The Ringer (13 page)

“Okay, enough.” Dottie patted Lane’s knee before she left her on the couch. “Lane can’t keep working after such big news, and I’m only pretending to push around papers. So why don’t we all get some shut-eye and start again in the morning?”

“Goodnight, honey.” Dottie gave her a comforting kiss on the cheek and then did the same for her son. “Goodnight. Don’t lose too much sleep over this, Lane. You did what’s best for you. It’s all any of us can do.” She gave them a wave on her way out the door.

No one uttered a word after his mother left. The sound of the crackling fire took over the room as Jax stood in front of her.

“I’m such a ridiculous fool,” she confessed.

“Don’t,” he said.

“How desperate do I look to meet a stranger online and marry him?”

“I’m sure it didn’t go like that.” He chuckled. “I’m sure a date or two fit in somewhere.” He knelt in front of her.

“Parker took me out a lot the first month. He would fly into Seattle just to wine and dine me but claimed the distance was a problem. I figured he wanted to break up. Instead, he proposed.” She gave Jax a weak smile. In retrospect, she’d had an idea something was off about Parker, but desperation had made her blind. “We got married. Cut to six months later, and I’m hiding in the men’s bathroom after serving him with divorce papers.”

“It could be worse.” He took her hands between his and planted a tender kiss on her knuckles.

“How so?” she wondered aloud, impressed by how Jax’s thoughtfulness made her almost forget about his stern cop exterior.

“You could be dead.”

Taken aback, Lane swallowed the part of her pride that wanted to attack him. After all, he was right. “Parker wanted me dead, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” he told her. “Now we just have to figure out why.”

A steady amount of snow fell to the ground. Morning had come fast; Jax had burned the midnight oil, trying to study the evidence with a new eye. Early yet, he waited for Raff to get back to him.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” his mother sang with his father close on her heels. “Did you get any sleep?”

His parents were happier than he had ever seen them. Even his father exuded a subdued joy. Dottie stepped around the desk to give him a warm hug.

“No,” he told her. “Not much sleep at all.”

“We’re heading out before the storm hits,” she said. “Stu will be here with the helicopter.”

He glanced out the window. One heck of a blizzard would be rolling in soon. But he found no difference in the weather from the time he’d popped his head out of the paper hole an hour ago.

Dottie ruffled his hair and pressed a kiss to his forehead, much like she used to do when he was a kid. “Come on, I’ll fix you a good breakfast and you can see us off.”

“Sure,” he mumbled, still distracted by all the new information he needed to assemble. “I’m just waiting to hear back from Raff.”

“Is she going through Parker’s financials?” his father picked up a few of the reports he had already combed through.

“No, why?”

“It bears checking into.”

“You think the Locklands would risk their kingdom for something illegal?” Jax asked, surprised his father even had this much information. Old school wealth would go to their grave holding onto the illusion of money, whether they still had it or not.

“Rumors about bad investments here and there, even word about Bernie Madoff made the rounds.” His father shook his head. “They took a hit like everyone else with Wall Street. What’s the youngest Lockland’s name?”

“Dustin,” Jax offered.

“Yeah, some financial genius, huh? He ended up being the opposite of useful. Their medical facility is now the Lockland family’s only source of income, and at one point, even that was bleeding money.”

Nothing could be ruled out. While Jax digested the meager facts his father had laid out, he tried to ignore the sensation of itchy rocks in his eyes.

Truman set the papers down. “Your mother told me about Lane. I hope she didn’t take it too hard.”

“Not sure.” He took off his glasses and tried to rub the sleep away to no avail, so he gave up. “She went to bed after she got the news.” He leaned back into his seat.
All I need is a good few hours of rest. A straight week would be better
.

Jax shut his eyes for a moment.

At least he believed a couple of seconds had passed when he jerked awake to an empty room. The smell of freshly fried bacon and eggs wafted into the room.

“What!” His heart almost beat out of his chest. Jax scrambled to put his glasses back on and yanked at a Post-It his father must have stuck to his forehead.

This name seems familiar!
  His father wrote,
Find this kid’s name and look into his medical records
.

