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“Ahh, how the mighty have fallen,” teased Royce, which prompted Miley to draw a knife no one had known she had and land it on the table right in front of him. “I thought he told you no sharp, pointy objects.”
“Only where he’s concerned. The rest of you bastards are on your own.”
Alicia turned to Brock. “Are all the ops meetings like this?”
“No,” he scoffed. “This one is rather tame. I suspect they’re all putting on their best manners for your sake. Now if the lot of you are done clowning around, maybe we can learn something from Alicia.”
Smiling, she said, “I don’t know why I’m smiling…” She rolled her eyes. “You guys did that deliberately. Okay, so the day Rennault put me in the hospital for even talking to a lawyer, I decided that nobody was going to save me, except me. I started saving and hiding money.” She laughed. “Mostly I hid it in mason jars in the backyard, in my garden, and any place I could think of. Once I had enough saved, I arranged to get a corpse from the morgue that was my height and build, and I sent her off the bridge and into the ravine.”
“Alicia’s thought was he’d opt for collecting the insurance money,” said Seth. “Which he did.”
“I know what I did was illegal…”
“Committing pseudocide isn’t technically illegal. Some of the ancillary steps involved are low level, misdemeanor kind of things—all of which we can deal with. We need to know everything you did, so we can deal with it. Anybody see anything to be concerned about?”
“How did you get the body, and can it be traced back to your friend? I mean I understand how you got it…” King started.
“He just told me it was there. I made sure he wasn’t on duty. I checked into the morgue and got it released to a small funeral home outside town. Their security was minimal at best.”
“But why did they let you have it?”
“I told them I was her sister. Told a story about how she’d been estranged, and I’d finally found her, only it was too late.” King nodded. “I’d been researching and training how best to get away. When I got the call from my friend, after Rennault left, I went to pick up groceries and left a note on the fridge in case he came back—he had a habit of doing that. Instead of the grocery store, I went to the funeral home, arranged for an immediate pick up and then waited until the driver went inside the funeral home and snatched the body.”
“In broad daylight?” asked Royce.
She nodded. “I was desperate. I knew they parked out back, didn’t lock their vehicles and were pretty lackadaisical about their security. I muscled her into the back of my SUV and headed for a tall bridge with a deep ravine.”
She shuddered at the memory, but Brock’s steadying hand quieted the tremor.
“Then like I said, I drove it to a spot I’d picked out both for its height and its isolation, took a few things with me, rigged the accelerator with a stick I knew would be incinerated and sent the corpse and the SUV through the railing. I watched as it sailed down, hit the ground, and exploded into flames. I figured the vehicle’s VIN would match the DMV records and unless Rennault wanted DNA or dental records matched, I was effectively dead. Knowing Rennault, I figured he’d want the insurance money as soon as possible.”
“How’d you get off the bridge?” asked Miley.
“I’d trained for that as well. I hiked through the wilderness until I was two towns away and jimmied the lock on the gas station restroom. I cut and dyed my hair, cleaned up my mess and then hiked to a truck stop where I hitched a ride with a woman trucker.” She smiled, remembering the woman’s kindness. “She didn’t ask me any questions, but she knew. She gave me all the cash she had, maxed out her ATM withdrawals, bought my dinner and an open fare bus pass in her name. We even kind of looked alike so she gave me her driver's license. From there I just started making my way as far away from him as I could. I figured bigger cities would be easier to hide in. I finally ended up here in Chicago with you guys.”
“You should tell Samantha your story. She’d have a field day turning it into a best seller,” said King. “You showed amazing resilience and courage. Not many people—male or female—could have done that.”
“So how do you think he found you?” asked Brock.
“I don’t know. I’ve been so careful.”
“I think I do. You are quite a hit at the Majestic. They’ve done some local and online publicity that showed a photo of you…”
“I told them they couldn’t do that,” she said angrily.
“Well, they did. My guess is somebody spotted that photo and either told Rennault or the insurance company—a lot of them will pay a percentage of the payout if someone tips them off to a fraud. If the insurance company can prove that it was, they can take that money back. At the end of the day,” said Seth, “it doesn’t really matter. He’s found you. Brock says you’ve chosen to make your stand here with us.”
She nodded.
“But only if you’re all on board,” said Brock. “Otherwise, JJ has a plane waiting, and Nina has the necessary documents for us to start a new life somewhere Rennault will never find us.”
“And Fitz would fire the lot of us,” said King. “No, together we make our stand. We’re going to need to act carefully as Rennault is in law enforcement. Seth had Sully do some sleuthing. There is no evidence of any kind of abuse—no hospital records, no police reports, nothing. We’re going to start digging into Rennault’s past.”
“The guy’s too slick,” said Seth. “He’s been too careful about covering his tracks. I find it hard to believe that this is his first rodeo. I want to make sure Ewan Rennault is really Ewan Rennault. Sully and I are both looking for past complaints or convictions, how he got here both in terms of transportation and time off. Since he’s got the insurance money, you showing back up alive means he’d have to give that back. I hate to say this…”
“But he doesn’t want me back; he wants me dead.”
Brock took her hand. “His end goal doesn’t really matter. The mission remains the same, protect you and make this motherfucker pay.”
