Confessions Of An Old Lady Read online

  “I told you it would work,” was all he said.

  “What would work?” I had just woken up and wasn’t thinking about the conversation we’d just had Wednesday night about the meeting.

  “He agreed to a sit-down with us. But it’s much sooner than we expected. It’s going down tomorrow night…at midnight.”

  That got my attention. I shot bolt upright out of bed. I had to control the panic I was feeling, lest Sonny pick up on it. I took a couple of deep breaths. “Hang on.”

  I set the phone down, reached across to the nightstand, grabbed a ponytail holder, and pulled my messy morning hair up into a high ponytail. I rubbed my eyes and patted at my cheeks to help wake myself up. After another deep breath, I picked the phone back up and placed it on my cheek.

  “So soon?” I tried to sound uber-casual about the whole thing.

  “Yeah, I was surprised too. Guess he wants his son back, eh?” Sonny chuckled at himself.

  Just effing great. Now I had to tell Renley ASAP, so he could organize a raid in under forty-eight hours. Perhaps they were prepared and this wouldn’t be a problem, but I was concerned about the extremely short timetable. On top of that, I also had less than forty-eight hours to figure out a way to keep Sonny out of harm’s way—both from the Monsters of Mayhem and from the DEA. I had no idea how in the world I was going to pull this off.

  “Uh…yeah. That’s great, Sonny. But you’re not going, are you?”

  “Hell, yeah, I’m going! Why wouldn’t I?”

  Yeah…why wouldn’t he? What possible reason was I going to be able to come up with to keep him from going to the meeting?

  “Be-because…” I stuttered. “Because…I’ve got a bad feeling about this meeting, Sonny. You guys are trying to kill each other. They just shot you, for God’s sake! Now, you’re holding his son hostage and you chopped off part of his finger! Do you really think they’re going to just sit down quietly and have a ‘meeting’ with you without trying to kill you again?” All I could do was hope my love and concern for him would be enough to persuade him not to go.

  Silence. No response.

  “Sonny? Did you hear me? I love you, Sonny. I don’t want you to go to this meeting. It could be a trap.”

  “Yeah, I heard you, babe. And I love you too. But if it is a trap, I can’t let my dad walk into it alone. I have to go.”

  “No, you don’t. Make up an excuse. I don’t want you to go, baby, please. I have a bad feeling.”

  Again, silence. Was he considering my plea?

  He sighed. “All right. If it means that much to you. But what am I going to say to Dad? I can’t exactly call in sick.”

  I thought for a moment. “Sure you can. Rather, you tell him I’m sick. I have an idea, but you’ve got to hear me out.” I was nervous all of a sudden, but this was the only thing I could think of on the spur of the moment. “Tell him I’m pregnant.”

  “What? Are you? Pregnant, I mean.” He sounded panicked.

  “No, God no.” At least I was pretty sure I wasn’t. I hadn’t really been keeping track of my periods, but I was on the pill and was pretty sure I hadn’t missed any…pretty sure.

  “How is telling my dad that you’re pregnant when you’re really not going to convince him that I should stay back from the meeting? And what are we going to tell him when he realizes that you’re not pregnant?”

  “One thing at a time. You just tell him I just found out I’m pregnant and that I’m really sick. Tell him you’re worried about leaving me all alone and that in case something goes down, you don’t want to leave your future son a bastard. He’ll understand that. Then, later we can just tell him it was a false alarm. He’ll understand that too.”

  “No, he’ll be disappointed. He’s wanted grandkids ever since I graduated high school. But still…it might work. But Trish…I still don’t feel right staying back from the meeting. I’m vice president of this club. If anything did jump off, I’d never forgive myself for not being there.”

  “You’re right. You’re the VP. Which is exactly another reason why you shouldn’t go. Tell Leroy you’ve got to stay behind…for preservation of the legacy. If, and only if, something was to go down, someone would have to be here to pick up the pieces and keep the club going. It would be insanity to put both of you at risk. Where would the club be if they lost both of you?” That argument sounded even better than I had intended. Especially since I came up with it on the fly.

  “You know what? That actually does make sense. All right. I’ll talk to Dad as soon as we hang up. He’ll agree. Especially when I point out the whole legacy thing. He’ll probably wish he’d thought of it himself.”

  “Good.” I felt a wave of relief wash over me. Now, if Renley could pull together a tactical team in time to raid the meeting, Sonny wouldn’t be there and he’d be safe not only from them, but from whatever the Monsters might have planned for them.

  But when we hung up the phone, my elation was short-lived. It hit me almost immediately that now I had an even bigger problem on my hands. What was going to happen to me, to Sonny, and to the assignment after the meeting? If Renley and the full force of the DEA came to bear on the club the next night, did that mean my assignment was over? If so, Renley would pull me out of Nicholasville faster than I could spell m-o-t-o-r-c-y-c-l-e and then would I ever see Sonny again? Not likely.

  So now what? My next job was to call Renley, inform him about the meeting, and try to convince him there was some merit in letting me stay in Nicholasville to continue the investigation into the club. But Leroy was going to be caught up in the raid, so theoretically the assignment would be over. I just had to convince him, once he realized that Sonny wasn’t at the meeting, that I should stay and continue on with the investigation, ostensibly to “try to take Sonny down.”

  Would that even work? I wasn’t sure, but it was my only option for not blowing this investigation, but still being able to stay with Sonny…at least until I could figure out something more long-term.

  I picked up the white iPhone.

  Chapter 22

  “Tomorrow night?” Renley asked, shock evident in his voice. “Goddamnit, Rockford, how am I supposed to get a full tactical team ready in less than forty-eight hours?”

