Текст книги "Thread of Hope"

Автор книги: Jeff Shelby

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

SIXTY-THREE

I was exhausted and wanted to go back to the hotel. The previous night with Lauren had drained me-both physically and emotionally. Seeing Chuck had emptied the reserves. I knew that returning to my old life would take a toll on me, but I had underestimated exactly how large the toll would be.

But Chuck had filled in a couple of tiny blanks for me and I didn’t want to lose the momentum of having small pieces fall into place while the thoughts were fresh in my head. So I stopped at a gas station, grabbed some coffee, made a phone call to Gina and headed back to Rancho Santa Fe and the Jordan estate.

Caffeine and adrenaline had my hands bouncing on the steering wheel as I was buzzed through the gate. I drove slowly up the winding road, formulating what I wanted to do. It was entirely dependent upon whether or not Gina had arranged what I'd asked for.

As I crested the top of the road and pulled into the circular drive at the front of the home, I could see she’d done exactly what I’d asked.

She was sitting on the steps of the Jordan home, along with Jon Jordan and my escorts from the first day, Hanley and Boyle. Jordan was pacing slowly behind her and Hanley and Boyle were perched on either side of her. They stood when I shut off the engine. I bounced my hands off the wheel one last time and got out.

Jordan came down the steps immediately. “What the hell is going on, Tyler?”

I came around the car and didn’t say anything.

Hanley and Boyle slid into protective spots next to Jordan. They were about five feet from me. Gina stayed on the steps, watching.

“I asked you a question,” Jordan said, his face flushing.

I stood there, silent.

Boyle took two steps toward me and pointed a finger at me. “Hey. Are you…”

I grabbed his wrist, pulled him to me and brought my knee hard into his crotch. His mouth opened, but no sound came out and he sank to the ground. I bent his wrist straight back, felt it snap and dropped it.

Hanley came up fast on my left, but I was ready. I stepped into him, blocked a punch and pivoted around him. I locked my arm tight across his neck, under his chin and wrapped my left arm tight around his head, as I spun us back to our original position.

Hanley beat on my arms, but there was no strength behind the punches. Gina stood behind Jordan, making no move to come forward. I stared at Jordan as Hanley’s punches stopped hitting my arms and his body went slack. I held him up for another moment, making sure he was out, then dropped him to the ground.

I hadn’t exerted much effort, but I was breathing hard, sweat soaking my back. My hands were shaking and I waited a moment until they stopped.

“What the hell are you doing?” Jordan asked, glancing over his shoulder at Gina.

“You sent them after Chuck,” I said. “They were the ones that put him in the hospital.”

I didn’t need to see his reaction to know I was right. I’d pegged them from the moment they showed up at the high school. I’d placed Matt and Derek on my suspect list as well, but sitting with Chuck at the hospital that day, I knew that two high school boys weren’t capable of inflicting the kind of damage Chuck had suffered. Jordan had sent his two goons to do a job and they'd gotten it done.

Boyle rolled over on the ground and tried to sit up. I planted my left foot and drove my right foot into his jaw. His head snapped back and thumped against the ground.

Gina moved down the steps behind Jordan and I held up my hand. “Don’t, Gina. Or I’ll put you on the ground next to them. I’m done fucking around.”

She stopped and stayed behind Jordan.

I moved my eyes back to him. “Our deal has changed.”

He glanced at his men on the ground, then back at me. “What?”

“Deal’s changed. You’re gonna drop the charges against Chuck. Right now.”

Anger fired through his eyes. “The hell I am.”

“You’re gonna do it. Gina’s gonna drive you down to Coronado, you’re going to go into the station and you’re going to drop the charges.”

The anger flared hotter. “We had a deal, Tyler! We…”

“Had,” I emphasized. “Had. You tried to kill my friend, though you neglected to tell me that part when I signed on for this. So we had a deal. You still want me to find your daughter, you’re going to go drop the charges. Now.” I looked past him at Gina. “Olivia inside?”

Gina nodded.

I focused on Jordan again. “I’m going inside to speak to your wife while Gina takes you to Coronado.”

Jordan’s anger was fully aflame now, his hands balled into fists so tight it appeared they’d been glued that way.

“And before you say something stupid, let me lay it out for you,” I said, stepping closer to Jordan. “You refuse, I’m going right from here to the cops to tell them it was these two assholes that laid him out. Chuck’s awake and he I.D.’d both of them. No one is dumb enough to think they did it without your knowing, so you’ll go down with them. And I won’t spend another second looking for Meredith.”

Jordan stood there, rigid, furious, unsure what to do. I let him think it out for himself. I knew that dropping the charges was no guarantee that he’d leave Chuck alone. In fact, I was certain he might make another run at him. But dropping the charges would buy me some time to demonstrate to him that Chuck hadn’t done a thing to Meredith other than attempt to help her.

