  “Because you need Ben to be the killer? I’m betting this film shows otherwise, huh?”

  “No shit, Einstein. I don’t care what the video is. Your client is going to go down as Josh’s murderer. Not me. I’ll kill the kid if I have to. You too. But I’m not leaving without that video.”

  “Calm down,” Grant said.

  “Put your fucking hand up!”

  Grant gritted his teeth, trying for a constant show of submission, but he hadn’t even realized he’d lowered his hand. Jittery asshole didn’t seem ready to take chances.

  “Why’d you kill him?” Grant asked. He’d honestly had his bets on Kylie.

  “Why?” the man laughed. “You should have tried living with him and see how long it took for you to get sick of him. All his whining. His excuses. Not listening to anything I told him to do. Like a goddamn child.”

  Grant raised his brows. “You killed him, your high-earning client, because he annoyed you?”

  Dave sneered. “No. Because he was a liar. He lied to me. To our father.”

  Our father? Josh and Dave as brothers? Grant flicked through the facts in his mind. Josh was raised by a single mother, Dave by adopted parents. Josh from Pittsburgh, Dave from Eastern Ohio.

  Unbelievable. “Your father?”

  It was always the spouse or next-closest relative. And they’d scratched off that avenue early on, seeing as Josh had no known siblings from his single mother, being raised as a single child—that they knew of legally.

  “Both of ours,” Dave said. “Dad knocked up his mom after I was already born. Hit the drugs too hard and courts made me go live with his former in-laws’ cousins.”

  Grant tried to follow. Josh’s father’s ex’s parents’ cousin. That was an ambiguous pathway of relations to track.

  “But he was a good man. Addiction is an illness, not a decision. Of course, Josh never agreed.”

  “Josh wasn’t close?”

  “No. Too low for him to associate with once he’d hit it big.”

  “How did you find each other?”

  Dave shrugged. “Dad kept in touch with Josh’s mom. Banged her when he had an itch to scratch. We’d always known of each other.”

  Grant still couldn’t easily accept such an unexpected connection.

  “After his mom died, Josh didn’t even pretend to give a shit about Dad. Hardly wanted to recognize him. Once he started making money and getting his name out, he’d all but practically disowned him.”

  “And that made him a liar?”

  “Hand up!” Dave stepped closer, near enough that Grant feared he might be able to see the gun resting on the couch. “No, not the disowning. That was just fucking disrespectful.”

  Keep talking. Keep talking, asshole.

  “He’d promised to cover Dad’s hospital bills. Turned into hospice, really. It was right when he’d won on Idol. Right before we’d arranged his first big contract, his first record. Money was coming in—we both knew it. I was in a tight spot. I’d invested in that asshole’s career, making deals, spending before he’d cashed in. No advances had come in yet and Dad was in the last rounds of chemo. I had always taken care of Dad’s bills. I couldn’t just leave him on his own. He needed me, needed his sons. Josh said he’d fence it for me, cover the bills so Dad would be all right.”

  “Didn’t come through?”

  “No.” Dave blared his breath through his nose like a bull. “Motherfucker. All those years ago, he’d said he picked up the bills with his first winnings. Never did. You know what he did?”

  Ouch. Kylie.

  “He bought that bitch a fucking trip to the Maldives. While Dad was dying, he was basking in the sun with that whore.”

  “That had to have been years ago. Why now?”

  Dave snorted. “Never knew. The sneaky fucking weasel hid it from me all those years. Said he’d paid it up so Dad wouldn’t miss the chemo. I only knew about it when he’d decided to switch up his will. He wanted to ‘prepare for Kylie’, his goddamn whoring love of his life, and wanted to make sure she would be covered in case anything happened.”

  Like a murderous half-brother?

  “He’d picked some new financial team to help his accountant go through and arrange his finances. He’d dismissed Dad’s bills for years, letting his accountant cover it up and eventually pay it when the HMO sued for past notice.”

  Dave stepped closer, likely past any stretches of patience for the evidence that Grant didn’t have, the video that would clear Ben’s name and open up the case to identify the real killer.

  “That’s why I killed him. I couldn’t fucking take it anymore. The ungrateful, sniveling, disrespectful asshole had it coming. Fuck you, bro. Fuck you. That was the message he’d needed. I’d found out the morning of the party that he hadn’t
come clean for Dad. Then he was acting like his usual whiny, cocky self, like a kid, not sticking with Richelle all night. Not listening to my orders. I told him to pay the bills for Dad back then, because I knew he’d be rolling in money. Nope. Didn’t fucking listen to me. I instructed him to stay away from goddamn Kylie. But no, he wouldn’t obey. I couldn’t do it anymore. Fuck him!”

  Ever so slowly, the door swung open behind Dave—out of his range of vision because he’d stepped so close to Grant. Roxie crossed the threshold, her mouth agape, her eyes wide as she took in the sight of Dave pointing a gun at Lucy’s car seat.

  She silently removed her laptop bag from over her shoulder and nodded at Dave. The bag free, she held it in her hands and foisted it up as though mimicking she’d hit him with it. Dave continued to scream at Grant for the video, and Grant watched as another figure neared his apartment door, Stuart, creeping up behind Roxie.

  He had no choice.

  “Get down!” he yelled at Roxie.

  As he warned her, he threw the empty car seat at Dave’s hand holding the gun, the first blast firing through it. Roxie disobeyed, likely because she hadn’t known Stuart was aiming his gun at her back. She swung her bag at Dave, her laptop smacking the man’s head, sending him off balance. As Roxie and Dave were shifted to the side, Grant dove for his gun on the couch and fired at Stuart.

  “Roxie!” Grant jumped up, his gun at the ready, checking first Stuart, then Dave.

  No movement came from Kaniz’s PI on the floor, blood pooling on the hallway carpet. Roxie wrestled with Dave on the ground, both of them reaching for the gun that had been knocked out of Dave’s hand when she’d struck him.

  “Don’t move!” Grant kicked the missing gun away as he dashed to them, training his gun on Dave’s head.

  Roxie gasped as she scrambled on hands and knees, backing away. Her stare glued to the car seat on its side.