“Lacey wanted me to ask you to go easy on Zee,” he said.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“We’re all leaving tomorrow, but you’ll still be here. We want her cooperation, but not at the cost of her mental health.”
“You seriously think I’d do something untoward to her? To one of our father’s victims?”
“No, no. Of course not. It’s just… Your way of getting your way is usually…you know. Sexual.”
He wasn’t wrong. “I believe I can seduce her,” I said.
“I believe you can too. That’s not the point. The question is whether you should.”
“Look,” I said. “I feel just as bad for Zee as the rest of you do. She had the shitty luck to come into contact with Derek Wolfe, and she paid the price. But if we look at it another way, she was actually really lucky. She lived through the ordeal, and as far as we know, no one else did.”
“Doesn’t mean she owes us anything.”
“Did I say that? But all of our lives are on the line here, including your wife’s. We’re all implicated, and if Zee has information that would clear us, we need it.”
“She doesn’t have that kind of info, Reid,” Rock said. “All she has is her own story.”
“Which will prove what kind of guy Dad was, and that there were many more out there who wanted him dead.”
“But there aren’t. Not with Zee’s story, anyway. They’re all dead. Hunted and killed. The only thing Zee’s story will do is make her a suspect instead of us.”
Again, Rock was not wrong. We could easily prove Zee wasn’t in New York the night of the murder, but what good would her story do other than to fuck with Dad’s character? It still wouldn’t absolve any of us of the crime. In fact, it would only give us more of a motive to off the psycho.
Something niggled at the back of my neck. That something called a conscience, which right now I wished I didn’t have.
“Why?” I asked Rock. “Why didn’t any one of us inherit Dad’s lack of conscience?”
“It’d make this a lot easier if we had.”
Truth be told, I was probably the closest to Dad’s lack of conscience. On more than one occasion, I’d ignored the angel on my shoulder in favor of the devil. Usually for business, though, not for personal gain. And never for sexual gain. I’d never bedded a woman without her explicit consent.
But wasn’t this business? I couldn’t run this business from a prison cell. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to prison for killing the bastard when my hands were sparkling clean.
Okay, maybe not sparkling, but still clean. I hated the mofo, but I didn’t kill him. Neither did Rock, Roy, Riley, or Lacey. I believed all of them. Hell, Lacey didn’t even have any motive.
“So about Zee,” Rock was saying.
“What about her?”
“We can sure use her story, but please don’t push her.”
“Is this you or the wife talking?”
“Both, to be honest, but Riley most of all.”
Riley. My kid sister, who had suffered more at our father’s hands than the three of us guys combined.
Riley, who I used to envy because of our father’s attention.
Boy, had I been dead-ass wrong.
For Riley, I’d do anything.
Even this.
“All right, brother. For Riley. Tell her I’ll treat Zee with kid gloves.”
It was a promise I knew I’d keep.
Didn’t mean I wouldn’t sleep with her, though.
5
Zee
That innocent eighteen-year-old girl had a plan.
Acceptance to Smith. Yeah, it was an all-girls school, but she didn’t worry about that. She looked at it as a gift. She’d be forced to spend more time on her studies. Her beauty wouldn’t be a hindrance in a group of all women. No one would envy her for the physical characteristics she couldn’t control.
The girl had aced the SAT and ACT, hitting a perfect score on the latter. She wanted to break free from the acting and modeling career her mother had forced on her and expand her horizons.
Turned out, though, that the acting and modeling stuff had helped her in the long run. She’d been homeschooled by a qualified teacher, and she was way ahead of her public school educated colleagues. Hence the amazing scores on the standardized college admission tests.
She was always bright. But even her intelligence couldn’t make an actress out of her. She didn’t have that kind of talent, and she just wasn’t interested. She wanted more. She wanted to help others. What better way than to become a physician? A healer? She dreamed of bringing new lives into the world, so she’d already decided that when—not if—she made it to medical school, she’d specialize in obstetrics.
Her mother was against Smith.
Her mother was against a career in medicine.
But the girl was eighteen. She could make her own decisions. Her own choices.
Her first choice was to leave acting and modeling behind.
No more auditions.
No more dieting.
No more dance classes.
Though she’d actually enjoyed the dance classes. She was a capable dancer, and she’d reaped the benefit of the hard work for the last ten years. Her body was toned and muscled.
But she just wouldn’t have time for dancing as she embarked on her new life.
Her brief foray into modeling had given her a lovely wardrobe, and she packed all of her clothes into her car for the road trip to Smith.
Her mother refused to go with her. Refused even to co-sign on her student loans.
No problem. She’d get deferments until she was done with school altogether, and as a physician, she’d be able to pay off the loans in a reasonable amount of time.
She and her mother said their goodbyes. There was no hug. No handshake, even.
Just a goodbye.
They both seemed okay with that.
The girl drove herself into the city. She’d been there many times before, to meet with agents, but she’d never done the tourist thing.
She wanted to visit the Statue of Liberty, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ground Zero, the MOMA—so she allotted herself three days in Queens in the only hotel she could afford, and she learned the subway system to see her heart’s desire.
She ate the best bagel she’d ever tasted at a deli. Okay, maybe it was the best because at least five years had passed since she last ate a bagel. Still, it was delicious with the smear of cream cheese and the zing of poppy seeds.
She ate a hot dog from a street vendor. Then a slice of New York-style pizza.
She laughed, knowing what any agent—or her mother—would say about these treats.
Didn’t matter. That was her old life.
This was the new.
She was exhausted after her first day of tourism. She’d walked miles and miles and breathed in all she could of the beautiful culture of New York.
She perused her guidebook and made plans for the next day, and then she snuggled into the lumpy bed in the cheap room filled with cheap seventies furnishings, and fell into a deep sleep.
When she woke up, she was in the fight of her life.
6