“What have you learned about Meredith?” Jordan asked through clenched teeth.

“A lot,” I said, walking past him toward the house. “But I won’t share a single thing with you if you don’t get your ass in a car with Gina and go to Coronado.”

“You work for me. I hired you.”

“I’m working for Chuck,” I told him. “And Meredith. That’s it.” I stopped on the steps next to Gina. “I’m going inside to talk to your wife. If you’re out here when I leave, entire deal is off and I go to the cops. And you can find your daughter yourself.”

Jordan stared at me, no doubt wishing he could get his hands on me. That would’ve been a mistake on his part. I held his stare.

Gina descended the stares and whispered something in Jordan’s ear, her hand under his elbow.

I went inside the home, leaving Jordan to make his decision.

SIXTY-FOUR

Olivia Jordan was sitting on a leather sofa in an expansive living room littered with expensive furniture. She wore jeans similar to the ones she wore the first time I’d met her and a red blouse with a wide collar and silver buttons. Her legs were crossed, the boot heel of the top leg bouncing as she paged aimlessly through a magazine.

She glanced up when I came into the room and tossed the magazine on the sofa next to her, impatience and irritation mixing in an ugly way on her face. She held up a hand. “Here I am. Waiting for you as ordered.”

“You were a hooker,” I said, sitting down in a chair across from her.

The impatience and irritation disappeared quickly, replaced by embarrassment. “What?”

“You fucked men for money.”

She was rattled, throwing her eyes toward where I’d come from, probably wondering if her husband was coming in behind me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Seriously? That’s how we’re gonna play this? I’m gonna tell you the truth about your past and you’re gonna just sit there and try and look bewildered?”

She blinked her eyes rapidly, the corners of her mouth twitching.

“In Vegas,” I said. I picked up a marble coaster from the table next to me, rubbing my fingers along its smooth surface. “I don’t know if you were doing it elsewhere, but you were doing it in Vegas for sure. Don’t know if your husband was a client. Maybe that’s how you two met and…”

“Stop,” she said.

“…maybe he decided it was cheaper to marry you than pay for you on a nightly basis.”

“Stop,” she said again, more force behind it this time.

I dropped the coaster back to the table and she flinched. “And now your daughter has apparently picked up where you left off.”

Her entire expression froze. I searched her face for some sort of recognition, some tic, some cue, that told me she wasn’t hearing that for the very first time.

I found none.

“What did you say?” she whispered.

The question sat between us for a long moment.

“Meredith has been working as a prostitute,” I said finally.

She immediately shook her head. “Impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible.”

“Meredith isn’t like that.”

“Like you?”

“She’s not at all like me, Mr. Tyler,” she said, her voice edged with anger.

“Did she know about your past?”

The anger faded and was replaced with hesitancy.

“I can run down your history in Vegas if you want,” I said. “I got it from a cop. I know I’m not wrong.”

She whispered something that I couldn’t understand.

“What?”

“Jon doesn’t know.”

I stayed quiet.

She placed her hands on her knees and for a moment, I thought she was going to vomit. But she took several deep breaths, staring at the ground before she looked at me again.

“Jon doesn’t know,” she said. “I’ve never told him. I met him…” Her voice trailed off.

I sat there, my mouth closed, watching her.

“I met him after I’d already decided to leave…that life,” she said after a long pause. “I didn’t want to revisit it with him and I knew what he’d think.”

“So you were done hooking when you met?”

“He wasn’t a john, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said.

“No, what I asked was if you were done hooking when you met?””

She was trying to strike an indignant pose, but couldn’t quite put it all together. And I wasn’t entirely sure why I was pressing her as to how she and Jordan had met, but I felt like I was close to uncovering something I’d been looking for.

She remained silent and that gave me my answer. “So you weren’t out of the game then.”

“I was on my way out,” she said, averting my eyes.

“Much easier to go out on the arm of a really rich guy, I’ll bet.”

The anger percolated in her eyes again. “I love my husband. I always have.”

“I didn’t say you didn’t.”

“No, but I understand what you’re insinuating,” she said, her words hard and cold. She sat back in the sofa and folded her arms across her chest. “Of course it was easier to walk away with someone like Jon. But I’d already decided to leave. I don’t give a shit whether or not you believe that.”

“And he doesn’t know?” I asked.

“I’ve never said a word to him,” she said, her eyes slipping away from mine again.

“Did Meredith know?” I asked.

Her expression changed to something I couldn’t read. She looked down at her hands, as if the answer might be written on her fingers. Her fingers clamped tighter to her knees. “Yes. She found out.”

SIXTY-FIVE

“Some asshole at her school,” Olivia Jordan said, the words coming out of her mouth as if they were made of acid. “She came home and confronted me.”

