Confessions Of An Old Lady (15 page)

Chapter 28

After I’d made my introductions, Sonny and I sat down on the floral printed couch that my dad had railed against for two weeks before finally caving in. Mom and Dad sat across from us, Dad in his favorite recliner, Mom on the loveseat that matched her lovely couch.

“So…” Dad began. “Sonny, what exactly is it you do for a living, son?”

“Dad!” I was embarrassed immediately and turned and apologized to Sonny on my dad’s behalf.

“What? I can’t ask this nice young gentleman a few questions before he takes my daughter on a whirlwind trip out of the country?”

“Dad, I told you it’s an assignment. Sonny’s one of my fellow agents. We’re both going to Minsk together, so you can quit with the third degree.” My father would never completely be able to leave behind his career as a police officer, so it was just like him to interrogate any man I ever brought home, not to mention a six-foot-two, burly, muscle-bound motorcycle dude.

“Honey, just leave the kids alone, now. You hear? Olivia’s all grown-up now. She can make grown-up decisions and we have to trust that she’s making the right ones.” Mom was just as concerned as Dad was, but her tactic was more subversive than Dad’s. As Dad liked to come right out with the intrusive questioning, Mom would make passive-aggressive comments, all the while pretending to be on my side.

“Yes, darling. So…Belarus…” Dad tried to change the direction of the conversation.

“Yep, Belarus.” I answered pithily.

Just then the front door swung open and in walked my sister Carly, brother-in-law Max—short for Maksim—and my two nieces, Yulia and Nadia.

“Hey! Olivia!” Carly shouted as she bent over to set Nadia down on the ground. Nadia immediately started jumping up and down, reaching and crying for Carly to pick her back up. Carly ignored her and rushed over to give me a hug. We held each other tight. I hadn’t seen Carly in, well, I don’t know how long.

I pulled myself from her grip just enough to be able to look down at Yulia, who was now at least a foot or so taller than I had remembered. “My God, Yulia! How tall are you now?”

“I’m three feet, eleven inches,” she answered matter-of-factly. Yulia was the brains of the crew, spoke fluent Russian and English, and never ceased to amaze me with the contents of her little seven-year-old brain.

I introduced Sonny to Carly and her crew. When the conversation grew a little loud, Carly leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Olivia…good Lord! What a hunk! Where’d you find this stud?”

“He’s my co-worker, Carly.” I wasn’t ready to introduce Sonny as my
boyfriend
just yet. My family was going to have enough questions regarding our spontaneous “assignment” in Minsk. Why complicate things and give my family more of a reason to give me a hard time?

“Riiiight,” she said, winking in a way that said,
I know and you know that’s a lie, but we’ll leave it be for now.

We all sat around in front of the fireplace, discussing the eight-time-national-championship-winning UK basketball team—a stark contrast to the football program. Anything to avoid discussing my supposed trip to Belarus. It was so hard to lie to my family, although I should have been used to it by then. I’d been lying to them in some form or fashion, about one thing or another, since joining the DEA.

We spent most of the day listening to Dad’s funny stories about me, like the first time I tried to do laundry all by myself and turned all of his socks and underwear pink. When the sun was just starting to go down early, because it was still winter, Sonny pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and discreetly looked down at it. When I saw him do this, I realized it was his subtle way of telling me we needed to wrap things up and head back to Nicholasville.

“Mom, Dad…we’ve got to get going. Our flight leaves early tomorrow morning and we’ve got some things to do before we leave.”

“Oh, please stay,” Mom said softly.

“Yeah, sis. Stay. I haven’t seen you in such a long time. The girls…they’ve missed you and so have we.” My brother-in-law nodded in agreement.

The little twinge of guilt I’d been fighting off all day grew exponentially, but I told them that I had no choice and promised to stay in touch at least once a month while in Belarus and to bring them all back souvenirs.

As we grabbed our coats and headed for the door, Mom grabbed me and pulled me close. “Please be careful, baby girl.” I could hear the sorrow she was trying to stifle.

“Yeah, always watch your six,” Dad said, reaching in for a hug of his own. It was police speak for
watch your back
.

Finally, before the tears could spill out over my cheeks, I was able to make my way out the front door. Sonny followed close behind me, thanking my parents for their hospitality. He was quite the gentleman.

When we shut the doors to the Malibu, I laid my head against the headrest in the driver’s seat and Sonny leaned in the front window.

