Page 91 of High Velocity

A slight exaggeration but one that has the desired effect as the remaining blood drains from the old man’s face.

“It’ll be interesting to find out what he has to say,” she adds as an extra push.

Her father bites.

“He’s a criminal. It’ll be nothing but lies.”

“Maybe,” Stephanie indulges him. “But he had plenty to say before he tried to use me as leverage with Ben. Of course, you and I both know that didn’t go very far, since I never was more to Ben than a plaything. You knew that, right, Daddy?”

She’s relentless as she pushes him. I can only imagine she’d be a force to reckon with in the interrogation room.

“Anyway,” she continues, swirling around the dregs in the bottom of her cup before pinning her father with a look. “Ben ended up talking plenty himself before he was taken out. Boasted, actually. So eager to show me how superior he was. But he wasn’t careful enough, was he? No. Guess he wasn’t quite the FBI agent you both imagined him to be. His first mistake was underestimating me. His last mistake was leaving two witnesses behind. Did you honestly think you were safe, Dad?”

She expertly rattles the old man, who is now almost purple in the face, clutching the armrests of his wheelchair with gnarled, bloodless fingers.

“He was like a son to me. Looked out for me after David died and left me with hospital bills that would’ve put me on the street had he not intervened. That’s more than I can say for you,” he snarls. “You were worthless then, and you’re worthless now.”

I push away from the doorpost at his spineless verbal assault, but a sharp headshake from Stephanie stops me in my tracks.

“Good to know I’m worthless to you, Daddy. It makes this next part so much easier.”

She carefully sets her cup in the sink and walks over to the kitchen table, planting her left hand on the surface as she leans down in his face.

“You have twenty-four hours to turn yourself in. Consider it my final gift to you. If you haven’t turned yourself in by noon tomorrow, I will do it for you.”

With that she turns on her heel and walks toward me, her face an impassive mask. Yet I see the tiny muscle ticking at the corner of her mouth, she’s barely holding it together.

The old man cackles at her back as he decides to try and bully her one last time.

“You? Your word against mine? You were a failure from the start. Do you have any idea of the connections I still have in the Bureau?”

My presence is ignored. Not that I care much about that, I’m too busy focusing on Stephanie’s face to gauge the impact of his words as she approaches.

She stops right in front of me and shoves her left hand into the opening of her sling, pulling out the phone I never saw her tuck in there. Clever woman, she was recording this entire conversation.

With a faint smile for me she turns around one last time, holding up her phone for her father to see.

“Word of warning, Daddy,” she cautions him in a calm, but deadly voice. “Do not make the mistake of underestimating me again.”

Twenty-Nine

Stephanie

I’m drained, the last couple of weeks have been hell.

Trying to clean up forty-plus years of living from a house you turned your back on is a painful experience. Not to mention frustrating, when you have to do it with one arm because the other one is useless. Of course, with everything going on, I haven’t really kept up with my PT or my exercises.

I got the call from the Traverse City police department the morning after Jackson and I returned home. We’d gone straight to the airport when we left my father’s house and crashed at my apartment in Kalispell because the plane got in late. We never even made it back to the ranch.

Jackson said he wasn’t really surprised my father chose to blow his brains out. According to reports, he probably did so shortly after we left. His cleaning lady found him.

I was mostly angry. It felt like the ultimate betrayal, final confirmation I meant nothing to him. Not that I needed it, it was pretty clear to me already.

My first stop after receiving that call was the office, where I had to sit down with my boss and my partner to fill them in on my father’s involvement with Ben Vallard and Mitchel Laine. Jackson wasn’t happy to be told he had to wait outside, but there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it. Apparently, he spent his time calling the ranch and making arrangements, because by the time I walked out of the office several hours later, he already had taken the rest of the week off, had flights to Michigan arranged, a hotel booked in Traverse City, and had sourced a funeral home for us to talk to.

Of course it wasn’t as simple as arranging a funeral, we had to wait for an autopsy first, and then it took the FBI three days to go over the house with a fine-tooth comb before we were allowed in to dig through his paperwork to see if he’d left any instructions.

I hadn’t realized there was a small part of me still craving for some kind of affirmation from my father, until I found an old shoebox in the back of the closet in my old bedroom, which my father had used for storage after I left home. The box was filled with old drawings, silly elementary school awards, snapshots, report cards, water safety certification, a second-place medal my team won in a soccer tournament. A collection of mementos, little milestones of a young twelve-year-old’s life.

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