Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 02 - The Hustle (8 page)

She did, without hesitation, and took a seat next to me instead of across the table. She raised a hand as if to touch me.

I stood and moved around the table, took the chair across from her.

She drew her hand back and held it with her other hand like a wounded paw. “I thought you’d finally got over your anger.”

I spat air. “Never going to happen.”

“Never?”

I looked her over, just in case I thought I could change my mind. She had her dark hair cut short, hanging just below her ears. The style made her look more like she had back in high school. Enough so that I felt a familiar tingle low in my gut. Her skin had paled. But she looked clean and healthy. I don’t know what I expected. Apparently I had watched one too many prison movies.

Despite all of this, I came to a quick decision. “Never,” I said.

“Then why are you here?”

“To talk about our new mutual friend. Mr. Hersch Olin.”

Her brow creased. “I don’t know who that is.”

Figured. “He must have given you another name. It’s the guy who visited you recently.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Oh.”

“Yeah. ‘Oh.’ What’s he calling himself now?”

“He said his name was Oliver Heschel.”

Cute. Hersch Olin. Oliver Heschel. I had the feeling he’d made the aliases similar as a message for me. He knew I’d come see Autumn right off the bat. It also meant he had easy access to false identification—no chance he could have gotten in here without it.

“What’s going on?” Autumn asked.

“He’s a grifter, and you gave him fuel for his con.”

She shook her head. A lock of her hair caught against her eyelashes. She brushed it aside. “I didn’t give him anything. We just talked.”

“What about?”

“He said he was working for you.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. “And you believed him.”

“Why wouldn’t I? He knew all about our daughter. About what happened with Daddy. How could he know any of that if you didn’t tell him?”

I didn’t see any reason to drag Sheila into this conversation. Sheila might have screwed up, but Autumn didn’t need to know it. “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “He’s not working for me. He’s trying to juice me for a million bucks.”

Her already prison pale face turned ashen. “Oh, God.”

“What all did you tell him?”

“We just talked.”

“About what?” A new flame kindled to replace the bonfire that had burned through me when I last had Hersch—or whoever the hell he was—on the phone. “About what, Autumn?” I pressed when she hesitated.

“About you. About us.” She shrugged. “Not much of anything.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific than that.”

She slapped a hand down on the table between us and leaned forward. “What do you want from me?”

The guard raised an eyebrow, her hand resting on the hilt of the nightstick on her belt.

“For once,” I said, “I want the truth from you.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific than that.” Her eyes smiled, a cold satisfaction in them at using my own words against me.

“What did you tell him,” I enunciated slowly, “that he didn’t already know?”

The smile in her eyes disintegrated. She rubbed at the table, pressing so hard the tips of her fingers turned white. “What could I have told him that matters?”

“Obviously something, or you wouldn’t be wasting my time dodging simple questions.”

The shadow that passed across her face told me everything but exactly what I needed to know. She had fucked up and she knew it. I tried to think of how. What piece of information could she have let slip that would give him an edge in his so-called “race.”

I stopped pushing. Stared at her. Either she would speak next, or we would sit in silence until the guard decided we’d glared at each other enough for one day.

I have to give Autumn credit. She held out a good couple of minutes before the quiet wriggled its way under her skin. I noticed the stone-faced guard even grew a little antsy. But Autumn couldn’t hold back forever. She never could from me. Apparently, she still couldn’t. Strange, considering I was significantly responsible for putting her in prison.

She pressed harder on the table until the white moved up to her knuckles. Any more pressure and I thought she might snap her fingers clean off. “He asked a lot about Daddy.”

“Like?”

“Where he grew up. Who his friends were. What kind of investments he’d had. He even asked about his sex life.” She scrunched up her face in a purely juvenile way—
That’s like so gross
, it said.

None of his questions surprised me. I knew what he was doing. I’d done it myself already. Track the path of Lincoln Rice’s past. Try to find someone else who might have known about the black market adoption ring he was involved with. He couldn’t have worked alone. But he had done a good job keeping his secret life separated from his public one. I had reached scads of dead ends. Still, could I have missed something? Something Hersch—I decided to stick with that moniker—might catch in his own investigation. Suddenly I doubted every move I had made while digging into Rice’s life. Maybe I hadn’t dug far enough. Probably hadn’t, because in my search I had ignored one obvious stream of information—not out of carelessness, but out of anger and distrust. Hersch had one up on me because he had gone to Autumn to ask his questions. Something I couldn’t bear to do…until now.

I sensed some tension from the guard. She was prepping to end the visit. Time almost up. “What was the last thing he asked you?”

Autumn hitched one shoulder. “I don’t know.”

“Dig it up, Autumn.”

“Why is this so important? I didn’t tell him anything that he could blackmail you with for a million dollars.”

Should I tell her? Give her something to stew over while she stayed trapped in prison, unable to do a damn thing about it? Why should I care? After her betrayal, why worry if she suffered a little? She had earned it.

I said, “He’s going after our daughter.”

Her fingers still rubbing against the table made a sound like a windshield wiper on dry glass. She stopped, curled her fingers into a fist. “What do you mean?”

“He’s trying to find her, to get to her before I do, so he can get his million.”

Her eyes widened. “You have to stop him.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do.”

She shook her head. “Give him the money, Ridley.”

“I’m not giving that bastard one cent of my parents’ money.”

Her voice turned shrill. “It isn’t your parents’ money anymore. It’s
yours
. Give him the money.”

The guard stepped away from her post against the wall and started toward us.

“What is the last thing he asked? The last thing you told him?”

