Page 12 of Deadly Evidence
“Their lawyer filed a no-contact order so I couldn’t talk to Ethan or anyone else in the family. I never considered an abortion. But at least the money helped bury my father.”
“And now?”
“Nothing. The Dearbornes are cold, calculating people. They wanted Lacey dead rather than suffer the embarrassment of an illegitimate child in their midst. When she’s an adult, I’ll tell her who they are. I’ll let an attorney inform them about her. But I expect they’ll think we’re just after their money.”
“I’m sorry, Anna.”
“I don’t need sympathy,” she retorted. “I need my life to go on as it did before the drug smugglers showed up. I need my grandfather to get better, and I need to protect my daughter from the truth about her dad while she’s still so young. Everything else is history.”
For all of her bravado, she looked so fragile at that moment that he had to fight the impulse to offer her the shelter of his embrace, but he knew she would only move away.
In the light of dawn, she’d probably be embarrassed and horrified at telling him so much.
“Look, I know this situation is hard. But just try to work with me, and by the time I leave in a few months, you’ll all be safer. Deal?”
“First, tell me what’s going to happen.” Wrapping her arms around herself, she ignored his offer of a handshake. “I’m good with a rifle. But I have a couple of old men here who couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a shotgun if they were twenty feet away—and a hothead of a kid who could try to play hero and get himself killed if there was trouble. I need to know.”
From the set of her jaw, he knew she meant every word. And despite his resolution to keep everything on a professional level, his admiration for her grew.
He considered his words carefully.
“I can tell you just this much—we’re building a multi-agency investigation of a major new player in drug trafficking. We plan to track shipments back to their initial arrival in Mexico and follow them to their destinations in the U.S.”
“It’s going to take a while to set this up,” he added. “But it’s a chance to take down some big players and a network with tentacles reaching throughout the United States.”
“How can that be? There aren’t endless parades of drug runners through here—these people are onfoot.How much can one of them carry—maybe eighty pounds at the most?”
He nodded. “The organization uses multiple routes and types of transport. Vastly larger shipments than here. But this route is newer and probably the most isolated. They aren’t expecting much attention here. They’ll be more careless.”
“I hope so, so you can take them down.” She leveled a long, steady look at him. “Please believe that I had nothing to do with Ethan’s...activities. Ever.”
He nodded.
“But most of all, promise you won’t say anything to Lacey about her father. She doesn’t know the truth—and I want her to believe only good things about him.”
“She’ll never hear a word from me about your past, and I’ll keep all of you safe. You have my word.”
He just hoped he could keep it.
Anna rested her forehead against the door of her grandfather’s bedroom and willed the tension out of her spine before tapping on the doorframe. “Hey, are you okay?”
After a moment, she heard bedsprings creak and the snap of a bedside lamp switch and instantly regretted her visit.
It was only ten o’clock now. He’d always been a night owl. But lately he’d taken to just sitting in his darkened room with his hands folded in his lap and his face a mask of silent grief.
She opened the door a few inches and peered inside to find him sitting up in bed, fumbling for the glasses he kept on his nightstand. “I’m sorry—did I wake you up?”
“No, no...come in. I always have time for my Lydia. Are the kids in bed yet?”
Her heart turned over at the gentle smile wreathing his leathery face as he relived his memories, and at the fine tremor of hands that were once strong, tanned, and capable, but now lay on the covers like fallen birds.
His Parkinson’s had been coming on slowly for over a decade. Fifty years of cigarettes had left him with a legacy of emphysema.
But the death of his beloved wife last July had taken the greatest toll of all.
“I’m Anna, Grandpa. Not Lydia,” she said softly as she pulled a chair to the side of his bed.
His lower lip trembled and his gaze slid away. “Guess I was just...dozing.”
