The fix a novel, p.27
The Fix: A Novel, page 27
“That’s what I was afraid of,” she said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I’m not going to go public with any accusations or ask you to take any tests,” she said. “I had a baby boy. I put him up for adoption, but his adoptive family died. He’s back with me now, and I wanted you to know. Whether you believe it or not, he’s your son. If you don’t want anything to do with him, that’s fine. Your loss. Again, I just wanted you to know. And I needed to ask if you were contacted by anyone asking if you wanted a do-over?”
Hollis blinked and gave his head a small shake as though trying to catch up with all she’d just said. She honestly couldn’t blame him. She’d just said a lot. And if he was being honest and had convinced himself that he didn’t have a child, then she’d expect him to need a moment.
“A do-over? What? No. Why? What does that even mean?”
“He emailed you. Cyrus Sanders. He sent you a note to your campaign email and told you he was your son.”
Hollis squinted and brought a hand to his forehead. “I thought that was a prank. I get a lot of those. Mostly people looking for money. I ignored it.”
Well, that part was true anyway. She knew because Rex had told her. But hearing it from Hollis, and learning of the way he’d simply brushed it off, made her want to scratch his eyes out.
She took a step toward him, hands fisting by her sides. “Somewhere, in the back of your egotistical head, you must have wondered if that was really your son reaching out to you. He asked for help. Even if you didn’t want to connect yourself to that boy, you could have called and told me. You could have forwarded the email to me. You could have done something.”
“Again,” he said, “I don’t respond to pranks.”
“Because of your negligence, he was kidnapped. He could have been killed.” Her words were measured, but her blood chilled as she spoke her deepest fear. That she’d have been too late in saving him. That she’d have had to watch her son die, the same way she had her mother and sister.
Cami’s statement made Hollis pause, his expression speaking of what she judged to be honest confusion. “Kidnapped? What? By who?”
“The police are investigating. They don’t know.”
Hollis tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling for a moment before looking at her once more. “Well, hopefully you’ll get that cleared up. There are a lot of sickos out there. But it has nothing to do with me.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Now, Cami, it’s been interesting, but I’ve put up with enough. My fiancée is waiting for me, and I’m in the middle of a significant campaign. I don’t need this.” He dug in his back pocket and brought out a wallet and removed a stack of bills. “Here,” he said, grabbing her hand and setting the money on her palm. “There won’t be more where this came from, so don’t even try it. I have a cadre of lawyers who would enjoy nothing more than ruining you. And, Cami, I’d advise you to stick to your word and not involve me in more of this bullshit. I won’t have you derail me from my plans like you tried to do before I left for Princeton. You can’t possibly imagine the stress I’m under.”
Then he stuffed the wallet back in his pocket and left.
Cami stared at the open door he’d just exited through for several moments. She honestly didn’t know whether to find something to throw or to laugh.
You can’t possibly imagine the stress I’m under.
No, Hollis, I couldn’t possibly.
She stepped over to the counter and put the money there, hoping the janitorial staff would see it as a tip and take it. She wanted nothing to do with Hollis’s attempt at a payoff with what looked like under two hundred bucks.
She left the dressing room and walked downstairs, bracing to run into Hollis or Seraphina again. But the auditorium was mostly empty, only a few remaining loiterers and staff who were cleaning up.
She made her way to her car and then sat there staring out the windshield, going over her visit with Hollis, and parsing through the things he’d said. There was no question about the fact that he was still self-involved, but his reactions had seemed legitimate and somewhat easy to read.
He’d confirmed that he’d been the one to receive the email and had ignored it. If only he’d had the decency to forward it to her, she might have done something before a kidnapper took Cyrus and put him in danger.
She could have answered his cry for help.
Someone had done something, though, even if it was after the fact. Someone had given her the necessary information to free her child.
If it wasn’t Hollis, then who? And why?
Chapter Forty-Four
Rex stood at the front door of his grandfather’s house and looked around. Updates to the flooring and the appliances and many other things needed to be made to bring the place into the current decade. But he’d cleaned out, packed up, and recycled, and that morning he’d made six trips to the Goodwill. There was a single box of photographs and odds and ends that he was going to take to his mom later.
It was good enough, he figured, for someone to see the potential and not feel overwhelmed by the amount of work involved in making the house into a home.
His work here was done.
And yet, it also wasn’t. He’d offered to help Cami go through the files she’d taken from her father’s house. And there was still a lot of information to sift through. But even that would only take so long. A week, perhaps, if they worked on it each evening after Cyrus went to bed.
He had another month before his job started, but he still had to find an apartment and get himself set up in a brand-new state he’d never been to before. He’d planned to take the long route there, stopping and seeing some sights along the way . . . maybe camping under the stars. He’d seen so many other places around the world, but he’d never really seen America. And he wasn’t sure when he’d have another opportunity.
He’d been excited about that part of his move. And now, all he could feel when he thought about driving away from Aspen Cove was despondency.
He knew why that was, of course. He’d gotten attached to Cami and to Cyrus too. He felt . . . responsible for them in some way that probably wasn’t entirely appropriate. It was just that they’d been through so much, and he was worried that it wasn’t entirely over.
