Page 32 of Truth or Dare

It was Zack and he’d pulled in to the underground. I replied to tell him I’d be down in two minutes. I cleared the broken cup and spilled coffee from the kitchen floor and then poured a new coffee and brought it into my bedroom. Felicia was still in the bathroom. I called her name and she peeked out from the opened door.

“There’s clean robe or clothes in my closet if you wanna grab something to wear for now. I brought you another coffee. Take a bath or shower if you want. Can you hang in here and watch TV or something for a bit? My P.I. is here and he and I are gonna sweep our belongings for bugs down in my SUV and then we’ll be up. When we come back up, I’ll have him double check your bag, shoes, and that necklace.”

She nodded, looking shell-shocked, still. I put the coffee on the nightstand and left the room. I set the alarm on my way out. Just in case.

Zack had proven himself invaluable over the last several months to the point he’d become a buddy to me as well as our private investigator. He checked and said that everything was clear of bugs and tracking devices, including the sapphire necklace, which was genuine and worth a small fortune. I had my luggage checked as well while I filled him in on the details of the trip.

Maybe they weren’t suspicious of me because of their relationship with Pop. But I wasn’t taking chances because I knew they could be watching. I also knew that a select few were at least somewhat aware of the rift in the final days of Pop’s life and news could travel that far and if it did, even as a rumor, we’d be under suspicion eventually. As far as the lawyer Stan Smith went, he knew too much and was too far away for me to keep an eye on so I had to bear that in mind. With Pop gone his loyalties could easily change, particularly if he had no ties to me because I’d stopped using him. I needed to retain him as a lawyer at least until all this shit was over with. Pop had another local lawyer and that’s who he worked with when he temporarily froze me and Tommy out. He hadn’t made any changes to his will so all of that overwrote the temporary orders that had been put in place in the few weeks before Pop died.

Me and Zack talked to my brother on webcam in my den and agreed that depending on how we played out exits from the businesses we did not want to be in, this could mean that transition would take a whole lot longer than we’d hoped. And if it all started to go to hell the whole damn family would have to slip off the grid. Tommy said he’d work on that contingency plan.

Fuck, Pop; you’re still fucking with us, even from the grave.

Zack was gathering intel about the people on the list of names I gave him and we were gonna re-group later to come up with a plan. After we said goodbye to my brother, I saw Zack to the door and then I checked on her. She was in my room, watching television in my bed. She was in a pair of my grey on grey checked flannel pajamas, a pair I’d never worn but got given for Christmas last year. They were huge on her. She was watching cartoons, looking small in my big, dark wood sleigh bed buried under my big wine-colored comforter.

I sat on the bed. “How you doin’?”

“Fine.”

She probably wasn’t fine.

“Is it okay I chose these to wear?” she asked, looking up innocently at me, giving me a pang of something, I didn’t know what.

“Sure; I brought your things up. They’re in the den and everything is clean, no surveillance or GPS devices. Listen, we have to talk about a few things. You feelin’ up to that?”

There was no big rush provided she wasn’t in a huge hurry to move on.

She winced.

“Will you try for me?” I asked.

She looked at me with what looked like stars in her eyes.

I gritted my teeth for a sec and then forced myself to continue. “I know you’ve been through a lot. I don’t know but I do know, you know? Fuck, okay, first question, are there people looking for you? Family?”

She was quiet a moment, but then answered me.

“No,” she whispered.

“No family?” I asked.

She shook her head and looked to the comforter, tried to mask her pain, but I saw it. I wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth or not.

“Did they kidnap you while you were on vacation in Thailand or something? Is that how they got you?”

She shook her head. My stomach churned. Did this girl volunteer? There were those that did, those who wanted to be looked after, who came from poverty or who were so damaged they thought that someone making all the decisions for them was their anecdote.

She must’ve read my sickened expression as she shook her head vigorously. “I was in Thailand for work, taken in, blackmailed, and there was no escape.”

“Ah,” I felt relief. Maybe I shouldn’t have but I did. The idea that I’d brought back someone who wanted that for herself? That’d be beyond my comprehension. And for a split second before she said she’d been blackmailed, her behavior flashed in my mind and I was glad to have confirmation that it was a product of her so-called training rather than her behavior being something that was a result of her preferences.

“My private eye says they’ve probably microchipped you. Do you know if they have?”

She nodded.

“Right. We’ll get that dealt with as soon as is feasible. So I wanted to make sure you weren’t in a hurry to get back to Alaska. I don’t want you to think of yourself as being in prison. We can sort things out for you; I’ll help you get on your feet and eventually, not sure how long it’ll take, but eventually you’ll be able to get on with your life. It’ll probably mean a new identity, you might not be able to go back to Alaska, but we have to wait and see what happens. You say there’s no family there but are you okay with that?”

“I could live the rest of my life and never step foot back there,” she said softly.

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