But I have my own story to tell. And it begins now.
Kane sits down next to me and rests his wrists on his jean-clad legs. He doesn’t ask questions. He waits for me to talk. I enjoy the silence. The cool breeze. The willow tree limbs swaying around us. The calm before the storm that is coming. But finally, I tell him everything.
“You’re staying and you’re keeping your badge,” he concludes.
“Yes. I’m staying. I’m keeping my badge and I’m going to find a place in New York City to rent.”
He glances over at me. “You can stay with me.”
“You know I can’t do that and create the trust I need to create with the New York bureau.”
He stares at me for several beats, his expression indiscernible before his gaze shifts forward again. “Sanity, not insanity,” he says.
I think he’s more relieved than he wants to admit. I think Kane needs me to pull him to the middle. Even if it means that the badge is now, once again, between us.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Kane and I head to the police station to give our statements after we leave the cemetery. Kane doesn’t hang around after we finish up, leaving at my urging to allow me time for a brother-sister hate/love fest. I begin that process by joining Andrew in his office. “My boss is in town. He knows I’m closing the case, but there’s more.”
My brother stands up and walks to his door and shuts it before he sits down on the arm of the visitor’s chair beside me. “What now, Lilah?”
“I’m moving to New York City. I’m going to be working on a cold-case task force for my boss. I’ll still be reporting to the LA bureau, but I’ll be focusing on New York State. And I took the job because Mom’s grave reminds me that we will all be dead one day. I need to be with you guys. I want to help Dad with his campaign. I want to fight with you in person, all the fucking time.”
We talk for an hour, and this time I get my doughnuts with him. And today, my brother feels like my brother, and that is not a person who would involve himself with the Society if he knew they existed. But for now, it’s better that I leave that topic alone. What he doesn’t know can’t kill him. I hope.
“Have you told Dad?” he asks before I leave.
“We had a fight yesterday,” I say. “I just need to get over that first, but I will. That’s the entire point of being home. Family.”
“Family,” he says. “Remember that. We protect each other.”
And Dad’s version of that is that I get raped and not killed, but I don’t say that. I give a reply of, “Don’t fuck with the Love family,” and leave.
I stay with Kane that night. Murphy lets me know that he’s aware of my sleeping arrangement by express-mailing a new badge to me at Kane’s house. It’s not long after I’ve opened that package that Kane announces he’s leaving on a business trip. The kind of business he doesn’t discuss, and just like old times, I know my badge is the reason. I stay at my cottage, despite his insistence that I stay at his place here or in the city. Of course, I’m certain someone is watching me. I’m still a target for the Society, but even Kane agrees that Eddie will be well buried before they come for me. They have no option. My death, this close to Eddie’s, would bring unwanted attention to them and to my father.
I spend the rest of the day in leggings and a T-shirt, pinpointing rentals in New York City online, and I decide I’m not going to live the way I lived in LA. That isn’t how you fit in, in East Hampton or even in New York City. I rent a place without visiting. I don’t have time for that chitchat, check-things-out-with-the-Realtor shit. I know the locations. I’ve seen the photos.
I’ve just DocuSigned the lease when there is a knock on my door. To my shock, Pocher is standing on my step. I open the door. “If you’re recruiting me to put out flyers for the campaign, I suck at that stuff. I end up cussing people out for blowing me off at their own house. But I can deliver doughnuts to the men in blue and do the whole ‘my father supports law enforcement’ spiel while trying not to eat them.”
“Can I come in?” he asks, his expression and tone troubled, as if he was a real human. Even his dress pants and white button-down appear rumpled and out of order.
I don’t have my gun on me, but he’s a delicate man, and I’m pretty sure I could take him with a knee to the groin. I offer him space to enter and wave him forward, pointing toward the kitchen while unwilling to give him my back. Once we’re in the kitchen, I stop at the island and put it between me and him, and the only refreshments I plan to offer him are my knee and my knee again, not that I have anything else in the house to offer, anyway.
I have to play a little nice. I am, after all, supposed to be playing the part of the cooperative daughter. “I guess you heard that I’m staying.”
“My brother was kidnapped. There is a sizable ransom.”
