Revenge: A Bad Boy Romance (25 page)

Even the toughest men cracked eventually if you applied the right kind of pressure. I wasn’t proud of the methods I used, but they got results.

Three hours of hunting down leads and interrogating men led me to the only possible conclusion.

It was a conclusion I should have reached a long time ago, but it was so terrifying, so horrid, that I didn’t want to admit it to myself.

I knew who killed Kara.  

There was one man who’d wanted her dead all along. He’d seen her as a distraction, an annoyance, someone I shouldn’t be bothering with.  

Tonight I’d broken bones and seen my fair share of blood, but none of that made me feel as sick as the realization that I knew who the killer was.

Dad.  

It was so fucking obvious that I couldn’t see what had been right under my nose the entire time. No wonder he hadn’t wanted me tracking down her killer.

My own father.  

Kara had actually liked him. She didn’t like who he was, or what he did, but she respected what he had achieved. And I thought he’d liked her. Maybe he had once. Dad was the sort of person who would buy you a beer one minute, and stick a knife in your back the next.

He’d stuck a knife in Kara. More than once. He’d killed her. He’d done it personally, according to the men I’d interrogated.  

Tonight he would find out what it felt like to get a knife in your back.

James told me that Dad was spending the evening at a strip club with his mistress. She worked there apparently, and Dad often spent the evenings hanging out in the back room. That sounded like exactly his idea of a good time.

I drove over to the club, and arrived after it had closed. Dad’s car was still in the parking lot. The front door was unlocked and there were a few cleaners milling around picking up bottles and glasses.

“Leave,” I commanded. I didn’t raise my voice, but everyone quickly took the hint anyway and fled out of the door. If Dad was here often, they were probably used to scenes of violence, and the minimum wage they were paid wasn’t worth the risk of catching a stray bullet.

“Get out here, Dad,” I yelled at the top of my voice. “You and I need to have a little talk.”

I pulled out my gun and felt the weight of it in my hand. The weight put a lot of people off, but I preferred a heavy gun; it reminded you how powerful it could be. When a gun weighed the same as a child’s water pistol, it was too easy to treat it like one.

I heard movement from backstage, and then a door opened.

“What the hell is going--”

I raised my gun and fired.  

-*-

“Wakey, wakey, Dad,” I said, as I poured a glass of cold water over him.

He slowly came to, and then immediately wished he hadn’t.

“You shot me,” he cried out. “You fucking shot me.”

“The bullet went right through your calf. You’ll be fine. I took the liberty of tying you up when you fell unconscious.”

Dad tried to move his arms, but they were handcuffed behind his back to one of the dance poles.  

It wasn’t like he’d be going anywhere with that leg wound, but I didn’t want to risk him pulling out a knife or a gun. I wouldn’t put it past him to have one hidden on him somewhere.

“What the fuck is going on, Denton? Jesus Christ, get me to a fucking hospital.”

“No need for a hospital, Dad. A morgue is the only place you’ll be going, but first, I want to ask you a few questions.”

“You trying to take over? Is that it? I was going to give you everything anyway. You don’t need to do this.”

“Oh, I
do
need to do this. I’ve needed to do this ever since you killed Kara.”

“What the--”

The front door swung open and James came rushing in, panting and out of breath. “Denton,” he yelled, then paused to breath. “What are you doing?”

“Dad killed Kara. It was him all along.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” James said, while Dad just looked up at us both, as if he couldn’t believe what was unfolding in front of his eyes. “Your father would never do such a thing.”

“I followed up those leads you gave me. They all said the same thing. It was him, James. He thought she was a distraction. He wanted her out of the picture.”

“That… that can’t be right,” James said, staring at my dad.  

“It explains why our own men kidnapped and killed Kara. They did it under Dad’s orders.”  

Dad kept moaning in pain and uttering blanket denials that I didn’t want to hear right now. I grabbed an abandoned bra off the floor and shoved it in his mouth to shut him up.

James just stared at Dad, as if he were trying to see the the truth in his eyes.  

“I’m sure there must be some explanation for all this,” James said wearily. He believed it too, and that meant I wasn’t being paranoid. James always kept a cool head; if he thought Dad was guilty then it was almost certainly true.

“The only explanation is that Dad cares more about keeping his organization in line than he does about human lives. He’d kill me if it made him a few bucks.”

Dad shook his head vigorously, but I ignored him. It was too late for denials.

“What are you going to do?” James asked. “You can’t keep him tied up here forever.”

