Текст книги "RISE - Part Three"

Автор книги: Deborah Bladon

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Chapter 8

"My father is still in New York." Landon settles on the sofa next to me. "He's going to plead guilty to some lesser charges during his arraignment. I won't be there."

I'd explained when I first arrived at his apartment that I was leaving for Boston in the morning. My father is there now and although he still hasn't contacted me directly, he's anxious to see me. That message was passed on through Everett via text message.

He was leaving today to speak to the district attorney ahead of my father's arraignment. He didn't see a reason for me to spend an extra night in Boston so he suggested I take a train tomorrow. I'd booked a ticket right after I read his last text message telling me that I needed to explain my relationship with Landon to my father as soon as I saw him.

"I have to tell my dad about us." I rest my hand on his thigh. I've missed being this close to him. Since he left my apartment yesterday morning before I went to meet Everett, our only correspondence has been two phone calls and dozens of text messages.

I'd gone to see Gabriel after my meeting with my dad's lawyer. My intention wasn't to talk business but when I'd sat across from him, the speech about my dad I had prepared in my mind on the subway ride to his office, was suddenly lost in a blur of details about the event in Los Angeles.

Whether my father goes to prison or he's exonerated, my life has to move forward. I can't drop the ball that is my burgeoning business. My father taught me better than that. He may have his faults but he's always steered me in the right direction when it comes to securing my future by my own hand.

If I tell Gabriel that I can't fully focus on the event, he will replace me without a second thought. I can't risk that at this stage of the game.

I sat with him for an hour discussing the silks and lace that we want featured on the models in the pop-up event. He had boxes of lingerie and as I picked through them, I caught him studying my profile.

He'd asked tersely if there was anything he could offer that would help me or my family. It was genuine. I could see that in the way his expression softened. I'd thanked him and told him that everything was being taken care of.

I hadn't mentioned his mother's name even though my initial intention was to tell him that she'd spoken to my father's lawyer and had been providing intimate details about my life.

As I chosen the lingerie pieces that I wanted the models to wear in Los Angeles, I realized that my father's actions might have stolen parts of my life away too. It's not Gianna's fault that my dad did things that put my privacy at risk. She was asked questions and answered them honestly. I have no right to fault her for that.

"Do you want me to go with you to talk to your dad?" Landon's voice breaks through my thoughts. "I can get a ticket for the train and ride there with you."

I shake my head slightly to refocus on the conversation. "What about your dad? Are you going to tell him about us?"

His gaze narrows. "My dad isn't part of my life anymore. I don't think I'll ever talk to him again. He doesn't have a right to know about you."

If he's trying to conceal the muted anger in his tone, he's failing miserably. His body language alone speaks of the fury that is there, right below the surface. "Aren't there things you want to say to him?"

He scoops the palm of his hand over my cheek. "There are things I wish I knew about why he left but he caused so much suffering, Tess. I mourned his death for years. There's no excuse for that."

Our fathers may have known each other at one time. The two of them may have conspired in their crimes but that's where the similarities end.

I don't hate my father. I can't imagine never speaking with him again. I'm confused. I'm hurt but mostly I'm afraid. Tomorrow, I have to get on a train and go see my dad so I can tell him that I'm falling in love with Frederick Beckett's son.

Chapter 9

I sit in the plain room as I gaze down at the text messages on my phone that Landon has sent me since he kissed me goodbye at Penn Station this morning.

He'd held me last night until I couldn't keep my eyelids open. He'd helped me to my bed, undressing me slowly, kissing my skin tenderly before he pulled back the covers so I could slide between them.

He wanted to stay and make love to me he said, but sleep was more important. I'd held tightly to him as he kissed me once last time, whispering against my lips that he would do everything in his power to protect me and my family.

I'll be on the next flight if you need me, Tess. I'm one phone call away.

A loud noise pulls my gaze from my phone and Landon's last message. I look across the room to where the heavy steel door is opening. I'd walked through that door less than ten minutes ago after a female guard searched my purse and patted me down.

She'd been silent the entire time. My mindless chatter about the weather and the fact that I've never been in a facility like this before didn't warrant a response. She was stoic, her movements almost robotic as she cleared me for entry.

I keep my eyes glued to the door. I've imagined this moment all morning as I rode the train to Boston. I don't want to cry. I want my father to see his independent and strong willed daughter. I need him to see the strength in my eyes that isn't within him right now. I need him to witness my faith in him.

I stand when the guard enters the room, knowing my father is right behind him.