He was also concerned about the fact that she’d gone to see Hollis. She’d said she wanted to do it alone, and he could understand why, but he’d still gone to pick up the phone to check in on her several times before reminding himself he didn’t have that right. Instead, he’d distracted himself with the last of the cleaning and trips to donate useful items.
He went into the bedroom he’d been using for the last few days—the room that shockingly still had a bed and a clean mattress under all the junk shoved inside the space—and pulled a clean pair of clothes from his duffel bag. Just as he finished dressing, he heard tires on the gravel outside, and the purr of an engine. He stopped and listened for a moment to be sure he was right and then walked into the living room and pushed the curtain aside.
His heart bounced, then took up a swift beat. Cami. She was walking toward his front porch, expression unsettled, but when she saw him through the window, her face bloomed into a smile. He dropped the curtain and went to the door and pulled it open. God, he felt relief. Relief and happiness, just to see her, just to know she’d thought of him and wanted to see him too. He didn’t even care why.
Before he could say a word, she walked into his chest, embracing him. He paused for only a moment before wrapping his arms around her, too, and pulling her as close as he possibly could. “Everything all right?” he said into her hair, and she nodded, but she didn’t let go. Instead, she turned her nose into his neck, and he was almost tempted to step away and tell her he needed to shower, but she seemed to like it there, if her sigh and the fact that she wasn’t moving of her own accord were any indication. He liked that too.
Yes, he would have slayed a dragon for her once upon a time, but now he’d slay a thunder of them.
He was fucked.
But right that moment, he couldn’t seem to care.
She dropped her arms with another sigh and stepped away. Her lips began to lift into a smile, but then it fell as she looked around behind him. “It’s all cleared out,” she said, and there was something in her voice, a sort of alarm.
He turned and looked at it as if she’d told him something he didn’t already know, as if he hadn’t just completed the last remaining chores as a way of distracting himself from his errant thoughts about her all day long. “Yeah. It’s done. And listed. I already got a few calls that I need to return.”
She stepped farther inside. “That’s great. It’s a nice place. I can see the potential now.”
“That was the plan,” he said with a small smile.
“Mission accomplished.” Their gazes held. He finally looked away.
“On the house front anyway. I’m still here another week at least.” He’d decided that apparently, without really thinking about it. He’d said it now—he couldn’t take it back. Not that he wanted to. “Plenty of time to go through those boxes . . .”
“Yes. Thank you.” She looked around again, her brow knitted.
“So, ah, were you able to see Hollis?” He assumed Hollis hadn’t offered anything helpful, if anything at all. He knew that if he had, she’d have led with that and not the state of his house.
“Yes, I saw him. And yes, he’s still an egotistical prick. And no, he doesn’t deserve to have power of any kind, and I hope Virginia voters see as much.”
“Tell me,” he said, gesturing toward the couch that was amazingly clean, but only because it’d never actually been sat on but been a catch-all for stuff. A quick vacuuming to get rid of the dust, and it looked like new.
She sat down, and he did, too, and she brought her knee to the side as she turned his way. “I told him about Cyrus and the kidnapping. In a nutshell? He knows Cyrus is his son and is worried I’m going to go public in some way and bring controversy to his campaign.”
“So he does have motivation.” If Hollis had been surprised but ultimately decent and maybe even requested to meet his son, or asked if Cami needed anything, then that would be different. But he’d expressed the exact sentiment Rex had worried he would.
“To have had him kidnapped?” Her eyes drifted to the side for a moment. “Yes, I suppose, but . . . I honestly think he was shocked when he heard that he’d been kidnapped. I don’t think he knew about it. He did receive the email from Cyrus and either convinced himself it was a prank, or actually believed it was. Hollis was never a good liar because he never tried to be good. He took it for granted no one would question him, so he didn’t bother to make himself seem believable. He hasn’t changed.”
“Well that helps.” He almost bit his own tongue. It came across as bitter, and he didn’t want to remain resentful toward the guy. It was just that hearing Cami bring up the teenage version of Hollis, the guy who’d made him feel so worthless when they were in high school, set him on edge. Still. And he didn’t like that about himself. It made him feel petty and small, his own feelings trapping him in the discomfort of youth.
Cami’s eyes lingered on him a moment as if she was trying to figure him out, and then she looked down and picked at the cuticle on her thumbnail. “On my way here, I got a call from Detective Mauro in California. They were able to identify the remains of the man who fell to his death.”
He sat up a little straighter. “And?”
“Apparently, he’s hired muscle. Well known in Oakland, California. The guy has a long rap sheet and just got out of San Quentin six months ago for armed robbery. The weapon they found near his body had the serial number filed off.”
“Did they mention any known connections?”
“They’re looking into that now, but I mean, they’re not likely to find anything, right?”
He sighed. “No. Guys like that don’t generally keep records.”
“The rental cabin is owned by a corporation that appears to be a shell company.”
