Page 43 of The Shadow

Harvey tangles his fingers deeper with mine, his anxious concern almost palpable. “What happened after he was locked up?”

“We went on with our lives, or at least tried to. But the ever-present questions continued to linger… What if he gets out on good behavior? What if he bribes a guard to let him escape? What if he appeals and his case is overturned? It was like we were living in a different prison now. A prison of uncertainty, never really feeling safe… It was just an illusion, you know?”

He nods and I’m sure he does know. As a man who spent years in the Special Forces, I can only imagine the demons that haunt him.

“But all of that fear and uncertainty came to an abrupt halt one day about six months after he was sentenced. We received notice he would be transferred to a different prison upstate and he was but about a month after his transfer, we got a call. He’d been found dead, murdered by his cellmate.”

“Good.” Harvey’s voice conveys zero hesitation or remorse. “I hope it was slow and painful.”

“I don’t know the details about how he died, but one thing I did find out about the man who killed him, he was also involved in that same gang my dad was caught up in and about four years earlier, he’d been sentenced to fifty years by Judge Sarco. The crazy coincidence…” I say sarcastically, “is my dad was the one who testified against him and he’s the reason that man got a life sentence. He was already forty-one when he went in so he knew when the judge handed down fifty years he’d never see the light of day again.”

“Ah, one of those kind of coincidences.” He smirks. “Do you think the judge had your dad taken out before he could start talking in prison since he was tied up with him in these bribes and kickbacks?”

“I did—at first. But something in my gut wouldn’t accept it. I knew there was more to it but Jax and I promised each other we wouldn’t bring up the case ever again.”

Harvey’s eyes widen. “Meaning?”

“A few years later, during our college graduation weekend, we were just chilling in his apartment that we’d spent all day packing up, talking about what our next steps were, how our lives were about to change.” I smile, thinking back on that night. I can still feel the excitement that vibrated between us. The excitement of the unknown mixed with the realization that we were finally college grads. “We’d been drinking, not too much but for me, two Mike’s Hard Lemonades at the time got me loose enough to let my guard down so, I asked him the one question I’d been harboring all those years. Did you have anything to do with my dad’s death?”

Harvey’s eyes widen in shock. “You think Jaxson had him killed?”

I shrug. “I never got a straight answer from him. He just smiled at me with this lazy grin he’d always give me when I knew he wasn’t telling the truth and said, ‘Isn’t it funny how karma always finds a way, huh?’ And that was it, we never talked about it again.”

“Do you think he’s capable of something like that?”

“I don’t know,” I admit, “but I do know that Jax would have done anything to protect me and my mom.”

“Where is Jaxson now?” Harvey’s eyes are staring down where his hand still clutches mine.

“I don’t know.” The tears come back, fat and hot, tumbling down my cheeks faster than I can wipe them away. “The day after we graduated, I went by his old apartment to say goodbye. He had accepted a job in LA and we had plans to grab lunch but when I got there, it was empty. I pounded on the door but he didn’t answer so I used my spare key he’d given me and let myself in. All of his belongings and car were gone but he’d left me a note sitting on the kitchen counter along with instructions to give my spare key to his landlord.”

“What did it say?”

“He told me that he wasn’t really taking a job in LA. He had taken a job with an international group of high-end hackers that had been around forever. He couldn’t involve me; he knew my plans to move to Manhattan and pursue a fun, fast-paced job would be destroyed if he and I were still friends and he ever got caught. Jax always had big dreams of being an altruistic hacker ever since we were kids so it didn’t really come as a surprise. It was just hard to lose that person, to close that chapter of my life that had been a constant for so long.”

Silence settles between us as I stare off into nothing. Finally, I look back at Harvey to gauge his mood after hearing all of this. It’s clear his mind is racing with questions, some I know I probably am not ready to answer. He must feel the toll this conversation has taken on me because he changes the subject slightly.

“What about your mom? What happened to her?” My face falls and fresh tears well up. “Shit, I’m sorry,” he says, trying to fix it. “We don’t have to talk anymore, baby.”

“It’s okay. A year after I graduated college she was diagnosed with a rare form of sarcoma. It was in her stomach and there was nothing they could do. She died within eight months of her diagnosis.”

“Fuck.” My stomach drops. “What was her name?”

“Margaret.” I smile, wiping my nose. “But she went by Maggie. I had a small funeral back in my hometown and she was buried in the same cemetery as her mom, something she always wanted.” I blow out a slow breath. “After dealing with her estate, which was nothing but medical bills at that point, I went to visit her grave one last time before heading back to the city. That’s when I saw it, a single flower with a burner phone.”

“Jaxson?” Harvey asks. “Was he at the funeral?”

“No, he wasn’t but I knew the phone and flower were from him. There was no note and only a single number programmed into the phone listed as JustInCase.”

“Did you call it?”

I shake my head. “No, I never have. But I kept the phone and put it in a lockbox at my bank.”

“It’s still there?” I nod. “What about the judge in the case? Any chance he could still be a threat?”

“No, he was actually disbarred a few years later in a huge sting that took down a few other officials. He never served time, but rumor is he ran off to Mexico and nobody has seen him since.”

Harvey releases my hand, sitting up to pull me fully into an embrace, holding me tightly as the sobs come back. “I’m so sorry, Aspen,” he repeats as my tears run down his bare chest. “You’ve been through so much.” His hands rub my back gently before pulling me back slightly so we’re eye to eye. “But those days are over for you. You don’t have to carry this burden alone anymore. I’m here for you, every step of the way, and I’m not going anywhere.”

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