His shoe comes into view first. It's one of the sneakers he's always worn when we've gone for walks through his neighborhood in Los Angeles. Next I see the bottom of his jeans. They're too short for him. He only buys them on sale and by the time he gets around to going to the mall, the sizes are so picked over he settles for what is closest. I've teased him about it endlessly.

I finally get a glimpse of his face as he steps out from behind the guard. His eyes scan the sparse space before they finally settle on me.

My hands leap to my mouth, my eyes well with tears and he begins to cry. My father stands near the doorway. There are no cuffs on his wrists; he's not surrounded by an army of guards with their guns drawn at the ready. He looks just as he did when he blew me a kiss as I turned back to look at him standing on the curb when he dropped me off at LAX.

***

"I've done things." He holds my hands in his on the steel table. "There are things I've done that I'm not proud of."

I expected these words after he'd embraced me. He was shaking as his arms circled my shoulders. I'd held tightly to him until the guard reminded him that we only had a few minutes together.

The uniformed man had motioned for me to sit across from my father before he walked away to sit in a chair next to the door.

"What things?" I ask as I brush away a lingering tear. "Please tell me what's going on."

His eyes glisten as he studies my face. "I've always wanted you to be proud of me. I wanted your brothers and sisters to look up to me too."

"We do," I say quickly. There's no hesitation in my tone. "I'm very proud of you, dad."

His eyes dart around the room. "I knew this day would come. I knew that it would."

"You knew that you'd be arrested?" I feel a lump form in the pit of my stomach. "How did you know?"

He releases my hands as he takes a heavy swallow. "Your past will always catch up with you, Tess. I've told you that."

He has. It came in the form of a firm warning after I'd skipped so many history classes in high school that I failed the course. I spent the summer after my junior year in a building with no air conditioning taking the class again. It wouldn't have been that bad had I not missed my chance to travel to Australia with a friend's family. The trip was all expenses paid and I'd blown it.

The experience may have helped me get on a straighter, more focused, path but it clearly pales in comparison to whatever my father has done in his past.

"You're right," I agree. "The past does have a way of coming back to haunt you."

"Mine did." He leans back in the chair, tipping his chin towards the guard. "Mine came back in the form of Frederick Beckett."

Chapter 10

"Did you work with him?" I cast my gaze to the floor as I ask the question. This is the point in the conversation when I should tell my father that I know Frederick's son. I should confess that he's the man I've been dating and falling for but I don't.

"No." His voice is husky. "We never worked together. Until I was arrested, I'd never heard of the man."

"He didn't work for Buckland Insurance?" I train my eyes at his face now.

He adjusts his glasses on his nose to keep them from falling forward. I watch the motion of his hand. It's a gesture he does countless times a day but I doubt he's even aware of it.  "The police told me Frederick handled investments for a firm based in Boston. I never dealt with them."

"On the news they said that he told the police things," I stop myself because I don't want to sound accusatory. I can't ignore what I heard on television or what I've read online since my father's arrest but I want to hear the truth from him, directly. "They said that Frederick gave them information that helped them build a case against you."

"I suppose that he did." His posture stiffens in the chair. It's a slight shift but it's enough that I notice the change. "My lawyer told me that Frederick had thousands of documents in a safe deposit box. Some of those documents relate to me."

"What documents?" I ask impatiently. "Insurance documents?"

"I signed things." He pinches his index finger and thumb together as he sweeps them over the top of the table, mimicking a signature. "When I first made district manager, I signed so many things. I didn't read them all."

I sigh heavily. Maybe the only thing my father is guilty of is poor judgment.  I know from my own personal experience, that attention to detail isn't his strong suit.

"Did you sign something back then that you shouldn't have? Is that what this is about?"

"It started that way." He glances back at the guard. "My secretary brought me stacks of things to sign and I did just that. Day after day I signed hundreds of policies without looking them over."

How can he be held accountable for a simple oversight? If something was amiss in one, or more, of those policies, that can't possibly warrant parading my father on television in front of photographers along with accusations that he's a mastermind behind some plot that involves a missing person.

I'm suddenly glad that my brother hired Everett to represent my father. He needs the best if he's going to fight this.

"Why are the police accusing you of so many horrible things if you only signed a few policies that you didn't even write up? Can't you make them see that it was all a misunderstanding?"

His breathing stalls for a brief second before his eyes lock on mine. I see quiet resignation there. I feel it before he even speaks. "I did those things, Tess. I'm not innocent. I'm far from it."

