“Kane buries my bodies,” I dare to say, joining him on the smoky-gray couch and setting my field bag down on the floor.
“Right,” he says as I set the glasses down and he opens the bottle. “How could I forget Kane? The bastard who won’t let you go on a date with me.” He fills our glasses.
“You’re my cousin.”
“Are we doing this again?” he asks, screwing the lid back on the bottle. “By marriage.”
“Yes, well, people date, fuck, and hate each other. We get to love each other forever.” I hand him his glass and pick up mine, offering him a toast. “To love and cousins.”
“To fucking, hating, and making up,” he says, clinking my glass. “Unfortunately, with other people. I officially give up, cousin.”
“Finally,” I say, and we both drink and savor the warmth of the woodsy flavor. I down mine.
“Tell me you didn’t just down forty-year scotch,” he says. “You’re supposed to savor it.”
“I savored a swallow.” I sink back on the couch and grab a pillow. “And I slept about two hours. I needed to de-bitch myself.” I laugh, the heat of the drink warming my limbs. “Un-bitch? Stop the bitch? Whatever you want to call it.”
“You’re always a bitch,” he says, sinking back and lounging next to me, his glass in his hand. “But it’s oddly endearing.”
“Ahhhh, cousin. You’re so sweet.”
He takes a drink. “This is a damn good scotch. How’d you get your hands on it?”
“I took it from my father.”
He laughs. “Like I said. Oddly endearing.” He hands me his glass, and I sip before giving it back to him.
“I’ve been thinking about my mother a lot the last two days,” I admit.
“What about her? Aside from the obvious that you miss the fuck out of her.”
“I’ve always thought it was odd that your father and my mother were in that plane when it crashed. Alone.” I flash back to my brother’s claim of an affair. “Do you think—?”
“Yes. It’s true.”
“What’s true? Be clear.”
“They were having an affair.”
I sit up and rotate to face him. “You’re sure?”
“You aren’t?” He sips his whiskey but doesn’t sit up.
“No. I don’t want to believe it.”
“I hear ya. Parents banging other parents blows the whole fairy-tale, happy-family shit to hell and back. But it’s true. I heard them talking, and it was one of those kinky, hot, burn-my-ears-because-it’s-my-father-and-your-mother kind of talks.”
“Fuck. How long was this going on and my cousin didn’t tell me?”
“A year that I knew of, but I’m pretty certain longer.”
“Did my father know?”
“I have no idea,” he says.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” I demand.
“You were in law school miles away. And what were you going to do? They’re adults. They were adults. Fuck. I still speak like they’re alive.”
But they’re not alive, I think. And I’m a law enforcement officer who now suspects murder. And I know all too well that you look close to home, to the spouse first, especially when an affair is identified. In this case, that means my father.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I stand up and walk to the windows overlooking the pool but without really seeing it. My father did not kill my mother. I refuse to believe that is possible. I won’t believe that, but the comment Pocher made about me being more like my mother than he knew comes back to me. It didn’t hit me wrong then, but now, it hits me ten ways of wrong. Did he kill my mother and Lucas’s father? Was she in the way? Was the affair the scandal that kept my father from the limelight?
Lucas steps beside me. “You okay?”
I glance over at him. “Most of the time. Not all the time. You?”
“The same. You know how close I was to my father.”
“Yeah. We were both lucky to have those relationships.” I glance back out the window. “I knew she wasn’t happy with my father. I should have convinced her to leave.”
“Don’t do that. ‘Should have, could have’ does no good for anyone. It solves nothing.”
I fold my arms in front of me, and we turn to face each other. “For me, that’s not true. It often does solve cases.”
“This isn’t a case,” he says, having no idea that, indeed, this may very well tie into the murders I’m trying to solve. “And people, family included, get angry when you get in the middle of their personal shit. It’s just how it is.”
“My father is running for governor.”
“No shit? So the rumors are true.”
“Yes. And I think my father’s banging his young housekeeper.”
“He better watch that shit if he’s running for governor.” He glances over at me. “And just so we can get past why you’re really here. Love forever and all that stuff, cuz, but I’m not hacking for you.”
“You have to. It’s life or death, literally.”
He holds up a hand. “No. I’m not doing it.” He walks back to the couch and refills his glass. “You’re the one who shut me down and saved my ass. I could have gone to jail.”
I walk to the opposite side of the table and stand above him. “And I could go to jail for what I did to keep you out of jail.”
“It’s a drug to me, Lilah, an adrenaline rush. I took the hacking jobs for that high. Even then, before I inherited my father’s money, I didn’t need the money. But I needed that rush, and I can’t do it again or I will keep needing it.”
I squat down in front of the table and him. “No, you won’t,” I assure him. “I’m not going to let that happen. I’ll grab you and hold on. I promise. There are dirty cops involved. There’s a body count that might be closer to a dozen after I finish connecting the dots.”
“And you think your people are dirty so you want to make me dirty again, too?”
“I think my father’s dirty. I think he’s involved.”
His eyes go wide. “Are you serious?” He sets his glass down. “Your father? In a dozen murders?”
“In a cover-up of at least half of them. Maybe it goes deeper. I don’t know. I need you to help me find out.”
“Damn. Yeah. I’m in.” He stands up and I follow. “Follow me.”
I grab my field bag from the couch, follow him up the stucco-encased stairwell to our right, and pause at the top as he unlocks a door. He turns to look at me. “Welcome to the addiction.” He shoves open the door and steps back, allowing me to walk inside. I walk through the doorway and find myself in a giant room that is walled off by floor-to-ceiling windows, the beach crashing against the shore beyond the glass. The only solid wall is lined with blacked-out monitors, the center of the room filled with random tables and tech equipment.
I face him. “This is insanity.”
“I had money that became even more money with my addiction.”
He backs up and punches a button, and the room churns and flickers to life. Monitors power up, buttons and machines lighting. He points to a horseshoe-shaped workspace with, of course, a white tiled top. “Let’s sit there.”
I follow him, and we claim spots in rolling chairs behind the countertop. A few minutes later, my computer is fired up, phone by my side, along with my note cards and a notepad. Lucas has a heavy-duty gaming-style notebook computer in front of him. He rubs his hands together. “What am I after?”
I decide to start with the part I want to supervise. The rest he can do on his own. Not to mention he might lose his mind right now if I say “assassin” and infer any connection between Ying Entertainment and my mother, which means his father. I slide a piece of paper toward him with a list of all the murder victims, including Laney and her brother. “I need complete case notes, inclusive of all personnel who came anywhere near the cases or crime scenes, down to the janitors. I wrote the location and investigating agency next to each name.”
He shoves back from the counter and roll
s around to face me. I do the same with him. “You want me to hack law enforcement? Are you fucking nuts?”
“That’s one way of putting it, but that’s to the point. It’s the only way to do this. And if you get busted, I’ll say I bribed you with some family secret.”
“I’m not going to let you do that.” He shoves fingers through his hair. “Damn it, Lilah.”
“If you’re not good enough—”
He points at me. “Don’t do that. Don’t play me. You know I’m good enough. I hacked some of the most secure systems in the world before you reeled me in. If I do this, I do it for you, but you better really need this.”
“I really need this.”
He presses fingers to his temple. “Okay. Fine. I’ll do it.” He turns to his computer.
I start to do the same and change my mind. “Actually. One thing I really need right away.”