Innocent Mistakes
Page 11
She laughs at the image of her nephew tethered to the wall with a corded phone. “Mallory?”
“Yeah, he seemed as surprised that she called as we were. Siobhan’s been hounding him all night, asking why she called.”
It strikes Sasha as odd that Hunter’s current girlfriend would call the boy accused of harassing him, but she’s not about to delve into the adolescent girl decision-making process. Sean’s about to say more, but a beep sounds in her ear.
“Shoot, Connelly’s calling me, Sean. I should take this.”
“Yeah, go. And go home soon.”
“Bye.”
She switches over to the incoming call. “Connelly?”
“I need you to come home. Right now.”
His voice stops her heart. “What happened?”
“Everyone’s okay, but you need to come home. The police are here. A SWAT unit.”
“What?!”
“We’re okay, I promise. But I need you.”
“I’m on my way.”
Her hands shake as she shuts down her laptop and throws folders into her bag without reading their labels. She’s halfway to the stairs when she remembers August. She turns and sprints down the hallway, her four-inch heels clacking against the floor. She comes to an abrupt, noisy stop in the doorway to his work area.
“I’m almost done,” he promises.
“Change of plans. There’s been an emergency at home. I have to go.” She tries to speak calmly, but her panic and breathlessness conspire against her, and the words come out breathy and quivery.
“Is everything?”
“I think so.”
“So, do you want me to email you the documents or …?”
“I’d really appreciate it if you could bring everything by my place tonight. I don’t care how late it is.”
“Sure, that’s no problem. It’s on my way home, actually.”
“Great. Thank you.”
She turns to leave, but he’s still talking.
“I just want to warn you, some of this stuff is pretty bad.”
She can’t focus on what he’s saying. Her heart’s pounding so loudly and her brain is screaming at her feet to get moving.
“Okay, that’s fine.”
She races to the stairs and flings herself down them. She bursts out of the building, leaving her car in the lot. She’d gone back home to pick it up when she had to drive out to Sean’s this morning, but she doesn’t trust herself to drive now—not even the few short blocks home. She’ll wreck for sure.
So she runs, weighted down with a computer bag over one shoulder and a messenger bag full of documents over the other. Her hair works loose from the knot at the nape of her neck and streams behind her like the tail on a kite.
She thinks it’s beginning to rain as her cheeks get wet, then she realizes she’s crying. She pants and stumbles when she reaches her street and sees the black and white squad cars parked at odd angles, blocking both ends of the block. Their lights circle lazily, throwing red, blue, and white beams across the row of homes. A big, black SWAT bus sits in the alley behind her house.
She peers past it to see her splintered kitchen door, then surveys the sidewalk in front of the house. A cluster of neighbors stands in the street, pointing at her house and speculating. Uniformed officers form a barrier to keep them away. It’s only a matter of time before the local press shows up. The back door is definitely the way to go. She slips into the alley and races toward her back gate.
A woman wearing a tailored pantsuit stands at the fence. She lifts a shiny badge. “Ma’am, you can’t go in there.”
“This is my house. My kids are in there. I’m going in.” Her voice breaks, and she fists her hands.
“Sasha McCandless-Connelly?” The woman squints at her.
“Yes. Do I know you?”
“No ma’am, but I know of you. I’m Chrys Martin. I partner with Burton Gilbert. He’s talked about you.”
“Gilbert? He’s … oh no, he’s on the homicide squad. I thought—”
“No one’s been hurt,” the detective assures her. “Your husband had the presence of mind to ask the SWAT team to call Burt. We’re here as a courtesy, that’s all. I promise.”
Sasha exhales. “Thank heavens. Can I go inside?”
“Yes, ma’am. Oh, is that your cat?”
Detective Martin points, and Sasha follows her finger to see Java crouched in the corner of the yard behind the potting shed. His eyes are luminous and huge in the dark.
“Oh, come here. You must be so scared. Java, come here.” She crouches and coos his name.
He darts out from behind the shed and wraps his tail around her leg. She scoops him up and cradles him like a baby, then turns back to the officer.
“Thanks. I don’t suppose you saw a dog, too?”
“Your dog’s inside, ma’am. From what I understand, he tried to protect your children.”
Despite the tightness in her chest, Sasha smiled at the notion of her sweet, dumb, chocolate lab protecting the twins from an armed SWAT team. She knows Mocha would have taken a bullet for them. The thought lands on her like a boulder when she realizes how close the hyperbolic saying came to being a reality. Bile rises in her throat and she rushes inside.
The kitchen floor is littered with chunks of detritus that used to be their door but is otherwise empty. She spots the kids in the living room and runs through the house, squeezing Java a bit too tightly. He hisses in protest.
“Mommy has Java!” Fiona blurts when she spots them.
Fiona and Finn snuggle under a blanket on the couch. On the coffee table, there’s a small mug of hot chocolate in front of each of them, and Mocha’s curled up beside them. If she didn’t know better, she’d think it was a cozy Friday night at home.