Groggy from lack of sleep, Lane made her way down the cabin’s curvy, tree-trunk staircase and prayed for caffeine. All night she had tossed and turned. Thoughts of Parker marrying her for some nefarious reason had kept her awake. After some consideration, she doubted Johnny Mac was the only intended victim of that hit.

Lane shuffled into the den, positive that was where everyone would be. But she found an easel with a beautiful oil painting of the Thornbird cabin in the middle of the room.

In the picture, snow fell upon a majestic house, while a brilliant full moon brightened the whole wonderful scene. She plucked a note off the easel.

May you forget the past and focus on the brave new future…love Dottie
.

When Jax mentioned his mother dabbled with colors, she hadn’t imagined anything this grand. Better than Thomas Kinkade could come up with. Lane admired the painting in front of her.

Touched by the sentiment, she choked back tears. A deep-seated urgency to find Dottie overwhelmed her. Lane snatched open the cabin’s back door and watched the snowflakes fall at a quick clip.

Covered in only her warm thermal pajamas, she walked into serene silence, which encapsulated the land. She basked in the wonder of it all as the sound of steel cutting through air told her where to go.

“Dottie, Truman!” She ran toward the cleared off landing.

A helicopter lowered down at least a football field away from the house. White fluff twirled around her as she closed the gap between her and the couple. Right before they boarded, Lane gathered Dottie into a fierce hug and held on tight.

“Why did you break up?” she said into the older woman’s ear. She needed confirmation of love since the couple made so much sense together.

“Rich people,” Jax’s mother told her. “I wanted to love my man and my kids on my terms. I didn’t want to follow anyone’s made-up rules. Damn near thirty years later, I can say not only was I stubborn but wrong to allow them to push me out.” Dottie kissed her on the cheek before she left. “Take care, dear.”

Truman grabbed his ex-wife’s hand with an endearing smile and helped her onto the bird. She backed away as blustery weather mingled with the snow. The fast moving blades whipped everything into a frenzy.

Lane stumbled.

She almost fell but he caught her. Jax pulled her away from the strong winds of the helicopter and closer to him.

Together, they watched the aircraft hover off the ground and lift into the snow-covered sky above.

***

“A steady stream of mild snowfall for the next couple of hours will change to whiteout conditions….” Jax listened to the radio while he loaded the dishwasher with the breakfast dishes. He wanted to get some target practice in with Lane, but after his parents’ departure, she had disappeared somewhere inside the house.

From the beginning of their odd journey, he had yet to witness her in a bad mood, but today Lane seemed a bit off. She hadn’t eaten much for breakfast and said even less. Jax decided she could use something to lift her spirits, and shooting at stuff usually did the trick for him. Maybe he could get her to relax and talk about her past.

The notification for a face to face on his laptop chimed. He wiped his hands on a dishtowel and reached over the counter to hit the accept button for the chat.

“You look like shit, Thornbird.” Raff eyed him through the computer screen.

“Being on the run from the law has its downside.”

Raff chomped on a shiny Granny Smith apple while he complained.

“I got to tell you, Jax, if you want to stay on the lam for a while longer, Ralph and I have no complaints about the amenities.” She looked behind her at his firehouse. “Nate did one hell of a job designing this place. If he ever gets tired of being a lawyer, I got this guy.”

Too tired to finish the joke where she didn’t in fact have a guy, he allowed the awkward silence to grow. Raff’s delicate but worn face slipped a notch, showing the true weight of her worries.

“You really do look like shit,” she repeated.

“Flesh wound,” he muttered. “I’m a smidge raw and red, but everything is in working condition.” He gave his partner a half-smile while he tried to convince her it wasn’t too bad. “How’s Sherman?” In previous conversations, he had taken great pains to avoid the topic, afraid the news would be something he wasn’t prepared to deal with.

“No change. He’s still in a medically-induced coma.”

Jax wasn’t sure how he felt about his initial diagnosis but decided to settle for the simple grace that Sherman was alive to fight another day.

“Give me time and I should know something about his shooting, at least I hope.” Raff shrugged. “And now that we’re done with the pleasantries, do you want the bad news or worse news?”