We’d sat in silence for about five minutes after she told me that Meredith had discovered her secret. Anxiety squeezed her face and I kept waiting for her to cry. But the tears never came.

“A kid at Coronado told her,” I repeated.

She nodded. “I was outside, planting flowers. I heard her car pull up in the drive. She got out of her car, walked right up to me and said ‘You were a hooker.’ Just like you did.”

“Was she upset?”

She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Not really. I think she was happy to have something to hold over me.”

“Who told her?”

“She never said. But she had details that were about right, so someone did.”

I wondered now if it was someone other than a classmate. “What details?”

She snorted. “That I fucked men for money. Again, just about what you said to me.”

I couldn’t tell whether she wanted me to feel guilty or whether she was just stating fact. I didn’t care. “You told me you were working at The Zenith when you met Jordan.”

“I was.”

“In what capacity?”

She sighed, but it carried more irritation than weary. “In the capacity you’d think.”

“So that was bullshit about how you met.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think you’d appreciate the nuance of prostitution when you asked me the first time,” she said, then waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Yes, I used to work in the hotel. I met him in the bar when I was having a drink.”

“When you were getting out of the business,” I said.

Her cheeks flushed. “No matter what you think, Mr. Tyler, I was getting out. But it’s not like you can just walk away.”

“Why not?”

“Because there are others involved.”

“Pimps?”

“With the level of clientele I serviced, we called them managers,” she said.

“Sure. So, what? Your manager didn’t want you to leave?”

“Of course not,” she said, frowning. “I was a good earner.” She immediately closed her mouth and the color returned to her cheeks as she realized what she was saying. “My clients paid a good amount of money for my time. I was a strong asset.”

It was clear to me through the vocabulary that she was using that she had completely re-imagined, maybe even dressed up, what she had been. I didn’t know what her circumstances were back then and it was none of my business, but listening to her attempt to dignify her work, I was embarrassed for her.

“Did Meredith threaten to go to her father?” I asked.

Something flashed through Olivia Jordan’s eyes and was followed quickly by anger. “Yes, she did, as a matter of fact.”

“You obviously didn’t want her to.”

“How very astute of you.”

“You bribe her? Threaten her?”

I expected an immediate denial, but got a moment of silence instead.

“Yes. I threatened to tell her father about her relationship with Derek. The truth about it. That she was sexually active.”

“He knew she was having sex,” I said. “He told me that himself. You talked to him about getting Meredith birth control.”

She nodded. “Yes. But he didn't know that she was dumb enough to pick up an STD. Jon would've freaked out and she knew that. I told her I'd tell him.”

I didn't say anything.

“You have to understand something about Meredith,” she finally said, the lines deepening on her forehead. “About the relationship I have with her. It isn’t the greatest.”

“That’s not what you told me the first time we talked.”

She hiked her shoulders as if that was ancient history. “I answered your questions.”

“I asked if you had a good relationship with your daughter and you said you did,” I reminded her.

“What I said was that I liked to think so,” she said.

My stomach tightened. I had misread Olivia Jordan after my initial visit with her. She had carefully chosen each word she’d spoken to me, in case it came back on her. It had and she was prepared.

“Tell me exactly what that means,” I said through clenched teeth.

“It means, Mr. Tyler, that my daughter can be a serious pain in the ass and that we don’t always get along,” she explained. “She’s a teenager. She doesn’t like her parents very much.”

“Her father has the same problems with her then?”

“You’d have to ask him.”

I took a deep breath. “So basically everything you told me the first time we spoke was a load of crap? The happy family, the great daughter. All of that?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Do you even want to find your daughter?” I finally asked.

She made a face as if I’d defecated on the rug. “What kind of question is that?”

“You don’t seem to miss her,” I said, watching her. “You weren’t terribly worried the first time I came here and today you seem as if you don’t really care whether you see her again.” I paused. “Either you don’t care or you know where she is.”

I hoped she would respond to the last part, but she didn’t. If she knew where her daughter was, she was doing an excellent job of hiding it. What she couldn’t hide, though, was what a hateful human being she was.

“I don’t want to lose this, alright?” she said, leaning forward. “Any of this. I worked extremely hard to leave my old life behind and I’m not giving any of this up.”

She was veering off course, but I didn’t interrupt her.

“She wants to run away and hide, fine,” she said, waving a hand in the air. “Go. Be gone. But there’s no way I’ll let her destroy my marriage.”

“You think she ran away?”

“I don’t know what happened,” she said, her jaw tightening. “I don’t know where she is. But as long as she’s not here, she can’t tell Jon the truth.”

“Lovely,” I said, wanting to vomit. “That’s a beautiful sentiment.”

She sat back in the sofa and sneered at me. “It is what it is. Every time I see her, I remember how far I’ve come. I’m not going back.”