But she does know better. Police officers and technicians swarm around, taking unnecessary photographs and talking in loud voices. Leo and Hank Richardson, his boss and closest friend, stand off to the side with faces like thunder. Sasha’s pretty sure this is all an effort for the police to cover their butts.
She deposits the cat on the blanket between the twins and leans down to pull each of them into a tight hug.
“Mommy, we’re okay,” Finn tells her.
She kisses his nose. “I know, but it must’ve been very scary. I’m so sorry that happened.” She turns to kiss Fiona’s cheek.
Fiona locks eyes with her, “It’s okay, Mommy.”
Finn pats her arm, “Dad’s letting us watch a movie on the tablet.”
“Oh, good.”
Finn continues, “He said a cartoon might help with the drama.”
“Trauma, Finny,” Fiona corrects him.
“Probably both,” Sasha tells her daughter.
“Okay, both,” Fiona concedes the point easily. “You were right, Finny.”
“I know, Fee-fee. Let’s watch the movie.”
Sasha manages a laugh. The twins appear to have shaken off the trauma/drama pretty well. She turns toward her husband. Unlike their children, he looks stricken. His expression is carved from granite, but his eyes are stormy. And he’s vibrating with barely suppressed anger.
She shrugs out of the straps of her bags and lets them fall to the floor with two soft thuds while she wraps her arms around Leo’s waist.
“Are you okay?”
He nods and swallows hard but doesn’t answer.
She tips her chin up and tries to make eye contact. “Look at me, Connelly.”
He lowers his eyes to meet her probing gaze. “I’m okay. We’re all okay. But someone’s going to pay for this.”
Hank clears his throat. “Leo and I’ve been going over active cases. I can’t think of anyone we’re investigating who would have done this. Certainly nobody local. We are monitoring a pretty nasty group out west, but we haven’t made contact. They’d have no reason. And more to the point, they would have no way of finding you folks.”
She nods. Hank and Connelly are fanatical about personal security. Always h
ave been, even before Hank adopted his kids and she and Connelly had the twins. They’ve had a slip up or two over the years—that’s how Connelly’s estranged father found them. And the octogenarian spy who broke in last winter. But in response to every breach, they locked their information down even tighter.
Just then, Detective Gilbert breaks away from a conversation with two uniformed officers and walks over to join them.
“Sasha, it’s good to see you. Wish it were under different circumstances,” he says.
“That makes two of us. You remember Hank and Leo?”
“I do. And I spoke to them briefly when I got here. I wanted to ask you, though, if you have any idea who did this.”
“Wait, you’re asking me? I thought you might know.”
“Your husband and Mr. Richardson say nobody springs to mind from their work. What about you? Representing any serial killers at the moment? Have you pissed off any sociopaths?”
“Not this week.”
“Huh. Do you have any current cases that are particularly ugly?”
It’s a fair question, but she’d been keeping a low profile of late. “Detective, my newest client did just fire me. But that case involved a dispute over a family heirloom engagement ring. She’s unlikely to have swatted us.”
He nods his agreement. “Doesn’t sound like a strong candidate.”
She hesitates for a beat, then says, “You don’t think this could be payback for what happened with the Milltown police last fall, do you?”
“You didn’t make any friends on the force with that, but no. Even a dirty police officer wouldn’t engineer a swatting. This action didn’t just endanger your family. It also put the entire responding unit at risk. As terrifying as swatting is for the victims, it’s also frightening for the team to walk into what they believe to be an active shooter situation. No, I just can’t see it.”
His explanation makes sense. “Then I don’t know who it could be, Burt.”
He gives an uncomfortable glance toward the couch, where the twins are giggling at animated antics. “Someone has it out for you. If I were you, I wouldn’t feel safe staying here with my family until we know who did this. My involvement’ll have to be informal and limited because, thankfully, there’s no homicide here. But I will keep tabs on the investigation.”
She smiles at him. “I appreciate that. A lot.”
His eyes flick over to Finn and Fiona again. “No thanks needed, but, really, give some serious thought to getting out of Dodge.”
“We will,” Connelly promises before the detective walks away.
23
Connelly shakes Captain Stoddard’s hand and walks him to the door. After he leaves, Connelly locks the door and turns to give Sasha a tired smile.
“You sure they’re all gone?” she asks.
“Affirmative. The captain was the last to leave. There’s a patrol officer stationed down on the sidewalk and one out back, but otherwise we’re finally alone.”
She turns and eyes the sheet of plywood that Hank found in the shed and nailed over the kitchen doorway for them. “I hope that holds,” she says dubiously.
“It’ll be fine for one night. And let’s be realistic, neither one of us is sleeping easy tonight.”
Well, that much is true.
“These two, on the other hand, are out cold.”
She gestures to Finn and Fiona asleep on the couch, their heads resting against one another, the movie looping on the tablet. She eases the tablet out from Finn’s grip and turns it off.
Connelly crosses the room and puts his arm around her shoulder. They stare down at their children.
“How much do you think registered?” she whispers.
“I just don’t know. They were in the closet with Mocha. I’m not sure how much they heard, but there was a lot of shouting.”
“Who would do this to us?”
