Page 60 of His Virgin Vessel

Chapter Twenty-Three

Corinne

Two weeks passed.

They went slowly and miserably for me. I had expected Asa to be out of jail the same day he went in, confirmed as dad's informant, and ready to take on the mafia. Instead, Asa was still in jail. Dad said little, but wore a morose expression for much of the time, and the mafia were making their presence felt in town. I tried to talk to dad about it, but he invariably made some excuse, uttered a few vaguely comforting words and rushed off. I knew that, secretly, he was as worried as I was. First, he was worried about me about how I might react to the possibility of Asa being in prison long-term, and what that might do to the relationship between us that was still very much on the mend. Secondly, he was worried about his town. He didn't say it, but at the moment, I think he would have been prepared to admit that he had never realized how lucky he was to have a problem like War Cry. Compared to the mafia, War Cry was nothing. Lastly, and perhaps this was just optimism on my part, I thought he was also worried about Asa. Perhaps he wasn’t worried in the conventional way - he knew that Asa could take care of himself - but Asa had handed himself in under my dad's protection, and I knew that dad felt he had let Asa down. As a sheriff, Brian Dugas, of course, did not like Asa, and, as a father, he perhaps liked him still less. But he had given his word to do his best to make Asa an official CI, and the fact that he had failed and that his failure had put Asa in jail, weighed heavily on dad's conscience as a man of his word. To Brian Dugas, a man was only as good as his word. He had fought hard to keep that word, but, in the end, the decision had been taken out of dad's hands.

Not that he was giving up. Though he tried to keep me out of it altogether, I could tell that he and Porter Crucero were plotting something. I just hoped that it wasn't anything that was going to come back to kick them in the ass. Brian Dugas was in uncharted waters here, and that was the other thing that was really preying on him. It was not just that he had let Asa down. The law had let him down. Dad had served the law all his life. He respected and believed in it above all other things, perhaps even family, and it had let him down when he had needed it. More accurately, the law had proved to be as prey to the human frailty of corruption as anything else. It was a sad time to Brian Dugas.

It probably wasn't a good time to be Asa Covert, either, but I had no way of knowing. Because he was still technically under consideration as a confidential informant, his basic rights to a phone call or any other contact with the outside world could be dispensed with, in the name of keeping him safe. I would have given a lot to know how he was and what was going on with him, but I had a feeling that the answers to either question would not make me happy. This being the case, I decided to move on from wondering what Asa was doing and what was going to happen, which were things over which I had no control, and focus on what he might want me to do. Asa had always been clear that I should make the effort with my family, particularly my dad, and I had been determined to stay true to that. It had worked out pretty well. Things were still a bit tense, and there were still arguments between us, but, now, instead of storming off and slamming doors, we stayed and talked. We even found that nine times out of ten, we could sort things out that way, and that we had, in fact, been on the same side to begin with. Talking to my dad was a bit of a revelation, and I owed it to Asa.

Having said that, the other thing I was doing might sound completely contradictory. I was looking for somewhere else to live. Much as I was enjoying this new-found closeness with my dad, and as much as I was hoping to build on it, one of the things that had come out of our talks was that living under the same roof brought us into friction. We had lived in the same house all my life, and, while I was there, it was hard for Dad not to see me as a little girl. I was a grown up now, and it was time for me to move out on my own, but without severing ties as I had before. So, I started looking for somewhere in town.

"Just look carefully," Dad said. "You know there are places now that are Mafia-controlled."

"I'll be careful," I reassured him

"Take Risa with you. She's a smart girl."

I nodded. Then added. "Why don't you come too?"

Dad looked positively startled. "You want me to come?"

"Only if you want to."

"Oh, I would definitely want to. Thank you for asking."

It was these exchanges that made the difference. Brief though it was, such a conversation would never have taken place between dad and I, until Asa had entered my life.

# # #

The following day we headed out with a list of apartments to see. My price range did limit me, but dad had offered to help out with rent, and I had accepted, as long as I could pay him back once I had gainful employment. We had seen a few places and were heading towards a third before stopping for lunch when I spotted something in my rear-view mirror. There was nothing automatically suspicious about the black car, but I was sure that I had seen it behind us earlier as well. That was odd, because, when you are apartment hunting, you are inevitably taking a route around town that doesn't really lead anywhere. No one should accidentally take the same route. But, as I thought that, the car turned off. I dismissed my concerns as paranoia and decided not to mention it to Dad, who was bound to overreact to something like this. Still I kept my eye on the mirror for the rest of the day.

It was a good day. Not a hugely productive one, in terms of finding apartments, but a fun one spent with my Dad and my sister. It was a very happy car-full of people who headed back out of town in the direction of the Dugas home.

It was then that I saw the black car again, still following.

"Dad?"

Dad had been sharing a joke with Risa, but immediately sensed the anxiety in my voice, his face growing grave. "What's wrong?"

"I'm sure I saw that car following us earlier."

Dad took a quick look. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"They stopped following."

Dad shook his head. "You stopped seeing them, but I doubt they stopped following."

"What do I do?" Fear flowed through me, fast and cold. What if I had driven my father and sister into a dangerous trap?

"Don't panic," Dad said, his voice calm and soothing. "Just keep driving. Don't let them think that there's anything wrong."

"There might not be anything wrong," Risa added, always the voice of optimism.

"Exactly," Dad agreed, though I could hear little optimism in his tones. "We're coming up on the turn-off west. There's nothing much else ahead but our house, so if they don't turn off here, then..."

He left the sentence unfinished as we passed the turn-off. Moments later, the black car passed it, too, staying on our tail. There was no longer any doubt that they were following us. The Dugas house was out in the wilds, and there was nothing else in this direction but our home.

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