The Darkest Link (Second Circle Tattoos) (25 page)

They’d barely spoken about the trip. Reid had told her he was going, said it was time to take care of business. And that she understood. But she was in no place to predict how he would behave once he came face-to-face with his father. It stung a little that he hadn’t asked her to go with him for moral support. Yet she also understood that it was something Reid and Harper had to do alone.

“I have no idea how things are going to go,” she said, taking a seat across from him. “Reid has said some pretty heavy stuff about his father, and I know he’s all out of energy because of everything with the garage. But I do know he loves his sister deeply. He isn’t going to do anything that will leave her exposed again, especially now that he suspects Winston is involved with all this.”

Trent took off his baseball hat, ran his fingers through his hair, and placed it back on his head. He stood and stretched. “Your boyfriend had better take care of her, Lia, because I might just have to kick his ass if he doesn’t.”

The rest of the day passed by uneventfully. She did one small finger tattoo and did some sketches for a client who wanted some work done in a few weeks. Hopefully she would be all better by then. She texted her mom to see how she was and didn’t get a reply. The lack of response was unusual for her mom, her phone being her only real contact with the outside world on a daily basis. It worried her to the point where she couldn’t shift the heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach, and the idea of going home while not knowing where her mother was didn’t sit well. At the end of the shift, she called a cab and headed over to Star Island.

Damn,
her father’s car was in the driveway. She let herself into the house, calling her mother’s name as she walked from room to room. The first place she checked was the greenhouse. Lia looked at the empty table where her mother’s prized orchids had sat and shook her head.

She walked through the kitchen next, half-expecting to see her mom puttering about there, but there was no sign of her. Lia took out her phone, dialed her mom’s number, and started to walk faster. She took the stairs two at a time, a sick feeling growing in her gut. Hearing ringing ahead of her, she ran down the hall toward her mom’s bedroom. She pushed open the door and found her mother tucked into bed. And her father sitting in the chair in the corner.

“What the hell, Dad? What’s wrong with Mom?”

“I just got home and found her like this. She’s breathing.”

Lia ran over to the bed and put a finger to her mom’s wrist and found her pulse slow and steady.

“Mom,” she said, her own heart racing. “Mom, wake up. You’re scaring me.”

There was no response. Lia placed her hands on her mother’s shoulders and shook her. “MOM!” Nothing. Help. They needed help.

“Dad. Call 911. Now,” she said, her voice trembling.

“She’s alive, Lia. There is no need to panic,” he said. For all the concern in his voice, he could have been discussing the grocery list.

Lia continued to attempt to get her mother’s attention, patting her on the cheek firmly and shaking her. She glanced over her shoulder and found her father still fixed in the chair, looking down at his fingernails. “DAD. Please. Move. Get your phone.”

“This is nothing more than momentary silliness, Lia. It helps no one if we overreact.”

He still didn’t move. She wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt that he was in shock, too, but his words were too calculated. With trembling hands, Lia reached for her purse, which she’d dropped on the way in, and grabbed her phone.

“Don’t. Lia,” her father warned, his tone frigid.

She stared at her father but continued to dial. “You’d better not be telling me to not call for an ambulance for Mom,” Lia said, her voice remarkably controlled in contrast to the rest of her.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s clear she took one or two pills too many. But she’s still breathing. For the sake of everybody involved, I think we should let her sleep it off.”

Lia gave the operator the details of her mom’s condition and asked for an ambulance. After she hung up, she turned to her father.

Disgust flooded her. The man in the chair, a stranger. He sat rigid, staring her down.

“Call. Them. Back,” he snarled. “Cancel the ambulance. Tell them it was a fainting spell. That she’s fine.”

“She could die, Dad. How can you not care about that? You might not love her, but she’s loved you all these years. Doesn’t that at least count for something?” she shouted, swiping at the single tear that had escaped and was making its way down her cheek.

“If she loved me, she wouldn’t cause a scene like this.” He jabbed angrily toward the bed.

The menace in his tone set her on edge. As much as she loved and wanted to protect her mom, the fear in her belly told her to get closer to the bedroom door.