***

The guard had called a ten minute warning to us after my father told me that he was guilty. I was grateful when he interrupted us because it gave me a moment to silence my heart's beat. I thought my dad, and the guard, would hear its steady rhythm. It was pounding, just as my mind was. I didn't expect this.

I knew when I arrived that I'd have answers to many of my questions. I didn't know that my father proclaiming his guilt would answer almost all of them in one fell swoop.

"I loved your mother, Tess." He smiles gently. "I loved her so much but something changed."

His declaration may have been welcomed in the middle of their contentious divorce, but today I don't want to hear any of it. I want to know more about the man who broke the law and then lived his life as if nothing was amiss.

"They said you are involved in the case of a missing woman," I say the words recklessly, not tempering the edge of anger that's there, in my voice. "Who is she? What happened?"

The muted accusation pushes him back in his chair. His eyes drop to my mouth before they settle back on my eyes. "I had nothing to do with that. I have no idea where she is or what happened to her."

That's more than I know. I hadn't taken the time or put in the effort to learn more about the woman in question. I had done that with purpose. I didn't want to catch a glimpse of her or see her name in print. I wanted her to be faceless and nameless so I wouldn't torture myself with imagined scenarios about what had become of her.

"Who was she?" I repeat the question.

"I'm trying to get to that." He sighs. "She was one of the agents who worked in my division. She wrote up those policies I told you about. She started everything in motion."

"Why didn't you go to the police then?" I push my palms against the edge of the table. "You should have gone to the police, dad. They would have arrested her."

"I couldn't do that." His weathered hands reach towards me, desperately seeking mine. "I cared for her, Tess. I thought I loved her."

Chapter 11

Since my parents divorced I've never heard either of them talk about loving someone else. I didn't expect my mother to seek out a new partner. She'd found her soul mate in the sorrow that she's immersed in since her marriage ended.

I always expected my father to date. He's an attractive man. He works out, he takes care of his appearance and his charm is undeniable.

I once asked him why he never pursued any of the women he'd met in the gym or why he wasn't interested in the beautiful brunette he always talked about from his book club.

The timing isn't right, he'd tell me. She's not really my type, he'd say.

It seems as though his type was an insurance broker writing fake policies who lured him right into her trap. She managed to do all that while he was married to my mother.

"Her name was Lydia. Lydia Keeley. She needed help. I helped her."

His voice is vulnerable in a way I've never heard before. I knew that the passion in my parent's marriage had waned. I assumed it was an inevitable part of life when two people settle into a routine with one another.

Now, the time my father bailed on our family vacation to North Carolina makes more sense. I don't have to question why he was always the one holding the camera when we stood in front of the fireplace for our annual family holiday photo. My brothers would run to get the tripod, but my father would wave them back to their places next to my sister, my mother and me.

He'd tell them that the lighting wasn't right with the tripod and he could always find our best angles. My mother's smile in those images wasn't as bright as it had been years before when he'd proudly stood next to her after asking the neighbor to step in to take the photograph for us.

They were small things that illustrated a major shift in the dynamic of their marriage. None of us noticed what was happening right in front of our eyes.

"What happened?" I push my hair back over my shoulders. "Where is she?"

He shakes his head, his shoulder slumping forward with the movement. "She left the office on a Monday afternoon to go meet a client. She never got there. They found her car in a parking lot a week later."

"When was that?"

"It was six or seven months after I ended things between us." His voice is low and quiet now. "The police questioned me about it then. They thought I had a hand in it. They were wrong. I may have stopped loving her, but I'd never hurt her."

***

"Just five more minutes," I plead with the guard. "I came all the way from New York. I had to take time off work and I won't be able to come back until next week."

The truth in that statement is so muddled with the half-truths that even I can't keep it straight.

I do have to focus on the event for Gabriel and if I leave now, I may not have the chance to tell my father about Landon and me. In a perfect world I wouldn't have to do it within a five minute time frame and with a guard breathing heavily nearby but this is what I've been given, so I have to make it work.

The guard points at the clock on the wall before he walks back to his post by the door.

"I need to tell you something," I spit the words out quickly while I press my hands over my eyes. "I'm sorry I have to do this."

I feel his hands grab mine. They're gentle and comforting, just as they've always been. "You can tell me anything, Tess. I will always be your father."

He will. I know that. Nothing can change that fact. If I have to take the train to Boston each week so I can visit him in a prison here, I'll do that.

"I told you I met someone."

"Frederick's son." There's no inflection in his tone at all. I can't gauge whether he's angry or not. "You've been seeing the older boy. He's the one who tried to save his father when the boat capsized."

