Page 154 of Down Knot Out
Blake folds his arms across his chest. “We don’t need to. The sheriff has the chain of evidence already.”
Abbott’s face crumples. “You have no idea who you’re fucking with.”
“Redwater Holdings is a dummy company,” I inform him. “But the account manager who signed the checks? You used your real name the first threetimes.”
He closes his eyes. “Fuck.”
Emily hits record. “Tell us, Marcus. Who paid you?”
He licks his lips, then slumps, all the fight draining out. “Redwater. I’ve never met anyone. It’s all email and wire. They gave me burner phones for some of it. Instructions to slow you down, mess up shipments, make tools walk, nothing major. Said if I played ball, there’d be more work. If not…”
I tilt my head, waiting.
The fight drains out of him. “They said if I didn’t do it, they’d tell the union I had a criminal record. No one would hire me again.”
Blake steps forward, and for a second, I think he’s going to hit the man. Instead, he lays a hand on Abbott’s shoulder, hard enough to remind him resistance is a bad idea, but not so hard as to hurt. “We can help you if you help us.”
“Yeah, okay, I’ll tell you everything I know,” Abbott says, his chest rising with shallow breaths.
Emily ends the recording and thumbs it over to me. “You want to call the sheriff, or should I?”
My hands shake with adrenaline, and I take a steadying breath. “I’ll do it.”
Abbott sags, all the fight gone.
Blake keeps his hold on Abbott’s shoulder, his own face unreadable.
I dial the sheriff and give the story in clipped sentences, then hang up and slip the phone back into my pocket.
Blake still hasn’t let go of Abbott, but he gentles his hold. Maybe he realizes that if it hadn’t been Abbott, it would have been someone else. “Why didn’t you come to us? We could’ve protected you.”
Abbott gives a bitter laugh. “Didn’t think anyone would believe me.”
Blake lets out a long breath, releases his grip, and steps back. “We’re not your enemy.”
Without his support, Abbott sits down hard on the nearest pallet, staring at his hands.
Emily comes over and stands next to me, close enough for our sleeves to touch. “That’s it, then?”
I think about it, the tension in my shoulders easing by increments. “For now.”
We wait with Abbott for the deputies to arrive by boat. It only takes twenty minutes, since Kyle had been waiting at the docks to bring them over.
As the water taxi glides in, Dominic steps out of the shed with the footage and the envelope we prepared, copies of everything we found. He meets the deputies at the pier, all business.
I turn to Blake. “You ready to see this through?”
He wipes sweat from his brow. “Yeah. I am.”
The deputies gather up Abbott, promising to follow up within the week. We stand by the cabin, watching them go, a strange quiet settling over the site.
Blake sags, straightens, then sags again, riding a wave of relief and struggling through grief over the father who put him in this position.
“I was so worried we wouldn’t figure out who was doing thisto usthat I didn’t think aboutwhowas doing it.” He moves toward me, and I pull him in for a hug, knowing he needs the contact and my pheromones to calm him. “I still can’t believe my father tried to ruin us.”
“But he didn’t succeed.” I cup the back of his neck, a purr rising from my chest. “We’ll still have to face him, but now we can do it on our terms.”
Blake breathes out, and he sags against me. “Thank you so much for being my pack.”