She stood, and slowly made her way away from him. “We don’t know what she’s taken. She probably at least needs her stomach pumped. You’re more terrified that the media will find out she overdosed—which we don’t know for sure is what happened—and that sickens me. Believe me when I say that if Mom dies, I will remember every single moment of this conversation. I’m going to remember you telling me not to call 911. I’m going to remember you sitting in that chair doing nothing.”

* * *

Sunday morning, Reid woke up feeling lighter than he had in years. His father had admitted to Harper what he’d set into play. It had been gut-wrenchingly awful to watch his dad, mom, and Harper fall apart at the seams.

Harper couldn’t get past the fact her father had attempted to protect her at Reid’s expense. She’d turned her face toward Reid, tears filling her eyes, and apologized that she’d withheld the smallest part of her heart from him, just in case he’d been exaggerating the events that had happened.

The conversation had gone well into the night, and it had been around two in the morning by the time he made it back to the hotel.

Ironically, somewhere between arriving and seeing Jackson standing on the porch and leaving Harper tucked up in her old childhood bedroom, Reid had had an epiphany. For years, he’d carried a stomach-churning dislike of his father, but watching his father fall apart, hearing him apologize for a complete lack of understanding, and seeing the fear in his eyes when he realized he was at risk of losing his daughter melted it all away. Suddenly, all Reid had wanted was to bring his family back together.

So he accepted his father’s apology.

Everything he’d carried with him for all that time suddenly seemed far less important than Harper having the wedding she deserved and his mom still having a husband she adored. And if that meant swallowing all the words he’d been perfecting over the years, words filled with retribution and anger, words designed to hurt his father, then that’s what he’d do. Because being right was nowhere near as important as his mom’s and sister’s happiness.

It was likely going to take his mom longer to get over what had happened. She’d been furious, talking to her husband through gritted teeth like she used to do to him when he’d been younger. She’d never yelled, never shouted, but if the hiss came out, he knew he was in all kinds of shit. Reid had pleaded for a peaceful reconciliation and ironically had been the one to suggest that his mom sleep on the idea and try to see the events in the context of their relationship together. By the time he’d left, it seemed like a pathway was there, even if they hadn’t yet walked it.

He had one more meeting to go before they left for Miami. Harper was catching up with her former best friend, and he had an off-the-record appointment with a lawyer.

Lydia Grayson was a tour de force, and as Harper’s former lawyer, she was the one person who could help him with his final concern. He showered and headed into the city.

“Reid,” Lydia said, standing to shake his hand as he arrived at Lou Mitchell’s Restaurant by Union Station. It had been his favorite post-hangover joint when he was younger.

“Lydia, thanks so much of meeting with me on a Sunday.”

They took their seats and ordered. Out of habit, Reid requested his favorite. The Greek sausage special omelet was a massive plate, and he’d missed it.
Shit
. He’d missed this city so much, a freaking omelet was making him nostalgic. They made small talk until their meals arrived. Lydia was interested in learning how the two of them had been reunited from his perspective, as Harper had already shared the news with her. Lydia laughed when he explained how Trent had punched him in the jaw.

“I’ve only met Trent once, but I can completely imagine him doing that, not that I condone violence in any way,” she said with a grin. “I think he’s good for her. Don’t you?”

“I do,” he said, truly believing it. There might even come a point where they could be considered friends.

Their food came and they began to eat.

“So, what is it I can help you with?” Lydia asked him between mouthfuls of her eggs Benedict.

“I wondered what the statute of limitations is on obstruction.”

Lydia eyed him over the top of her glasses. “Am I going to like where this is going?”

“Let’s do this in hypotheticals. Imagine a guy’s sister was assaulted, and the assailant was caught and sent to prison. But the guy never told the police he’d seen the assailant the night before. That he’d refused to give more money for drugs, and sent him home.”

Lydia stopped eating, her fork paused in midair. “This is all hypothetical, yes?”

“Of course. And what if that guy went to the assailant’s father—”

“Reid,” she cautioned.