“You gonna be okay?” Sonny asked.

“Yeah. I’ll be fine. I’ll gather myself and rally on the drive home. Don’t worry about me. I’ll meet you back at the house.”

“Speaking of that house…whose house is it really?”

“The Agency rented it from someone. I don’t know who.”

“Figured as much.” Then he turned and headed for his bike.

***

We arrived back at the Agency house by seven o’clock and were in bed within the hour.

Less than two hours after we laid down, Sonny’s phone rang, waking us both up. It was Jimmy.

“Shit! I forgot about Jimmy!” Sonny cussed as he pushed ANSWER on his cell phone. “Jimmy! You okay? So sorry I never called you back, man.”

Sonny listened. I could hear Jimmy’s muffled voice, so I knew he was excited about something.

“Shit.” Sonny cussed again. “All right. I need you to listen to me, Jimmy. If you’ve ever trusted me before, then trust me on this, okay, buddy? I’m going to leave town for a while. Just until the dust settles over this raid and until I can get my head cleared. Trish and I, we’re going to Mexico. Tell the others that I’ll sort everything out when I get back. In the meantime, I need you to take care of things for me. Can you do that, Jimmy?”

Jimmy answered and I could only assume it was in the affirmative, because Sonny seemed pacified.

“Now, as for Eddy Walters, just…do the best you can to keep him at bay. He’ll be looking for me, so you and the fellas might want to lay low for a while, but if he comes sniffing around…tell him we knew nothing about the raid and we’re just as pissed as he is. Tell him we lost some good men too. I doubt that’ll satisfy him, but it’s the best I can come up with.”

Jimmy said something else in response, something that changed the look on Sonny’s face from one of determination to one of concern.

“Well, that’s why I’ve got to leave town. He’s going to want blood for blood. Especially with his son dead. He’s probably feeling guilty about not going to the meeting himself, but that ain’t my problem. I’ll contact you as soon as Trish and I find a place to settle for a while. It might be a week or two, but I promise I won’t forget you guys. Take care of things for me, Jimmy. Tell Connie I’m real sorry about Harry and I wish I could be there for the service. Weasel’s family too. And if you hear from Dad, tell him I’m gonna take care of everything.”

Another second or so of listening and then finally Sonny said goodbye to Jimmy and hung up the phone. He turned to face me.

“Just as we imagined, Eddy Walters is on a rampage. He claims I knew about the raid the whole time and set them up, which is stupid, because why would I set up my own father just to take them down? Plus, he ought to know better than to think I’d mess with the fucking feds…”

His eyes went big as saucers. “Oh, Olivia…I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it that way, I just…”

“No, it’s okay. I know what you meant.” I placed my hand over his so he knew I was okay.

“Well, looks like we made the right decision to leave. Eddy’s not going to buy any of our explanations. He’s out for blood. I doubt he knows you’re a fed, but Jimmy said he’s suspicious of you and wants to talk to you about a few things. We have
got
to get the hell out of here.”

“Well,” I said, looking at my cell phone, which was docked on my iHome, charging. “Only a few more hours of sleep, then we will be on a plane to Spain. He won’t find us there. At least not for a good, long while.”

“I sure hope not. This guy is serious business, Olivia. He once killed a man in his own crew who he suspected of turning rat on him. He dropped him with a bullet between the eyes without so much as speaking to the man. Word has it, he burned the body and dumped what was left down a mine shaft in Harlan, so no one would ever find it. And that’s not the half of it. I could tell you stories all night long about how dangerous this man is. We don’t want him finding us, that’s for sure.”

“Sonny…I know I’ve said it before…but I am so sorry about all of this. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be leading a normal, albeit eventful, life. You wouldn’t be on the run. Eventually, your father would have either wound up in prison, like you said, or retired, and you would have taken over as president of the club you love so much. But here I came and screwed everything up, got your friends killed, your father God-knows-where, and you on the lam from a crazy-psycho motorcycle gang leader. I wish I’d have never taken this stupid assignment. It’s all my fault.” I began to cry again, this time out of true remorse for everything I had put Sonny though. Sure, he was a criminal, living on the fringe of society, but he was a good man despite it all, and he had been nothing but wonderful to me and everyone he cared about. Would the world really be all that much better if Sonny had gotten locked up? Or killed? I thought not. However, the federal government didn’t see it that way, so they would have done all they could to bring down the Lords of Chaos, with or without me. That fact alone didn’t make me feel any better about myself.

