“She’s good,” I said. “They’re both good.”
Kacey nodded, smiled, stood up, thanked me again, and walked out of the office with her purse on her shoulder and her head held high like a woman who’d accomplished what she came to do. I lied about Quest and Mehar because the less people that knew, the better.
I locked the office, grabbed my keys, and headed for the parking garage. Manassas Regional, five AM. Bryce would be there. The charter would be fueled and ready. And tomorrow I was going to fly low over every island in the southern Caribbean until I found my brother or ran out of ocean.
Sleep wasn’t coming tonight. I already knew that. But I set my alarm for three thirty anyway because a man who doesn’t try to sleep is a man who’s given up, and I wasn’t giving up on anything. Not on Quest. Not on Mehar. Not on that baby who hadn’t been born yet and deserved a chance to meet a world that was messy and violent and complicated but also had people in it who would fly across an ocean to bring them home.
I got in my car and sat there in the dark garage for a minute. The engine was off. The silence was heavy. I thought about Monica and what she would say if she could see me right now, running a company and raising two girls and hunting for a saboteur and chartering search planes before dawn. She’d probably say I was doing too much and not sleeping enough and that I needed to eat a real meal. And she’d be right about all of it.
I started the engine, drove home to an empty house, set my alarm, and lay in bed staring at the ceiling until the numbers on the clock stopped mattering and the only thing left was the morning.
16
Serenity
Xander spread three folders across the kitchen table and looked at me and Rita with the face of a man who was about to ask us to trust him with something dangerous.
“The strategy works,” he said. “But only if we can back it up. If your father testifies that Vivica killed David Jamison and that he helped dispose of the body, and if we can produce corroborating evidence of Vivica’s criminal history to establish her as someone capable of that act, the prosecution’s case against you falls apart. They built everything on text messages and an anonymous tip. We give them a more compelling suspect who can’t defend herself and a witness who was there that night, and the jury has reasonable doubt before I even finish opening arguments.”
“And the anonymous tip?” Rita asked from the chair by the window, her cane resting against the armrest.
“That’s the key. If we can demonstrate that the tip originated from Vivica’s network, and I believe we can based on the timing and the specificity of the information, then we aren’t just creating reasonable doubt. We’re exposing a conspiracy. A mother who covered up a crime to protect her daughter and thenweaponized it against her when the relationship soured. That’s a story a jury understands. That’s a story that makes Serenity the victim twice over.”
I listened to him talk and couldn’t help the warm flood of feelings flowing through me. I needed to shake out of it, though. I was practically disgusting and he would never have me. Besides, I needed to stay focus on my defense. This was about me getting out of a serious jam. I could spend my life in prison, and here I was lusting after this man. I needed to stay focus.
“What kind of proof are we talking about?” I asked.
“Vivica’s dealings. Financial records, communications, anything that paints her as a woman who operated outside the law and was capable of violence or ordering violence. The more documented her criminal behavior, the easier it is to convince a jury she killed a man who raped her daughter. Honestly, that narrative almost sells itself. A powerful woman discovers her child was assaulted by a teacher and takes matters into her own hands? Half the jury will want to acquit her posthumously.”
Rita made a sound that might have been a laugh if it had any warmth in it. “Vivica didn’t do a single selfless thing in her entire life. And now we’re going to make her a hero. Lord have mercy.”
“We’re going to make her useful,” Xander corrected. “There’s a difference.”
The buzzer rang at 4:17. I knew because I’d been watching the clock since three o’clock, calculating whether Dante would actually show up or whether he’d find a reason not to, the way he’d found reasons not to show up for most of the important moments of my life. Piano recitals, graduations, and the times when Vivica was being overbearing and running my life. Dante Banks had perfected the art of being technically alive while functionally absent.
I buzzed him up and opened the door and waited. When he stepped off the elevator and walked down the hallway towardme, I noticed he looked older. Thinner in the face. His suit was pressed but his eyes were tired. I could see the weight of the phone call I’d made three days ago still sitting on his shoulders. I’d told him everything. The arrest, the charges, the ankle monitor wrapped around my swollen ankle. I’d told him I needed him and he’d said he’d come. That was the most fatherly thing he’d done in years.
He hugged me in the doorway and held on longer than I expected. His arms wrapped around my belly and I felt him adjust when he realized how big I’d gotten, and something in his grip tightened and he pressed his chin against the top of my head and said, “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”
“About time.”
That was Rita. With an expression on her face that could have curdled fresh milk. She didn’t move toward him. Didn’t extend a hand or a greeting. Just stood there like a judge who’d already passed sentence and was waiting for the defendant to figure it out.
Dante released me and looked at her. “Rita. Don’t start with me. I just walked in the door.”
“And that’s the problem, isn’t it? You just walked in. Your daughter has been sitting in this apartment for a couple of weeks with an ankle monitor on her leg and a murder charge on her head and you just walked in. Where were you last month? Where were you last year? Where were you when she needed a father instead of a check?”
“I’m here now.”
“Here now.” Rita repeated it like the words tasted sour. “Here now isn’t good enough, Dante. Here now doesn’t fix twelve years of nothing. You need to fix this.”
He turned back to me and I could see him trying to find something to hold onto, some version of this conversation wherehe wasn’t immediately on trial. “Serenity, tell me what to do. Whatever you need.”
Rita stepped forward before I could answer. “Why does she have to tell you? Why does your daughter, who is about drop a baby and facing life in prison, have to instruct you on how to be her father? You created this mess, Dante. You and your trifling, petty, narcissistic wife who shipped her own child off to boarding school because she was too selfish to raise her. Serenity was fourteen years old at Ashford. Fourteen. And you let Vivica send her there because it was easier than fighting for your daughter. And when that monster put his hands on her, where were you? When she called you crying from that cabin, what did you do? You drove up there and buried a body and drove home and went back to your little life and left your child to carry that secret alone for twelve years. You’re nothing but a deadbeat with a paycheck. You may have money, Dante, but you are a terrible father.”
Dante’s jaw flexed. He looked at Rita with something building behind his eyes and I saw the moment he decided to swing back.
“You should be one to talk, Rita. Look at how your kids turned out.”