“Why?”

“Because once you gave him what he needed, he didn’t need to talk to you anymore.”

She crunched her eyes in an almost comic expression of concentration. “He—”

“Time’s up,” the guard said when she reached the table.

I looked up at her, tried to offer my most charming smile. “Just one more minute?”

“You want to keep talking, you can join her inside. I bet we can find a nice cozy cell for ya.”

My Mr. Charming smile gave a little. “Isn’t this a women’s prison?”

She pulled her head back, feigned surprise. “Ain’t you a woman?”

Ouch.
“You’re too sweet.”

“Time,” she said, “is up.”

Autumn reached across the table and put her hand on mine. “I’m sorry.”

I jerked my hand out from under hers as if she had pressed down on it with a hot iron. “You honestly can’t remember?”

“Hoe-kay,” the guard said and grabbed Autumn’s arm, tugged her to her feet.

“Please don’t hate me.”

Which pretty much guaranteed I would when she spoke again.

The guard jerked her head in the direction of the visitor’s door. “You need to leave now.” As if on cue, the door opened and another guard, his uniform fit to rip across his belly, stepped into the room.

I ignored both guards, my gaze locked on Autumn. “Tell me.”

“Daddy’s last lover,” she said. “I told him her name.”

The guard holding Autumn pulled her back toward the opposite side of the room. My guard put his balloon belly in my face.

“Who, damn it?”

Mr. Belly grabbed my arm. Despite his girth, he had a good grip. His fingers hit a nerve that numbed me from elbow to shoulder.

Autumn’s eyes filled with tears as she shuffled backward. “Sheila.” Then she turned her back to me and let the guard escort her out of the room.

“You need a broken arm?” Belly asked.

I smiled up at him, choking back the boiling gorge in my throat. “I got it.” I stood and yanked my arm free, then saw myself out of the visitor’s room. I had to go through the rigmarole of collecting my things and marching through a series of barred doors. The process was almost too much to bear.

I made it outside without unzipping my skin and leaping free of it. The air didn’t smell as fresh as I expected. A weird stink permeated from the prison grounds. I almost gagged on it.

I didn’t remember getting in my car, nor the drive to the hotel. All I could see was a sheet of red where memories should have been. Somehow, I didn’t get into a wreck on the way over. I guess fate had decided I was wrecked enough.

Chapter 9

The clerk at the desk told me no one by that name had checked into the hotel. I tried to argue with him, but it was half-hearted. Obviously, she had either checked in under an assumed name or had her driver/gopher check in under his name—a name I did not know.

I pretended to head out of the lobby, hesitated long enough until the clerk got involved with another customer, then slipped into the stairwell. Safely out of sight on the first floor, I took the elevator up to where Sheila’s room had been.

I didn’t really expect to find her still in the room. But if someone else hadn’t yet checked into the same room, maybe I could find a clue where she might have headed next.

I found something even better than a clue. I found Sheila.

I had knocked to make sure no one was in the room before attempting to break in. Then I heard the deadbolt click. I scurried through my mind to find some excuse for knocking—
Oops, wrong room
—until Sheila opened the door and stopped all thinking for a second.

“Ridley,” she said when I didn’t say something first.

“I didn’t expect to find you here still.”

“I hadn’t expected to stay. But I wanted to pay my respects before leaving.”

I felt a pinch deep in my chest. “You been over yet?”

“Not yet.”

“You want a lift?”

She thought a second, probably wondering why I’d come back to see her. But she didn’t ask. “Let me grab my coat.”

I used the drive over to chew on how I wanted to approach her about what Autumn had told me. I wanted to shout accusations and judgments in her face. I’d done enough shouting the last few days, though. Going on the offensive like that wouldn’t get me far with Sheila anyway. She had always had a steel coating over her heart, not cold, but strong. Though the drinking had probably cracked that shell, I could tell by the look in her eyes it still held.

The snowing had eased up, light flakes dancing on the cold breeze, alighting on the naked tree branches and the headstones in the cemetery.

Sheila and I stood side-by-side before my parents’ graves, looking down as if we could see them there, asleep on beds of silk and matching pillows. A crust of snow obscured the writing on their headstones. I brushed both of them off with a gloved hand. The thorny brown stems from the roses I left in the fall poked out of the snow, headless, between the stones.

Sheila took my arm. “I miss them.”

Despite my anger, her touch felt comforting. I could almost pretend we were back before Autumn had come back into my life, before Sheila had run off, before I’d learned about her secret affair with the man who had sold my daughter. Almost. The sour taste on my tongue wouldn’t let me, though.

“You’ve kept a lot of things from me,” I said.

I expected some surprise, but she didn’t so much as turn to me, just kept holding my arm, gazing down at the gravesite, our combined body heat a small buffer against the cold.

“Well?” I said.

“I won’t deny it.” She let out a long breath which smoked in the winter air. “What’s on your mind, Ridley?”

“I went to see Autumn today.”

Now she did react. I felt her start. “Why?”

“Because our friend Hersch went to see her first.” I turned to her so I could see her face. “He’s stepped up his con quite a bit.” I explained to her what had happened since that morning, stopping short of what Autumn had told me last.

The wrinkles around her eyes deepened. “Jesus. I’m so sorry I brought this on you.”

The faint sound of traffic from the road along the cemetery came like a soft breath over the hill beyond my parents’ gravesite. All other sound was muffled by the snowfall.

I looked back and forth between the headstones. More flecks of snow had collected on their surfaces. “Has Hersch contacted you since we last spoke?”

Her voice peaked. “No. Why would he?”