“Olivia…listen…sure, it kinda sucks that you turned out to be an agent trying to take me down. Sure it kinda sucks that my friends and family were put in the position they were put in. But none of that’s on you as a person. You were only doing your job. I know that now. Please don’t keep beating yourself up over all of this. All we can do now is make the best out of a tough situation and try to figure out a way to keep safe from Eddy Walters and the Monsters. We’ll figure something out. In the meantime, let’s rest so we can get up early for our flight to Spain. I mean…Spain! Think about it. Sure, we’ll be on the run, but can you think of a better place to be on the run? It’s kind of romantic. Don’t you think?”

I sniffled and let out a little chuckle. “Yes. It’s romantic, in a sick, twisted, we’re-running-for-our-lives kind of way.”

Sonny embraced me and smoothed over my hair. Then we lay back on the bed, staying in each other’s arms, and fell asleep that way.

Chapter 29

What actually woke me up was the smell. Although I’d never experienced it before, I knew immediately what the smell was, so I shot out of bed, instantly wide awake and nearly frozen with fear. I shook Sonny as hard as I could.

“Sonny! Wake up! The house is on fire!” I screamed over the roar of the fire and sounds of glass popping and breaking.

He jumped out of bed faster than I thought possible. “What the—?”

“Hurry! We’ve got to get out of here!” I shouted. “Why are the damn smoke alarms not going off?”

There were no flames in the bedroom, but there was thick white-and-black smoke climbing the walls and encircling the ceiling. Luckily, I had stopped sleeping in the nude when I arrived for the assignment, so I was fully dressed, albeit in cheetah-print pajamas.

“This way!” Sonny shouted, reaching for my hand and heading for the hallway. When he went to grab the doorknob he snatched his hand back and shouted “Fuck, that’s hot!”

I looked around and found a t-shirt on the floor by the laundry basket, the product of a nasty habit that I’d been meaning to mention to Sonny, only I’d figured it was too early in the relationship for those types of conversations. I grabbed the t-shirt and tossed it to Sonny, who wrapped his hand up in the thing and used it to open the door to the hallway.

“Follow me!” Sonny reached out his other hand for mine, which I grabbed immediately. We were both crawling on the floor, trying to avoid the thick smoke that was now billowing into the bedroom.

When we breached the doorway to the hall, we saw that there were flames climbing the walls and growing in intensity. A look into the living room told us it was completely engulfed in flames. The couch was aflame and the curtains were covered in red, orange, and yellow ribbons of fire.

When we turned to make for the front doorway, we saw something that increased our panic tenfold. The doorway was covered in flames—there was no way we could escape through the front entrance.

“Sonny! What are we going to do?”

He stopped dead in his tracks and I bumped into him.

“Sonny?”

“This way!” he shouted.

Without thinking, I followed him further down the hallway into the kitchen, which amazingly, was less charred than the rest of the house, but there were still flames licking across the ceiling, headed directly toward us.

Thankfully, there was a side door in the kitchen, because the back door was also out of the question. The only problem was that the smoke was so thick, it was hard to see where we were walking. All I could do was trust Sonny and follow wherever he led. But before I knew it, he had used his t-shirt-covered hand and opened the side door. We rushed outside as fast as we could and kept running down the driveway until we reached the opposite side of the street. I had no neighbor across the street, and all that was in that lot were some trees and a small field.

When we reached the field, about fifty yards from the house, we both stopped running and turned to face what we’d escaped. It was worse than I had imagined. There were flames spilling out of all of the windows in the front and sides of the house and climbing up onto the roof. We could hear the popping and cracking, like you hear sitting next to a campfire, only magnified times a thousand. The glass from the windows was shattering and the sound was ear-piercing.

I don’t know why I began to cry, but I did. It wasn’t my house, I knew that, but I had begun to make memories in the several months that I had been there. And it wasn’t just the loss of the house. I knew, and Sonny knew, without even having to speak the words out loud, that this was no accident. This was an attempt on our lives. Nothing feels more personal than when someone tries to kill you.

We both stood there, bent over, hands on knees, trying to catch our breath. “It was Eddy Walters,” Sonny said.

He was right. What were the odds that there was anyone else in this world that would want to set my house on fire and try to kill both me and Sonny? Zero, that’s what.

“Yeah,” I agreed with his deduction.

