Read The Caledonian Inheritance (The Athena Effect) Online
Authors: Derrolyn Anderson
Layla slumped back into her seat, meeting Cali’s eyes. “I have to get out of town… He won’t quit now… Now that he knows I’m alive he wants to kill me.”
“Wh
o?” Ramon was alarmed. “The Professor?”
Caledonia shook her head no. “Just drop it for now.
They’ll never believe us.”
~
Ramon pulled up to the police station and parked in front. “You’re gonna need to leave your weapon in the car,” he advised Cali.
“
I already stashed it,” she replied.
The cousins stayed side by side, taking a seat in the receiving area while Ramon went to speak to his fellow officers. “Don’t worry,” Cali
told Layla, “We’ll make this quick.”
“How did you find me?” Layla asked.
“The DEA had a tracker on your car,” Cali explained.
“That’s good,” Layla said, no more surprised about it than her cousin had been. “But how did you find the room?”
“Ramon had a hunch. Thank God for him… If he hadn’t shown up for your date I’d have had no idea what happened to you.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was so stupid.”
Cali put a reassuring arm around her, pale blue with sympathy. “It’s okay. I know how much you wanted to find your father.”
“So did Teddy,” she replied, his name bitter on her tongue.
Ramon returned to them, and they could both see that he was seething with anger.
Caledonia looked up in alarm.
“What happened?”
“The man in the hotel
room… His name is Joe Stewart. He’s a private detective in town from Los Angeles.”
“
That makes sense,” Cali nodded.
“He’s claiming that she’s a working girl,” Ramon said through gritted
teeth.
“Working?”
“A prostitute,” he scowled. “He’s telling them that he contracted with Layla for sex… And get this– He’s claiming that Reed is her pimp, and that he set up their date. He says that if we press charges the professor will back up his story!”
Caledonia didn’t think she could hate professor Reed any more than she already did, and if she ever had a
nother chance, she could imagine cheerfully slicing him into little bloody bits.
“Let’s get
out of here,” Layla said urgently. She was jumpy, looking over her shoulder nervously every time a car drove past the station.
Ramon was indignant, “No
way! You need to press charges! We need to fight this thing!”
Cali and Layla exchanged a look. They didn’t share the faith that Ramon had in the system; neither one of them had ever seen it work in their favor.
One of the policemen from the hotel room came in and pulled Ramon aside, “I hate to break it to you, but it looks like this guy’s got a pretty believable story.”
“He’s lying!” Ramon raised his voice.
The officer looked over towards Layla and back at Ramon, lowering his, “How well do you know this girl anyway?” He leaned in to speak conspiratorially, “Listen, from one cop to another, he says she specializes in real kinky stuff. He claims that everything was consensual… She’s a high class hooker that specializes in S&M.” The man looked back over his shoulder at Layla with a smirk, his avid, prying eyes making Ramon want to pound the look off his face.
“She was drugged and kidnapped!” Ramon exclaimed, fighting to control his temper.
“Look buddy, it’s her word against his, and to be honest with you, it doesn’t look too good for her. She drove herself to the hotel
and
she declined to provide us with a rape kit. Unless she can prove that she’s been violated, we’re gonna have to drop the charges against him.”
“She was held against her will!” Ramon cried.
“Apparently that’s all part of her little act. Stewart’s attorney has a clerk at a local sex shop willing to testify that a redhead bought all that bondage stuff from him today… He’s willing to I.D. her. Now, you’re not gonna make me bring him in for a lineup… are you?”
“
He has an attorney already?”
“Yeah,
some high class lawyer showed up before we even got this guy booked. Looks like our john has friends in high places.”
“I told you– she’s not a hooker!” Ramon exclaimed.
The detective lowered his voice, “Hey! Don’t shoot the messenger… All I’m sayin’ is that this lawyer has connections, if you know what I mean. He can make a lot of trouble for your girlfriend here. If she presses charges he insists that we book her for solicitation as well… Just to be fair.”
“What?!”
“Listen, as a personal favor to you the chief will let the girl walk if she agrees not to work in this town again. She’s lucky that the DA is willing to drop the whole thing.”
Ramon looked over at Layla, sitting next to Cali with her head resting on her cousin’s shoulder. Her
coppery hair was tangled, her blouse torn, and mascara was smudged under her shell-shocked eyes. She looked so traumatized and vulnerable that he couldn’t bring himself to add to her grief. Caledonia’s eyes met his with an “I told you so” look in them.
It went against everything he believed, but there was no going back now. “Alright. We’re out of here,” he told the officer.
~
They pulled up next to Layla’s car, and Cali offered to drive it home. “Do you want to come with me?” she asked her cousin. Layla looked over at Ramon.
“I’ll take you,” he said.
“I
want to stay with him,” Layla answered.
They watched as she drove away, and Ramon turned to get a good look at Layla. “When’s the last time you ate anything?” he asked her.
“I just want to get into a hot shower,” she said, shivering.
“You need to eat,” he said,
turning on the heater. He drove down the road a little while, finally turning into the driveway of a nearby fast food place. “What looks good?” he asked her, gesturing towards a giant plastic menu. The lit up pictures combined with the smell of frying food made her stomach growl.
“I don’t know… What do you like?”
A crackling voice on the loudspeaker made her jump, and she watched as Ramon leaned his head out the window and spoke into a metal grid. When they pulled away she asked him why they were leaving. He rolled to a stop at a window on the side of the building, looking over at her. “You’ve never been to a drive-through, have you?” he asked.
