Page 73 of Cruel Hearts

Stella nods. “That’s right. But we were wrong. It wasn’t Zane’s dad Clayton was after. Lark was added to the email by mistake, and Clayton needed to shut her up. Look at the date of the email. It was sent the evening before their flight. Clayton didn’t bribe the pilot to kill Kagan, he was after Zane’s mother.”

My mother’s and father’s deaths were damage control.

I stand in Max’s kitchen, hot and cold, like the time I had pneumonia. My skin is icy, but I’m sweating.

The man who treats me like his own son, the man who cried over my parents’ empty caskets, the man who spoke so eloquently at my dinner the night I announced I was finally ready to step into my father’s place at the helm of Maddox Industries.

He’s the cause of it all.

“The sad part is, Lark probably hadn’t seen it yet,” Stella says. “They were on vacation. Checking her email might have been the last thing on her mind.”

“That’s even better,” Max says, pushing his glasses up his nose. “She didn’t have time to pass the information to anyone. Obviously, the Blacks will go to extreme measures to keep their side business going and shutting someone up permanently doesn’t bother them. Who knows you have this?”

The knowledge slams into me. Ash isn’t after Stella because she escaped. He’s after her because he knows she has evidence against him and his family.

“I’m not sure. I tried to cover my tracks the best I could. I ran away when Ash was out of the country. Willow saw me leave, but I don’t think she knew I had the flash drive. Maybe she did. I can’t say how much she knows about what her husband and son are doing.”

“For her sake, I hope she knows damned little. If she’s an accomplice, she’s looking at spending the rest of her life in prison for threatening the safety and security of the United States of America. She’ll be a traitor, just like her husband and son,” Denton says, speaking for the first time since I stepped into the apartment.

“The question is, what are we going to do with it? We have no authorities to turn it over to.” Max scans the email again.

“You’re not going to give it to the FBI?” I ask.

Max shakes his head. “Man, think. They’ve been investigating this for years, and they’ve found no leads?Come on. The Blacks have the FBI in their pocket. The National Transportation and Safety Board found the black box from your parents’ plane weeks, maybe days, after the crash. The FBI took possession of it, and they buried it.”

I stagger to the couch, and the cat jumps into my lap. The purring comforts me. He noses my hand, and I pet him, scratching behind his soft ears.

Stella sits next to me. “There’s a money trail to the pilot. He was paid to crash that plane. He was in debt, and his little girl had cancer. He was an easy mark.”

The cat inches up my chest and rests its head on my shoulder. I must look a sight in my suit and a cat wrapped around my neck.

Max scoffs, but smiles. “I love it when he does that.”

The distraction doesn’t amuse Denton and he’s bouncing on the balls of his feet, ready for action. “We have enough to nail the SOB.”

“I’m going to copy this file. We’ve all seen it—and we know how desperate the Blacks are to keep this hidden. We all have to watch our backs.” Max taps a few keys. “I have to admit, I’m a bit overwhelmed. I don’t know what to do now.”

I know how he feels. The Blacks’ empire is like a broken mirror, cracks originating from a central point. The arms deals, the plane crash, and a big-time escort/prostitution service. Maybe more, if someone could bust open their company like a melon and find the rot inside.

“We start small and work our way up,” I say. “We don’t know who we can trust, so we start gathering evidence on the ones we can’t.”

Denton lifts an eyebrow. “How do you propose we do that?”

It’s time to reveal what an asshole I am. Everyone is going to hate me by the time this is over. It won’t matter I didn’t know most of what Ash and his father have been doing. It’s enough I knew a little and didn’t do anything about it.

Zarah and Stella sacrificed. Now it’s my turn.

I feel vulnerable, and the cat hugging me makes it worse. It’s not very manly, and gently, I pull him from around my neck and settle him onto a fleece blanket folded on the back of the couch. He curls into a ball and goes back to sleep.

I stand and brush the hair off my suit jacket.

“The mayor is a good place to start. For years, Vance Huxley’s been using Ash’s high-class prostitution service. He sells girls using his strip club as a front.”

Max whistles. “How do you know that?”

“Zane’s a client,” Stella cuts in, a grimace marring her pretty face. “In fact, he’s fallen in love with one of the girls, and he’s engaged.”

“There’s only one flaw to that plan,” Max says. He doesn’t seem concerned in the slightest about what Stella just said. Maybe he doesn’t care, maybe he has bigger fish to fry, but I’mgrateful the glint of disgust in Denton’s and Stella’s eyes isn’t mirrored in Max’s too.

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