He didn’t want either. “Lay it on me.”

“Well, I did what you asked and checked for any missing persons who worked for Lockland Medical Group.”

“And you got a hit.”

Raff pulled a flyer in front of the screen, a hard-to-make-out black and white.

“It’s kinda of fuzzy.” He squinted to get a better look.

“I’m sending it to you.” She typed on her keyboard. “Right now.”

As his email chimed, Raff took another bite from her apple. She chewed obnoxiously loud while he checked his phone for the picture.

“Tara Penske from Michigan.” He read her stats. The woman’s resemblance was eerily similar to Lane. Except for Tara’s waify appearance, she may have been a good seventy pounds less with lighter hair coloring. Take away those small differences and they could have passed for sisters.

He flipped through a couple of attachment photos. The knot in his stomach tightened. It became clear to him the main target in this mess was Lane. “Any theories?” he asked his partner.

“Not yet,” she replied. “It would help if Sherman woke up to provide some info.” Raff dragged her hand across her face and sighed. “As much as I love your house, I’m going to go bat-shit living here with Ralph. Now I remember why I left home at eighteen.”

“Hey!” Her brother yelled from the belly of his fire station.

Raff waved her brother’s hurt feelings away and went back to laying out the evidence they had found so far.

“I’ve got something else for you to check out. John Doe—”

Raff groaned. “John Does are too frickin’ hard.”

He understood his partner’s aggravations. Sympathetic to a point, he worked past his partner’s meltdown. If the shoe had been on the other foot, he would have welcomed her to hopscotch all over the country to keep ahead of the Chicago PD. “John Doe,” he repeated, “9003582-1.”

“What is this?”

“My dad has a hunch. Don’t knock a news junky?”

Raff curled her lip in a snarky smirk. She had no respect for armchair detectives. Jax ignored her and pushed on. “Check the summer months for any news reports about someone missing around this guy’s age. If my dad remembers it, then it must have been a big news story. I got an idea some of these John Does were mislabeled on purpose.”

Raff nodded, it would be the closest thing to an agreement his father could be on to something.

“Okay,” she said. “While I look this up, I’ll check on any updates about Sherman’s condition.”

“Great,” he told her, antsy to get off the computer. He wanted to find Lane.

“Jax, it could have been one of our guys.”

“One of our guys, what?” Slow to respond, he didn’t process what she said.

Raff checked the room for her brother—he assumed to make sure they were alone. She moved closer to the screen. “One of our guys shot Sherman. I hacked his phone, and your cell number was the last he called.”

“But you went to the crime scene and said his log was empty.” He made sure he had several burner phones at his disposal since he’d gone on the run. Sherman wouldn’t have been able to reach him regardless of the call, but that fact didn’t lessen his impending impression of guilt.

“Yeah. Weird, right? So, I got into his phone records. He must have been shot while calling you.”

“Shit,” he hissed.

“One more thing,” Raff said. “The mark Lane got killed, the dead cheating husband, Johnny Mac.”

“She didn’t get the guy killed,” he corrected her.

“Tomatoes to-mah-tos.” She screwed up her face. “Johnny Mac worked for Morgan’s Funeral. He transported bodies from hospitals and the city morgues.”

“Huh?” He wondered aloud, puzzled by this new bit of information. “Who the hell would want to kill a transporter?”

“Good question, and you’ll be the first to find out when I do.” Raff signed off, and the laptop screen went to black.

Heaviness crept into his chest and squeezed his lungs. Adrift in the ocean for too long, he threw the towel across the kitchen. If he had stuck with his own cases and not been so damn eager, he wouldn’t have put everyone in jeopardy.

Sherman could have very well been shot because of him, and Raff tittered close to the edge of falling into the mouth of stir crazy. A weight of responsibility for his ex-partner and present partner played on his conscious.

With too much aggression pent-up inside of him, he set off to find Lane. He needed to shoot something before the weather got too bad.

***

Lane stood outside. She gripped the handle of the gun as soft perfect flakes hit the ground. After his parents left, she’d hid in her room for the rest of the morning until Jax made her come out.