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“What about you?” Fordham asked me. “When did you last see him?”
“The day after the Roadhouse. He met me at the boulders, gave me back my album with all the photos of my cousin, and then I never talked to him again. Why – what happened?”
Fordham took a long time to answer. “We’re going to videotape those confessions, just like you said. I’ll testify on camera at the same time that if you aid in our investigation, I’ll let you both walk.”
“And Kade,” Jack added.
“We’ll see about Kade.”
“Without Kade, there’s no deal.”
“You’re in no position to be bargaining,” Fordham snapped.
Jack answered calmly, “Sounds to me like Eddie’s gone missing. And if Lou was behind it, then he’s probably dead.”
I winced. That was what I’d been worried about from the very beginning, since the Lead Guy at the boulders had refused to answer our questions.
I fucking hated Eddie for taking advantage of me and blackmailing me into snitching for him – but at the end of the day, he was a lawman doing his job. Lou was a sociopathic criminal. I wanted Lou dead, but not Eddie.
Jack stared at Fordham. “If I find out what happened to Eddie, and save him if he’s still alive… or, if he’s not, I give you proof of Lou’s involvement… then Kade walks.”
Fordham smiled grimly. “You give me my agent back, or you hand me that son of a bitch’s head on a plate, you got yourself a deal.”
52
We gave our videotaped confessions: me, that I’d outed an undercover agent, and Jack, that he’d been part of a massive marijuana trafficking operation. We also got our on-camera assurances from Fordham. But apparently they didn’t trust us with the location of their super-secret Fortress of Solitude, because they put the bags over our heads again, shoved us back in the van, and drove us 30 minutes away.
When they pulled off the hoods, we were on a deserted road in the middle of nowhere. The two guys who had held assault rifles on us were there, too. One was getting out of my car, and the other stepping off of Jack’s bike.
“Sweet ride, dude,” the guy leered.
Jack just gritted his teeth and kept silent. He also didn’t look at me.
The Lead Guy, who’d driven us there in the van, said, “If you need to get in contact, do it the same way.”
Then he and the others piled into the van and took off, leaving us standing there in dead silence.
53
Jack tried to talk first. “Fiona – ”
“You fucking son of a bitch,” I interrupted with barely controlled rage. “You lying, motherfucking piece of shit!”
“None of us had anything to do with her death!” he snapped.
The fact that he was barking at me in anger instead of begging for forgiveness enraged me even more.
“You fucking paid off the cops! All that bullshit about how you’d taken the club legit, how things had changed – you fucking crucified me for what I did to you, but you never once mentioned how you’d fucked ME over!”
“I didn’t even find out you were her cousin until that night in the Roadhouse! You lied to me first – ”
“I lied to YOU?!”
“When was I supposed to tell you, huh?! Our first date? Out there in the parking lot at the Roadhouse? When, Fiona?”
“Oh, I don’t know, how about when I told you about the DEA? Maybe you could’ve mentioned it then instead of saying shit like, ‘After all you’ve done to me, and you’re going to bust my balls over pot.’”
Now the guilt was finally hitting him. I could see it on his face as he looked away from me.