He’d figured. And when they investigated that company, it would lead to another one overseas. Eventually, they’d find themselves in some Bangladeshi rug store where the owner had been paid off to file paperwork. There’d be no trace of anyone who’d set up the operation now. “Did Detective Mauro say anything about the video camera in the room with Cyrus?”
“Just that there was a link to the feed on the guy’s phone. It was one of those prepaid ones, though, so not much else to access.”
Rex nodded. He knew he could assume any numbers that were in it were also from anonymous burner phones and had since been turned off. Oakland, California. Someone had hired a goon close enough to drive to the location. Why exactly they’d chosen that spot in the woods in Big Sur was a mystery. Maybe this unknown person or persons had a number of locations set up for just such a circumstance. The bars on the window indicated that it had a specific purpose, and that purpose didn’t have anything to do with communing with nature. “What now?” he murmured, mostly to himself.
“The boxes,” she said. “It feels like all we have.”
He turned and looked at her, his gaze moving over her pretty face. She was so beautiful to him. What was it about her features that set his heart on fire the way they did? Maybe if he could figure it out—quantify it the way he was usually so good at—he could gain control over it so he didn’t feel mostly flattened each time she turned his way. It feels like all we have. He moved his mind back to what she’d said about the boxes. He agreed it was all they had, but not only as it pertained to the case they were trying to work through together. Them. In general. And he didn’t like that. He could admit it, at least to himself. But how could they have more without someone—namely him—getting hurt?
Maybe it’s worth it.
Cami sighed. “I should go.”
He turned and met her eyes. There was something there—a question or a statement, he wasn’t sure. He wiped his hands on his jeans. He needed to get cleaned up and return some calls, and Cyrus would be waiting to be picked up at her father’s house. She’d had a long afternoon confronting the man who’d abandoned her eleven years before and had made it clear he was still the same selfish asshole. Maybe she’d expected it, but the confrontation had to have been emotionally taxing all the same.
They both stood at the same time, each letting out a small breathy chuckle when they almost collided. Again, their eyes met and she opened her mouth to say something, paused, and then closed it. She tipped her head to the side. “I might take the night off from box searching. It’s been a day.”
“I don’t blame you. You and Cyrus should do something fun.”
“Cyrus is staying at my dad’s tonight. They’re camping in the backyard. Roasting marshmallows. The whole bit.” She smiled, and he could see the emotion there. The gratitude.
“That’s nice. Your dad . . . he’s really stepped up.”
She gave a small nod and then moved around the coffee table and headed for the door. When she got there, she paused again, seeming distracted. She’d greeted him with such intimacy, but now she was leaving on this strange, awkward note, and he wasn’t sure why.
He opened the door, and she walked through it, turning and giving him a smile that looked forced. “See you later.”
“Yeah . . . see you later.”
Cami turned and walked down the steps, then stopped in her tracks. Rex stared at her unmoving back and then cast his eyes to the horizon, where she seemed to be looking. But there was nothing there other than a thin band of gold where the sun was just beginning to descend.
As quickly as she’d stopped, she pivoted and marched back up the steps to stand in front of him. “I have something to say.”
Rex was rarely taken off guard, not anymore, but this woman seemed to have some special knack for doing just that. “All right,” he said warily.
She drew up her shoulders as she inhaled and then let out a gust of breath. “I appreciate you. I do. I’m grateful for the way you helped me when you could have easily justified turning away, and the way you continue to do so. I like the qualities that speaks of. You’re a good man and an honorable human being. You care for children you’ve never met, and you have an admirable sense of justice. You work hard and, as far as brains go, you’ve got an extraordinary one.”
She sucked in a sharp inhale as though she hadn’t taken a breath in the midst of all those words. He liked those words . . . except that he didn’t know where they were going and was halfway bracing for a but.
“And so I hope what I say now doesn’t offend you in any way, but Rex, mostly I want you right now because you’re hot. I’m just attracted to you. Whether you came into my life as some hitchhiker on the road or a guy from my past who helped me with something that was a big damn deal, I find you sexy. Gorgeous. Appealing in every physical way, and that’s it. I’m sorry if that sounds inelegant, but it’s true. So, if you have some misguided idea that I only tried to kiss you in California because I feel grateful to you, I want to set the record straight and let you know that you’re dead wrong.”
He couldn’t help it—he laughed, a sound filled with both the amusement and the exhilaration of what she’d said. It was funny and kind of shocking, but also, the earnest expression on her face brought him more happiness than he could remember feeling in a long time. Maybe ever.
It’s always been you.
It made no sense. They’d barely known each other once upon a time, and yet he’d carried her with him all these years, a secret part of his heart that he hadn’t even shared with himself until she was standing in front of him once again, looking at him the way she was now.
“You don’t have to want me back,” she whispered, her voice so deeply vulnerable. And it slayed him that Cami, who had lost so much, who was once the most confident, most stunning girl in the world to him, was bravely showing him her beautifully tender heart. “But if you’re hesitating because you wonder about my intentions or because I didn’t see you when we were kids and you think that’s still the case, please don’t. I’m sorry I didn’t see you back then. I see you now. I can’t look away.”