“I don’t intend to.” I looked down at Dad, and placed my foot on his bloody leg, right above the wound. “Dad’s going to answer some questions.”

“Then what?”

“Then I’m going to kill him.”

“No,” a female voice said from the doorway.  

I looked over and saw Chloe standing there looking just as beautiful as the day I met her. She might have been lying to me this entire time, but my feelings for her had been very real. Too real.  

“Get out of here, Chloe. You can arrest me later. Right now, I have business to take care of.”

“You’re not going to kill him,” Chloe said, as she walked towards us. She had a confidence about her I hadn’t seen before. Had the timid thing just been part of the act?  

“I am, Chloe. And nothing you can say will stop me. I don’t have to listen to you anymore.”

“You don’t have to, but you’re going to want to. You’re not going to kill your dad, because he’s not the one who killed Kara.”  

“Then who did?”

Chloe pointed a figure at James. “He did.”

James turned around and looked behind him as if there might be someone else Chloe was pointing at. He then looked back to face me and gave a confused shrug. That pretty much summed up my feelings on the matter as well.

“Chloe, what are you talking about?” I asked. She looked distressed, and exhausted. She obviously hadn’t slept since I’d stormed out of her apartment, but that was no reason to throw accusations like that around. 

“James killed Kara,” Chloe staring at James as she said it. “I think he did it himself, but at the very least he ordered someone else to do it.” 

“Young lady, I think you need to go home and get some rest,” James said calmly. “I don’t know where this has come from, but I can assure you I had nothing to do with Kara’s death. We know who the culprit is now.” 

I trusted James with my life. Literally. James and I often walked into dangerous situations together. I had his back and he had mine. I trusted him more than I trusted my own father, as was evident from the fact that my father was gagged and tied up behind me. 

“Chloe, you must be mistaken,” I said slowly. But she looked so certain. She kept staring at James with a look of pure hatred. That must be how I looked with I thought about Roddy Barton, or Dad for that matter.

“I’m not mistaken,” Chloe snarled. “He did it. And I have proof.”

James flinched in my peripheral vision. That got a reaction. Strange.

“James couldn’t have had anything to do with this,” I insisted. “He couldn’t have.” 

“That man is not James,” Chloe said. “His name is Roddy Barton.” 

James snorted with derision. “Okay, I’m done listening to this nonsense. I tried to be polite but now you really need to leave. Let the grown ups talk.” 

I wanted to take James’ side, but Chloe looked so confident and sure of herself. I’d always known she was clever, but she wasn’t just clever, she was an FBI agent. That had to count for something.

“What proof?” I asked. 

“Denton, you can’t seriously be considering this? How long have we known each other?”

“Ten years,” I replied.

“You haven’t even known her ten weeks. And what’s this nonsense about me being Roddy Barton? I don’t look anything like him for one thing.”

“I’ve never seen him,” I admitted. “I only know second-hand what he looks like.”

“God, you’re fucking serious. You’re taking her word over mine.”

“I trust her,” I replied. Chloe had been lying to me from the moment we met, but I still trusted her completely and utterly when it came to Kara.

“You don’t need to trust me,” Chloe said. “I told you, I have proof.” 

Chloe stepped forward, keeping a close eye on James the whole time. He was starting to sweat. Could this really be true? Roddy Barton had been almost like a myth these past ten years. Coincidentally that was also the amount of time that James had been in our lives. 

Dad once told me James was the most loyal man he had on the team. If James had been working against us this entire time, it would explain a hell of a lot about why we’d been struggling of late.

Chloe handed me her phone, or at least, I assumed it was her phone. It wasn’t the one she normally kept on her, but Chloe having two phones was one of the less surprising things to happen this evening.

“James Bowman doesn’t exist,” Chloe said. “There’s no one in Chicago with that name.”

“I try to keep myself off the radar,” James said. “Glad to see it’s working. I don’t want filth like you digging around in my business.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” I agreed. 

Chloe flicked her thumb across the screen of the phone to the next image. “That’s Roddy Barton’s file. The FBI barely has anything on him, but then they’ve not really looked that hard. They’ve been more concerned with you and your dad. The passport photo is nearly ten years old and he was a lot thinner then. There is a more recent sketch though. We caught one of his men on robbery charges a year or so ago and he provided a description to cut a deal. Look familiar?”

The sketch artist couldn’t have drawn an image that looked more like James if James had actually posed for it. The likeness was unmistakable.