“You okay?” he asked, turning toward me, grabbing both my shoulders and looking me up and down.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine. How about you?” I looked him over as well.

“Fine. A little out of breath…my lungs hurt…but I’m fine.”

“Well, that’s a first,” I said without thinking.

“What’s a first?”

“I’ve never had anybody try to kill me before.” He looked at me puzzled for a second and then we both let out a nervous laugh.

“Wish I could say the same, but this makes twice in less than a month for me,” he said.

We laughed a little more and Sonny pulled me in close, holding me tightly and whispering in my ear, “I’m so glad that you’re okay. I don’t know what I’d have done if you were hurt.”

“You know, for a big, bad-ass biker, you’re sure turning into a big-old softie,” I teased him.

The loud boom was so unexpected and intense, we both jumped, still in our embrace. The flames burst out in our direction and we both fell to the ground. The brightness from the huge flames, which were now reaching toward the sky, caused us both to raise our arms above our eyes to shield them from the brilliance of the big orange fireball. Suddenly, the house was completely engulfed, the flames lapping the sides of the house and the roof.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, now even more shaken than before.

“The fire must have reached the gas heater and it exploded. You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.”

We both got up from the ground and began brushing the grass and dirt off of our clothes, staring with awe at what was left of the house I had called my home since last August. I felt a twinge of sadness about the poor little house, even if it wasn’t my actual home. The owner would be devastated. It was nearly one hundred years old and had probably been in their family for generations. But that was the least of my concerns, I reminded myself. Someone, namely Eddy Walters or one of his cronies, had firebombed the house Sonny and I were sleeping in, in the middle of the night. He had to have had every intention of killing us both. If he just wanted to send a message, he might have lit the house afire during the day, but to do it at night, when he knew we were both sleeping soundly inside, meant he wanted us dead for sure. Not to mention the smoke alarms, none of which had made a single sound. No, he meant to kill us both in one fell swoop.

Sonny broke my train of thought by reminding me that we needed to get away from there immediately, before emergency responders arrived and began asking questions we couldn’t answer, and in case Eddy came around to make sure we were dead. If he found us there very much alive, we wouldn’t stay that way for long.

Luckily, we had already packed our bags and things into the Malibu, which was parked on the street in front of the house, instead of beside it in the garage. I said a silent prayer of thanks for small favors. We had also thought ahead enough to store our bikes, for a reasonable fee, at a local storage unit called “Car-Go,” so thankfully, they weren’t caught up in the fire.

We hopped in the Malibu, Sonny driving, and pulled out so fast that the wheels screeched on the pavement. We drove without speaking for about ten minutes before Sonny finally broke the silence and said, “He’s not gonna stop, you know.”

“I know.” I knew what he meant. Eddy Walters would eventually figure out we escaped the fire, but hopefully, by the time he figured it out, we’d be on our flight to Madrid. I looked at the clock on the dashboard. It read three forty-seven a.m.

“We should just head toward Louisville,” I advised him.

“Yeah, I mean, we don’t really have any other choices. At this point, we’ll get to Louisville around six a.m. We’ll just have to wait around for a couple of hours, so that’s not so bad,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

“But what if he sends some men to the airport to look for us? Surely he’ll figure out that we’re on the run. What else could we do, besides try to leave Kentucky?” The thought that we might be caught by Eddy before we could make our escape terrified me.

“Nah…they’d check the Bluegrass Airport in Lexington first. Most people around here try to fly out of Lexington if they can, instead of driving almost two hours to Louisville. By the time they search all of Nicholasville for us…the garage, my house, the guys’ houses…go to Bluegrass Airport and look around, there won’t be time for them to get to the Louisville Airport in time.
If
they even come to Louisville, we’ll already be in the air.”

“Makes sense. And with security the way it is now, it’s not like they could figure out which flight we’re going to be on out of all the dozens of flights leaving this morning. You’re right. Let’s just get out of Nicholasville, then I’ll feel better.” I laid my head back against the headrest and breathed out a small sigh of relief. But that relief didn’t last more than a few seconds before I realized that I had one more thing I had to do before I could get on that airplane.

I picked up my white iPhone and held it out in front of me.

Sonny must have realized what I was about to do, because he nodded his head gently and said, “Go on…you can do it…”

For possibly the last time, I told Siri to call Agent Renley. My hand was trembling as a huge part of me hoped that Renley wouldn’t answer. But that hope was short-lived when, after the fourth ring, Renley answered.