He shakes his head. After a moment he says, “I think Detective Gilbert’s right. It’s not smart to stay here.”
“It’s too late to go anywhere tonight. They need to get some rest.” She gestures toward the twins.
“Yeah, not tonight. But tomorrow morning, you should pack up the car and take them up to the lake house until we find out who did this.”
She doesn’t look away from the kids while she considers what he’s said. The lake house is probably the right call. It’s remote, and they bought it through a trust, so their names aren’t listed on the deed. And it’ll be good for Finn and Fiona to get away from this. They can hike the waterfall path, take the canoe out on the lake, make a fire and roast marshmallows.
“Why don’t we all go?” She asks the question although she already knows the answer.
“I’m not leaving until I find the monster who did this to us. I owe it to them—I owe it to you.”
“You heard Detective Gilbert. It might not even have had anything to do with your work.”
He fixes her with a look. “But it probably does.”
She’s too tired to argue about it. “Let’s take them up.”
“Put them both in his room in case one of them wakes up?”
“I was thinking the same thing. Her sleeping bag’s already on the floor.”
She hoists Finn up and settles him against her shoulder. He stirs and flings his arms around her neck but doesn’t wake. His warm breath against her neck is even and deep. He’s getting so tall that his dangling feet bump against her shins with each step she takes. She wonders how many years—months?—of carrying him she has left.
She lowers him into his bed and pulls a light blanket up over his chest, then smooths his hair back. Connelly comes into the room and crouches beside the bed to ease Fiona into her sleeping bag. She sighs and turns onto her side. Mocha pads into the room, circles three times, and settles himself on the bottom of Fiona’s sleeping bag.
“He’s really being protective,” he remarks.
“He’s a good boy.”
Not to be shown up, Java creeps into the room and leaps up onto Finn’s bed. He lands lightly and curls up beside Finn.
Sasha takes a deep breath and sears the image into her brain. Her heart is in this room. She’ll do whatever it takes to keep them all safe. Even if that means taking them to Deep Creek and leaving Connelly here to deal with whoever dared to threaten them.
She reaches for his hand, and he laces his fingers between hers. After a moment, he motions toward the doorway. They tiptoe out of the room, then make their way along the hallway and down the stairs in silence. As they reach the foot of the stairs, the motion detector lights on the front porch blaze to life in the darkness. In her peripheral vision, she sees Connelly lift his shirt and reach for his holstered gun.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t feel comfortable being here right now without it. I don’t want to fight about this, okay?”
She bites back her response. She wasn’t here when armed men broke down their door. He was.
“Okay. It’s probably August. You know, the IT specialist? He’s dropping off some documents for me.”
He pauses, hand on his holster. “Oh.”
“Besides, there’s a uniformed officer down there. Nobody’s going to surprise us.”
He nods and releases his grip on his holster. “You’re right.”
“In fact, I should call him.”
She picks up her phone and finds August’s contact. He answers on the first ring. “Sasha, hi. I’m trying to explain to this police officer that I’m supposed to drop these materials off for you.”
“Why don’t you hand them your phone?” she suggests.
A female officer comes on the line, her voice wary. “Ms. McCandless-Connelly, this man says you’re expecting him.”
“Yes, I work with August. He has some materials I need for a case. It’s okay to let him up.”
“Okay.”
“Do you need anything—coffee or water, to use the bathroom?”
“No thank you, ma’am. I’m fine.”
She opens the door before he can ring the bell. He stares at her wide-eyed.
“Are you sure it’s okay to come in?”
“I’m positive,” she assures him “You remember, my husband, Leo?”
August gulps and sticks out his hand, “Nice to see you, Mr. Connelly.”
“Hi, August. Are you off the clock?”
August gives Sasha a sidelong glance.
“Yes,” she prompts him.
“Uh, yes.”
“Good. I’m about to have a glass of scotch. Care to join me?”
“Sure. I live in the lofts just around the corner, so I’m walking.”
Connelly tilts his head at Sasha. “You want something?”
She shakes her head. “Maybe later.”
While Connelly pours the drinks, she takes her laptop from its bag, sets it up on the dining room table, and powers it up. August trails her into the room and stands behind her waiting for the computer to start up. He drops himself into the chair at the end of the table and rustles through his bag.
“Here’s the thumb drive.”
She takes it and squints at it. “Are these images or do I need a special program to open them or what?”
“I saved them as images that will work inside the document review software installed on your machine. Naya said to let you know you can enlarge them and print them, too.”
She sticks the thumb drive into the port and turns to give him a knowing look. “I bet that’s not all she said.”
He coughs. “Uh, no … she also said you should get your vision checked because you’re getting … uh … you should get your vision checked.”
Old. The word August is tripping over but Naya revels in is old. Sasha knows Naya’s right. Or someone is making the font tinier on everything just to prank her. But probably it’s the former.
Connelly joins them and hands August a glass, then takes the chair on the other side of Sasha. “Cheers.”
They sip their drinks in silence while she navigates to the file directory. August’s eyes keep drifting to the boarded-over kitchen door. “Are you sure everything’s okay here?”