"Landon," I say his name. "I met him on a flight."

He glances back at the guard. He knows as well as I do that our time together is almost done. "He turned his father into the police, Tess. That boy did the right thing."

I swallow as I consider my reply. I don't need to ask him how he knows. His lawyer told him. He's obligated to share everything with my father. I fumble with my words, wanting to challenge him on his declaration that Landon did the right thing. How is it the right thing if my father is going to be taken back to a jail cell within the next ninety seconds?

I don't have time to say another thing as the guard taps my father's shoulder. "It's time, Otis. We need to go."

"Thank Landon for me." My dad leans forward to kiss the top of my right hand. "Tell him I'm grateful for what he did."

Chapter 12

"He'll be released by the end of the week." Everett runs a hand through his dark hair. "I'd have him out sooner but that's when he's scheduled for arraignment."

"How much will the bail be?" I ask even though I can't cover it if it's more than a few hundred dollars.

I'd spoken to my siblings about how we'd raise bail when we all gathered for dinner at my mother's house after I saw my father yesterday. My mother was the first to offer her house as collateral. The silence that enveloped the room after she said that had mirrored what each one of us was feeling. We were shocked. She'd sprung back to life to help our father and when I left to catch the train to come back to New York last night, she had hugged me tightly, telling me that she'd never loved me more.

"No bail." He grins, before he slides open a drawer of his desk.

"No bail?" I parrot back. "Clinton said if they let dad go we'd have to come up with the bail money."

"All of the charges against your father are going to be dropped, Tess," he says softly. "He's going to be a free man."

"How is that possible?" I clench the arms of the chair I'm sitting in. "I spoke to him. He told me about what happened."

"Every shred of evidence against your father was gathered under questionable conditions more than ten years ago." He reaches for a pad of paper. "The state believes that your father's involvement in the crimes committed continued for years but I've produced proof that he contacted his superiors within the company and then stepped down as district manager and took on a job as a sales person in another territory."

I watch his lips as he speaks, trying to decipher exactly what he's saying. "I don't know that I understand."

"There is a statute of limitations for the crimes your father was accused of committing." He jots something down on the notepad. "That time frame has passed. The state asked for an extension, which is laughable. No judge will grant them that. It's unconstitutional."

"What about the missing woman? He told me about her."

"That's interesting." He taps the tip of the pen in his hand against the notepad. "Your father had an airtight alibi for that day. He couldn't have been involved in her disappearance."

"An alibi?" Confusion can't even begin to cover what I'm feeling. If my father had an alibi that would have taken his name off the list of people potentially involved in Lydia's disappearance, he should have produced that immediately.

He slides his suit jacket off before he loosens his tie. "I asked your father if I could share this. He had no qualms either way."

That's my father. He's open and honest to a fault but apparently not when he needed to be. "Where was he the day that Lydia disappeared?"

He rests his elbows on his desk, cocks his head to the left and shifts slightly in his chair. "Your father was in a hotel room near the airport. He was with Gianna Foster."

***

"I'm happy for you, Tess," Landon says with his mouth pressed to my ear.

I want to pull back from the embrace so I can look into his face. I hear the honesty in his words but I know that a small part of him must have questions about my father's release.

"When will he get to go home?"

"After his arraignment," I offer as I push both my palms against his bare chest. "I haven't seen him since he got the news. I'm waiting to talk to him until he's back in California."

"Why?"

It's an expected question that I don't have an answer to.

After I'd left Everett's office and I'd come home, I'd thought endlessly about Gianna and my father. When I was offered the job to plan the Liore fashion show I jumped into it full force. I worked hard to prove myself to Gabriel and his brother, Caleb. I took chances, knowing that they might not like my style.

When Gabriel offered me the follow-up job in Los Angeles I was over the moon. I'd done it all because of my own hard work and perseverance. Now, I'm not so sure.

Even though Gianna has taken herself out of the role as advisor to the business, she's still more active than most people who actually work in management there. Her influence has touched almost every aspect of the event in L.A.

I no longer know if that's because of her insatiable need to control some small part of the company she once ran or if it's all about her relationship with my father.

He lives in Los Angeles. She travels there constantly. I'd be foolish not to believe the two are still connected.

"Landon." I look up at his face so I can focus on the man who has never wavered throughout all of this.

"Yes?" His full lips turn up into a sly smile. "What is it?"

"My father wanted me to thank you." I tap my hand on his chin. "He wanted me to thank you for turning your father in."

"I did the right thing." He reaches down to kiss me softly. "I did what needed to be done."