AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Fuck. Donovan, now there’s a name I don’t miss hearing about.”
“You knew Sean Donovan?”
Startled by the voice, I whip around to see Rick standing behind me, eyes hard and fixed on the screen that is currently displaying several photos of Donovan, and when the last picture pops up, I can’t help the gasp as I recognise the woman at his side.
“Holy shit! Is that Cam?” I say, swinging back round to look at Rick. He gives a firm nod, but his eyes are no longer fixed on the TV, but me instead.
“Answer me, Jess?”
“There isn’t a cop in the whole country that doesn’t know that name, Rick. Did I know him personally, no, but I’m not going to lie and say I wouldn’t have minded some one-on-one time with the vile bastard.”
“Who’s a vile bastard?” Seb says as he and Jamie enter the room.
Neither of us speak, locked in a stare off. My mind is working overtime as a reel of memories from my time as a cop flash behind my eyes.
“Oh my god. She’s Kasey Smith, Donovan’s fiancée and mother of his daug—” My voice trails off as I remember the news report about Donovan’s daughter and mother-in-law’s death and my conversation with Cam at the hospital. “Fuck!”
“Why the fuck are we talking about Donovan? And how do you know about Kasey?”
I look up at to see all eyes are on me, and I’m not usually easily intimidated, but with these three’s eyes, hard as stone, trained on me, I’m not embarrassed to admit I feel uncomfortable.
“You better sit down,” I say, and my eyes find Rick’s. Fuck, he looks hot standing there with his arms folded across his chest. His eyes have gone a stormy sea green, turbulent and deadly, like he could suck you under and you wouldn’t know a thing about it.
I watch every muscle in his body flex, including his jaw, as he pushes off the wall and strides over, sitting on the sofa beside me. The heat coming off him is enough to scorch you if you so much as dared to touch him at this moment.
Seb and Jamie take a seat too, and then they’re back to doing the whole uniformed and uncomfortable stare, which has me shift in my seat.
“Not long after I became a cop, we arrested a guy for soliciting. At the time, Donovan was still relatively unknown, but he was on his way up the ladder. The girl he had in the car with him had just turned sixteen, barely legal. He claimed that he was helping her out, giving her a lift, but we all knew it was bullshit. Besides, my colleague had previously arrested her for shoplifting, so we knew she was most likely a runaway living on the street.
“It was several more years before I would meet Donovan again, although we all knew who he was by then. This time it wasn’t in circumstances I expected. I’d had a row with Alistair and gone to my father’s house to have it out with him, but when I arrived, my father wasn’t alone. At first, I didn’t think he was home, but as I neared his office, I heard him shouting. He was livid. Cursing and ranting about how stupid whoever he was talking to was, and how if he wasn’t careful then he’d ruin everything. I thought he was on the phone until I heard the other person speak.
“I didn’t understand their conversation as I’d obviously missed most of it. Donovan told my father he’d take care of it, not to worry and that it wouldn’t be a problem soon. Three weeks later, Donovan’s daughter was killed in a car accident along with Kasey Smith’s mother.”
I watch as all three of them exchange looks, and Rick rubs a hand down his face, blowing out a breath. Jamie doesn’t say a word, instead she gets up, pacing and biting her thumb nail.
“Someone going to explain to me what’s going on?” I ask, looking between the three of them and waiting expectantly. “Look, when I spoke with Cam at the hospital, she mentioned she had a daughter before she had Jamison, and I understand it might not be your story to tell, but you can at least give me the basics so we can try and connect the dots here.”
Seb finally breaks the silence. “We had an inside man working for Donovan way before Faye died. It was with his help that Cam escaped and how we all met her. Obviously, there’s a shit load more to the story, but that’s for Cam to tell. It’s clear to me that your nefarious bastard of a father was in bed with the fucking devil. They’re the only dots that need connecting.”
“I don’t understand. If there was a connection, other than the one I just told you about, between my father and Donovan, how come your man never discovered it?”
Instead of replying, I see Rick throw a set of keys to Seb. “In my office is a cabinet with a folder containing details from Sean’s case. Bring it all.”
Seb hurries off to Rick’s office, while Jamie sits back down, still gnawing away at her thumb nail.
“What are you thinking, Rick?”
He turns to me. “The reason the connection was never made by our guy was because the judge involved in the case from the start was Archie Collins.”
Thirty-Five
Rick
It’s been three days since my revelation to Jess about her father, and the tension between us is palpable. I know she’s not angry with me, but this distance between us is unbearable and driving me insane. I even returned her phone to her after I ran a check for tracking software and devices, and it came back clean.
Seb and I trawled through everything in the case file and came up blank at every turn for another connection to her father. The man is damn fucking good at covering his tracks.
Seems to me that Collins putting his name to our case sheet was an attempt to get rid of Donovan as legitimately as possible. The only reasons I can think of as to why he would do that are either because he was a rival or a liability. It’s clear from Jess’ revelation yesterday that they were working together at some point, which leaves him being a liability.