She shook her head no, her eyes big in her pale face.
He paid and handed her a couple of sacks before pulling back out onto the busy street. A few minutes later he turned into a lighted parking lot to stop and rummage through the bags. “I hope chocolate’s okay,” he said, sticking a straw through the plastic lid of a shake and handing it to her.
They sat and ate delicious
greasy cheeseburgers wrapped in paper and shared some fries from the bottom of a cardboard box. Layla finally stopped shivering as warmth seeped into her body and color returned to her cheeks. Ramon watched her closely, relieved to see the life creep back into her eyes.
He
told her how Sherriff Brown had a theory that cheeseburgers were the cure for most of life’s problems, and Layla nodded solemnly in agreement. Warm and full, she finally sighed with relief, wiping her fingers on the paper napkins and finishing her shake with a loud slurp that made them both laugh.
“Ramon?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for finding me.”
He reached up to stroke her cheek with the back of his hand, flooding her with pretty purple affection overpowered by loving pink concern. “You have no idea how scared I was,” he said, but he was wrong.
She did.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, turning her face away, ashamed.
He leaned over to kiss her cheek. “You have nothing to be sorry for,”
he whispered into her ear. He pulled back and started the car. “Let’s get you home.”
~
Chapter Twenty-Three
TRUTH TELLING
~
Caledonia pulled up in front of the house, first spotting an unfamiliar car in the driveway and then a lone figure rising from the porch to greet her. Calvin was waiting out front, and she could see the relief flooding out of him. She stepped from Layla’s car and into his welcoming arms, surprised by the sudden intensity of his embrace.
“Is Layla gonna be okay?” he finally asked.
“I think so. She’s with Ramon.”
He pulled back to take her face between his hands and kiss her gently, touching h
er heart with his melancholy tenderness.
“What was that for?” she asked.
“I missed you. I hate coming home when you’re not here.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t just the dinner you missed?” she joked, but he didn’t laugh. He wrapped his a
rms around her again and pulled her close, dropping his head to bury his face in her hair.
“Hey,” she
turned her head to speak into his ear. “You okay?”
He
gestured to the visitor’s car. “Every time I think we’re in the clear more trouble comes along.”
“I know,” she said,
heaving a sigh and slipping her arm around his waist. She snuggled into his side as they walked up the drive towards the house. When she stepped inside she looked around, “So where is this FBI agent?”
He gestured up the stairs with a toss of his head, “It’s the weirdest thing. I told Michael to keep her busy, and the next thing I know they’re up in his room. I can hear them laughing
in there, but I have no idea what’s going on.”
“
I told Layla I’d get rid of her.”
“
Maybe Michael’s finally getting lucky,” Calvin flashed a faint smile.
Caledonia raised an amused eyebrow,
“I suppose I could leave well enough alone.”
The oven
timer started beeping. “You hungry?” Calvin asked. “It’s only frozen pizza…”
“
That’s fine.” She sat down and watched him check inside the oven. When he returned to the table her face had grown serious.
“I’m afraid I have more bad news,” she said
gravely.
Calvin sat down and covered her hand with his. “I
know. Just tell me.”
She took a deep breath, “Professor Reed didn’t kidnap Layla for himself. He took her for someone else.”
“Who?
When she told him he blanched.
~
Ramon and Layla arrived to find the two Cals sitting at the kitchen table with a pizza between them. Cali looked up with a sympathetic smile, relieved to see her cousin looking so much better.
“Hungry?” she asked.
“No thanks,” Layla said.
Ramon’s eyes cast around the room warily. “Where’s Agent Kim?”
Before they had a chance to answer, Calvin glanced up to see a pretty girl with
a long black ponytail come bounding down the stairs with Michael right on her heels. They were lighthearted, giggling like a couple of teenagers, but the girl stopped in her tracks when she saw the serious little group, and by the time she stepped off the last stair all the joviality had slipped from her eyes and her face was arranged into a serious mask.
She cleared her throat, taking them in one by one, but focusing the full force of her suspicious attention onto Layla.
“Hey everyone… What’s going on?” Michael asked, doing a double take at his disheveled sister. “Layla! What happened to you?”
Agent Kim
studied the girl she’d come to interrogate, surprised. Gone was the pulled together preppy she’d seen on the jailhouse surveillance tape. In her place was a shell-shocked waif; the girl looked like she’d been to hell and back, staring over at her with sad haunted eyes.
Cali wiped her hands on a napkin and stood up. Layla could see the colors welling up
within her as she rounded the table towards Agent Kim. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she extended her hand. “I’m Layla’s cousin Cali.”
“Mina Kim,” she replied
, shaking Caledonia’s hand with a firm grip. The first thing she thought when she looked into the girl’s blue and green eyes was how striking they were. The second thing she thought was that everything was going to be just fine. An immense feeling of well-being started coursing through her, making the whole idea of questioning Layla seem trivial, insignificant and unimportant.
Michael looked back and forth between the two of them nervously.
Cali gestured around the group. “This is Calvin, and Layla, and you already know Ramon.”
She nodded, “Officer Ruiz.”
“Anybody want some pizza?” Calvin asked.
“We just ate,” Ramon said, watching the interaction between Cali and Agent Kim with fascination. Anyone else would have seen a guest put completely at ease by a gracious host, but now that Ramon knew what Cali was capable of, it was obvious what she’d just done.
“Mina came over to ask Layla a few questions,” Michael explained.