“Oh,” I say, because that’s about as brilliant as I ever get. “I’ll call the local FBI bureau and—”
“The kidnappers are the rival to the Mendez cartel in Mexico. I need to talk to Kane.”
Murphy’s words come back to me: You are the only one who can control Kane. And that’s power. But I also remember Kane’s vow to make Pocher pay for my attack and force him to turn to me.
“He won’t take my calls,” he says. “Call him.”
“You’re going to have better luck with the FBI. I can take the lead.”
“Call Kane,” he all but shouts at me. “Please,” he adds, softening his voice.
Man, that please must have hurt like a bitch-slap. I pull my phone from the hoodie I have on and dial Kane. He answers immediately. “You’ve decided to move in with me,” he says. “Or Pocher is standing there.”
“Pocher is here. His brother has been kidnapped by a rival cartel, and he seems to believe you can help.”
“Put him on speaker after asking me to do this for you.”
“He’s quite distraught, Kane. Please talk to him for me.”
“Please,” Kane says. “Aren’t you submissive and sweet, Lilah Love. When I get back—”
I hit the speaker button. “Kane is on the line,” I say. “Kane. Pocher is standing here with me.”
“You have my ear, Pocher,” Kane says. “One of them. I have a meeting to get to, so make it fast.”
“My brother was kidnapped by the Rodriguez cartel,” he says. “They want fifty million dollars. I need him back alive.”
“Rodriguez is my enemy.”
“Can you get my brother back?” he asks.
“What’s in it for me?” Kane asks.
“You get the fifty million,” he says. “I’ll wire it to you now.”
“I don’t need or want your money,” Kane says. “The kingpin, Luis Rodriguez, owes me a personal favor that extends beyond the war between our cartels. To call in that favor comes at a price to me. You know what I want in return.”
Pocher looks at me. “She has my protection.”
“You’re getting there,” Kane says. “Go further. Dig deeper.”
“I will ensure that no one from our organization hurts her, but I can’t save her from her own stupidity,” he snaps. “And she stays away from our organization. Agree to that now, or I can’t make this deal.”
“Who are you talking to?” I ask. “Because it sounds like a third party, and if it were me, surely you’d look me in the eyes and speak to me.”
“Give him what he wants, Lilah,” Kane says.
“I’ll stay away from the organization,” I say, already thinking through the creative ways to spin that statement.
“If I get your brother back,” Kane says, “and you break your word, Pocher, I will personally deliver your brother back to the kingpin himself. Do you understand?”
“I get it, Mendez. Get him back.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Kane says. An
d proving he still has someone watching me, he adds, “Now leave her house. Pick up, Lilah.”
Pocher gives me a hard look and then turns and walks away. I pick up the phone and disconnect the speaker. “I’m here,” I say, placing the phone to my ear.
“I have to go, but know this, Lilah Love. He will pay for your attack ten times over. This is just the beginning.” He disconnects.
The day of Eddie’s funeral, I start my morning with yet another call from Pocher, and I give him the same answer I did yesterday: I have not heard from Kane. And it’s the truth, but not a surprising one for me. Kane’s business trips to Mexico are usually in what he calls “dark territory” for cell service. And so I dress in a black dress and black knee-high boots.
I arrive at the funeral home to a roomful of uniforms that do not include Greg, who leaves me a voice mail that goes something like “I’ll be in touch” or some crap like that. From there I decide the rain is the best part of the day. There is my brother with Samantha hanging on his arm, casting me gloating looks. Then there is the encounter with my father just before the service starts. “When were you going to tell me you were staying?”
“At least by Christmas,” I say, and that is pretty much the best part of the exchange before he joins Pocher in the front row of the church. The very fact that Pocher is here proves that the devil does not burn when he steps inside a place of worship.
I claim a seat in the back row, and the service begins, tears and sobs beside me, in front of me, all around me. I’ve never done well with other people’s tears. I don’t like public displays of emotion. I withdraw, clam up. I didn’t even cry at my mother’s funeral, and it wasn’t about an absence of grief. It was about too much of everyone else’s grief suffocating me. Which is why when Pocher gets up and walks to the back of the church, I rotate and watch him leave, then seize the opportunity to leave early and follow him.