“Your husband doesn’t feel that way,” I said.

For all the things that I didn’t like about Jordan, I had no doubt that he would do anything to get his daughter back. He was acting like a normal parent. Unlike his wife.

The sneer spread to every inch of her face. “Of course he doesn’t. He lives and breathes for her, thinks she is the greatest thing he’s ever seen.”

“Jealous?”

The sneer morphed into an explosion of anger and she leapt off the sofa. “She’s not even his child!our

SIXTY-SIX

Olivia Jordan, perhaps stunned herself that she’d spoken the words aloud, stood frozen for a moment before slowly moving back to the sofa. Her face held the angry outline of a frown.

After a few moments, she glanced at me, as if she was making sure that I was still in the room. She looked around, maybe checking to see if anyone else had been listening. Finally, she clasped her hands together and brought her unfocused gaze back to me. “I’ve never said that out loud.”

I didn’t say anything.

“She’s…not his daughter,” she said, the words coming out of her mouth slowly and awkwardly, like she was relearning the language. “He’s not her father.”

“Okay,” I said.

Whereas her face had been a mask of anger one minute before, she now bore the expression of a scared and confused woman who was wading into unfamiliar territory.

“I was with Jon,” she began, her hands rubbing together like she was trying to clean them. “We’d been together for a year. I got a call from…” She paused, staring at her hands, unable to find the word she was looking for.

“Your old manager?”

She looked up from her hands, her eyes vacant. “Yes, that’s right. He called me. An old client of mine was in town, asking for me. He was persistent and offering a larger than normal fee.” Her hands started working again. “Thomas…my manager. Thomas called me, explained the situation, asked if I’d do him a favor.” Her hands stopped. “I told him to fuck off.”

She laughed at the memory, though I didn’t see much humor in it.

She laid her hands flat on her thighs. “So Thomas told me if I wouldn’t help him out, he’d tell Jon. About my past.” She shook her head, her lips pursed together in a sour remembrance. “So I did it.”

“And you didn’t tell Jon?” I asked.

“That was the whole point,” she said. “To not let Jon know. About any of it.”

“Didn’t you think he might come back at you again? Thomas?”

“It wasn’t going to happen again,” she said.

“You couldn’t have known that.”

“Trust me,” she said, leveling her eyes with mine. “It won’t happen again.”

I dropped it and moved on. “Okay. So, the client. He’s Meredith’s father?”

Her eyes slipped away again and she nodded slowly. “When I found out I was pregnant, I assumed it was Jon’s. But when I went to the doctor for confirmation, I realized the timing was off. Jon had gone to Europe on business for a few weeks. When I tracked back, I knew it wasn’t his.”

I tried to sort out the questions in my head and get them in an order that would make sense.

“I was protected, like I always had been,” Olivia said, answering one of the questions. “It was a fluke circumstance, the pregnancy.”

“Why didn’t you just abort?” I asked, then corrected myself. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean just, as if it were an easy thing. But given the situation…”

“I was going to,” she said. “That was the plan.” She shook her head. “But a phone call came to the house from the doctor’s office. Jon answered. This was before doctors started taking privacy seriously. He was ecstatic.” A thin, empty smile crept onto her face. “No going back at that point.”

“Did you tell the father?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. I’m sure he didn’t use his real name.”

“Wouldn’t…your manager have known?”

She leveled her eyes with mine. “Probably.”

I left it alone. “And I assume Meredith doesn’t know?”

“Of course not. It was bad enough that she learned what I used to be. There was no way I’d tell her the truth.”

“You didn’t worry about her finding out?”

She frowned. “How would she find out when I was the only one who knew? And why would I have wanted to know him? Introductions would’ve been a little awkward, don’t you think?”

It was clear by her tone that she didn't care what I thought.

“You think that would’ve been easy?” she said, gathering steam, her anger fueling her. “You think maybe we could’ve solved our little problem if we’d all just sat down and talked about it? Maybe turned into some sort of Brady Bunch? Give me a fucking break.”

Her eyes were wide with fury. I wasn’t exactly sure who or what she was mad at, but I was getting a good idea.

“Every time you see her,” I finally said.

She stared for a long time at me and I assumed I would get some angry denials, maybe some more profanity. But her face finally took on an accepting expression, the resignation that she couldn’t-or didn’t want to-hide it any longer.

“Yes,” she said, her voice just above a whisper. “Every time I see Meredith, I am reminded of what I used to be. Of who her father is, of how she came to be. And every time I see her with Jon, when he’s gloating over her, spending time with her, telling her how wonderful she is…” She cleared her throat and ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t want to be reminded of that part of my life, but every day, I see her and I see it.”

“She’s your daughter, too,” I said.

“No, she’s not,” she said, shaking her head, looking right through me. “She’s the daughter of someone who no longer exists.”