Page 23 of Tortured Hearts
“We had an argument as I was taking her home,” he says, slumping back against the table. “She stormed inside, and I left. But I didn’t like the way we left things, so halfway to the station, I turned around. When she didn’t answer the door, I walked around back and saw another broken window. I knew I shouldn’t have left her there.”
A lethal rage simmers under my skin. The calm, calculated type of wrath that brings a grenade to a party with one finger curled around the pin. “What did you find?”
He looks up, his stare vacant. “Signs of a struggle, but no Becca. I have men out tracking leads, but I’m looking at my biggest one.”
“Reese,” I say coolly. “I wasn’t involved in this.”
“Then who took her? You’re the only one with a direct line to that monster you call a father.”
“Yeah? Two decades of dirty deposits to a Cayman Islands bank account say differently.”
I’ve never seen a man’s face pale so fast. Truthfully, I’d planned on holding onto that card a little longer, but Becca doesn’t have time for me to stand here using logic to convince her father of my innocence. Blackmail gets the job done a lot faster.
“W-what did you say?”
“You heard me.”
“I didn’t…” He drags a shaking hand across his mouth. “He didn’t…”
“I’m sure you both did. Laws protect the world, but money makes it turn; am I right, Chief?” I shake my head. “There were a lot of zeros in that account. No wonder youjumped through hoops to hide it.”
Too bad Owen sliced right through all of them. Once he found a loose thread in Reese’s finances, he kept pulling until the whole blood-soaked tapestry unraveled. The deeper he went, the more layers he found.
“My father is an unimaginative bastard, don’t you think?” I fold my arms across my chest and lean against the wall because the scales have tipped, and I enjoy watching him squirm. “Naming his shell corporation Rose and Dagger was a little too ‘catch me if you can,’ if you ask me. Not that anyone did, of course. I wasn’t familiar with that fun insignia until I arrived in Providence. Maybe that was a private joke between you two.”
His scowl turns venomous. “I never touched a dime of that blood money.”
I arch an eyebrow. “So you did my father’s bidding for free?”
“That son of a bitch murdered my wife and threatened my daughter. What was I supposed to do?”
“Not sell your soul, for starters.”
“I didn’t…” Exhaling, he pinches the bridge of his nose. “This is ridiculous. How did you even find?—?”
“I’m not doing the whole Scooby-Doo ending thing with you, Reese. The bottom line is I have a friend with very little social life and even less respect for personal boundaries, and your partner-in-crime was stupid enough to name one of his extortion enterprises after my mother. Now, here we are. You have me in cuffs, and I have you by the balls, so either lock me up or let me go because if my father has Becca, her time is ticking.”
A heavy silence stretches between us. I’m about to make a very rash decision when he closes his eyes, his throat constricting on a hard swallow. “The charges have been dropped.”
“What?”
“Becca,” he says, opening his eyes. “She gave you an alibi for the time of Ledger’s murder, then convinced my officers to call the Port of Providence and get time-stamped video footage of you leaving the docks. They compared it to the time you arrived on scene, proving there’s no way you could’ve started her office fire. I had no choice but to drop the charges.”
“How long ago?”
He shrugs wearily, and I swear to fuck, if my hands weren’t cuffed, I’d clock him. “An hour ago? Maybe an hour and a half.”
“Goddamn it, Reese. An hour could mean the difference between…” I round my lips over my teeth and take a calming breath. “Let me go,now.”
He shakes his head. “There’s protocol I have to follow…discharge paperwork and?—”
“Fuck your protocol!” I roar, my nerves scraped to their last fiber. “Becca doesn’t have time. You have a choice to make, Reese—your daughter or your reputation. You can only save one, so which is it going to be?”
He winces, a sad, haunted look in his eyes I almost feel sorry for.Almost.I’m about to repeat myself when he straightens his shoulders and pins me with a hard, clear stare. “If anything happens to her, there’ll be nothing circumstantial about any of this. I’ll end you.”
“If anything happens to her, you won’t have to.”
I’ll die with her.