“I know, I just gotta ask. What if that guy went to the assailant’s father, and the assailant’s father promised to not press charges against his sister if the guy forgot about having seen the assailant that night?”

“You didn’t . . .” Lydia started. “I mean, the guy didn’t accept the deal, did he?”

Reid nodded. “He did.”

Lydia sat and chewed some food. “Does the sister know about this?”

“The guy might have made the sister aware a long, long time later. Like a month ago.”

Lydia shook her head. “We might have been able to put him away for longer, Reid,” Lydia said, abandoning the hypothetical scenario.

He nodded. He’d realized that on the day of sentencing. “I know, but I think the assailant would have come for the sister sooner or later, no matter when he got out,” Reid said, getting them back on track.

“I don’t disagree with you on that one.” Lydia took a drink of coffee. “The statute of limitations for obstruction is five years. And it wouldn’t have affected the assailant’s trial for skipping out on probation . . . should the hypothetical assailant have done that, of course.”

“So regardless of what happens from here on out, the guy who should’ve spoken up to the police is cool.”

“Yes and no. The statute is a ticking clock. If you build . . . Sorry, if the hypothetical guy builds on the obstruction in a future conversation or trial, the five-year clock starts ticking again. So the guy needs to be really careful what he says going forward.”

Relief rushed through him. Two of the things that had blighted his life for the last six years were over. He’d been reunited with his family, and even though they had a long way to go, he was sure they’d make it through. And the fear that he would, at some point in the future, be charged with obstruction had just been resolved. “In that case, I’m pretty sure the guy would ensure that he never talked about it again, ever. To anyone. No matter what they asked of him.”

They finished their breakfast, and Reid paid for the food. It was the least he could do for the assurances Lydia had been able to provide. They walked out of the café, about to go their separate ways.

“Hey, Reid,” Lydia said. “I like to say this to all of my clients. I hope I never see you again. Because if I do, it means you have pretty serious problems. I don’t want to find that hypothetical guy we’ve been talking about in my office anytime soon.”

Reid laughed. “Me, either,” he said, shaking her hand.

For a moment, Reid chose to forget that he had a whole world of hurt to resolve in Fort Pierce with the garage. And he was going to forget about Nathan and Winston Bell. Instead, he was going to take a walk and see if he could grab a scalped ticket to go see his beloved Cubs at Wrigley Field for the first time in six years. There was no way he was going to get to see the entire game, but he might just be able to catch the first couple of innings before he had to go and get Harper and get them back to O’Hare for the flight back to Miami that evening. No sooner was the iconic red marquee over the main entrance in sight than his phone began to ring in his pocket.

He pulled it out and checked the screen. It was his sister.

“Yo,” he said. “Just about to try and grab tickets at
the friendly confines
. Want me to try and grab you one, too?”

“You’re at Wrigley Field?”

“Standing outside it right now. What’s up? You sound a little off, and we both know Trent will kick my ass if I take you home unhappy.”

“I think you should give Lia a call. Her mom is in the hospital.”

* * *

“Lia, quickly,” her mom whispered, casting furtive glances toward the door to her hospital room, through which her father had just exited. “I need you to get my meds. This makes no sense at all, but I swear to God I didn’t try to kill myself. I can never remember my medication, so I bought this plastic tray, you know the ones with days of the week on it. I fill it once a week and keep it in the bedside table.”

Nausea rose in Lia’s stomach like it had been doing for the last hour. Greasy roiling waves that left her desperately unsettled. With one eye on the door, Lia moved close to the bed. “Mom, you know I can’t do that for you. What if you . . . ?”

“What if I take them all?” Her mom shook her head at the suggestion. “Just bring them to me. I want to count them. You can take them all home with you when you leave. Or you can hand them in at the nurses’ station, I don’t care. But please believe me, I didn’t—”

The door swung open, and her father returned to the room. Uncertain what to believe, conflicting emotions of anger and fear squeezed Lia tightly. She took a step closer to the bed. Regardless of why or how her mom had taken the drugs they’d pumped from her body, she was vulnerable.