  “How the hell should I know? Maybe it’s too soon. Maybe we should hold off and let the investigation run its course. I’ll probably be able to eventually get some good dirt on the old man and the crew soon enough.” My voice squeaked, likely revealing my trepidation about this whole thing.

  “Hold off?” Renley actually sounded pissed off at me. “Wait a minute, here. Let me get this straight. You tell me that the Monsters of Mayhem and the Lords of Chaos are both going to be in the same location, with drugs and weapons, no less, and you want me to hold off? What’s going on with you, Rockford?”

  I didn’t answer, not knowing what to say. Apparently, I hesitated a beat too long.

  “Oh…my…God…you’ve done it, haven’t you? Goddamn it, Olivia!” Renley never used my first name and when he did, he sounded like my father. Olivia…Hope…Rockford…get your little ass down here right now…

  “Done what?” I played innocent, knowing full-well that it wouldn’t work with him.

  “You’ve fallen in love with Sonny Jackson, haven’t you?”

  Again, no answer would escape my clenched jaws.

  “Goddamn it, Goddamn it! I should have known this would happen!”

  “What do you mean, you should have known? What does that mean?” Now I was offended and forgot completely that I was the one in the defensive position at that moment.

  “You are good at what you do, Rockford, no denying that. But you’re still green. You are a good girl too, but I should have known you weren’t tough enough for this assignment.”

  Ouch. That stung. One thing I prided myself on was my career and to have my supervisor, no matter how temporary, question my abilities, was a punch in the gut.

  “Renley! I can do this job. Just because I…” I tra
iled off. I didn’t want to say it out loud. To admit it.

  “You, what, Olivia? You can say it. Go on, say it. Say ‘I fell in love with my mark on my very first fucking assignment!’”

  “Okay, fine! I have some feelings for him, Renley, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do my job. I can get these guys…including Sonny.” Even as I said it out loud, I knew that was an outright lie. I knew I’d been plotting and planning all along, ways that I could keep Sonny from being arrested as a result of my assignment. There was no way I was going to be able to arrest him, given the way I felt about him now.

  “Bullshit. You’re done, Rockford. I’m pulling you out immediately. And I’ve got to tell Kingston. I’m sorry, I have no choice,” Renley said, his anger cutting through like a knife through hot butter.

  “Renley, no! You’re making a huge mistake! No one knows this crew like I do now. You’re not going to be able to get anyone in here in less than forty-eight hours to ascertain the location of this sit-down. You need me, Renley. I can still do my job. I can’t help that I grew feelings for the guy…you said it yourself…he’s a charmer. But it’s not that serious, I promise. I can finish this job and bring down the Lords of Chaos motorcycle gang. You have to trust me.”

  Silence. I was panting now and pacing the house from the bedroom to the living room and back. I raised my free hand to my forehead the way you see people do in movies when they are in emotional turmoil. Why was he being so quiet? He was probably thinking of all the ways he was going to end my career.

  “Okay, fine,” he finally answered.

  “Excuse me…what? Fine?” Now I was confused.

  “Yeah, okay, fine. If you say you can still do your job and your service to this country and bring down the entire motorcycle gang, including Sonny Jackson, then I have to believe you. You’re right. We need you to get that location and it would be impossible to get it any other way.”

  “Thank you, Renley. I’ll never forget this. I’ll owe you one, big time!”

  “You bet your sweet little ass you will owe me one. But I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing it solely for the assignment. The minute the raid is over, you’re back in Chicago, riding a desk until…until…well, until you grow up.”

  Another punch to the ego and the gut. Grow up? I didn’t need to grow up. I simply fell in love. Of course, I didn’t expect Renley to understand. And even if he did, I really didn’t want him to know exactly how strong my feelings for Sonny were. I needed him to believe it was just a school girl crush on a charming and charismatic ladies’ man and that I was completely capable of bringing him down along with the gang.

  “Okay. Thank you, Renley.”

  I pushed end on my white iPhone screen, my hands trembling.

  Less than two days. That’s all I had left to complete my assignment. That’s all the days I had left with Sonny. Of course, the little idealistic girl in me could fantasize about all the ways Sonny and I could ride off into the sunset together, but the more rational, realistic side of me knew it was impossible. In less than two days, not only would Sonny possibly be behind bars, but he would know that I’d been lying to him for months about who I was. In less than two days, Trish Sanders would cease to exist and Sonny would probably want to kill Olivia Rockford. Hopefully, I’d be safe on an airplane to Chicago by the time he found out.

  I couldn’t worry about it in that moment, however. I had to speak to Sonny and find out as many details as I could about the location of the big pow-wow. I decided there was no way I was going to find out unless I straight-up asked him where it was going down and prayed to God he didn’t find it suspicious that I wanted to know the exact location of the dangerous meeting I wanted him to avoid.

  ***

  The next day, I slept in a little. Even though I had a much more lackadaisical lifestyle on this assignment, sleeping in still meant I woke up at eight o’clock, no later. I had gotten used to getting up at five thirty in the morning since I entered the training academy and just kept on doing it, even after I was placed in the Chicago field office. It gave me time to go for a run, take a shower, then sit down with Cleo at my little kitchenette and read the paper while sipping on coffee freshly brewed in my new Keurig machine.

  I knew Sonny wouldn’t wake up until at least eleven, so I piddled around the house, straightening up in the kitchen and loading the dishwasher with the two plates and three glasses I’d dirtied up in over a week. I’d never been much of a cook and at home I had my favorite carry-out restaurants on speed-dial. Here, I’d been picking up drive-thru or even sushi from the local grocery store.

  Finally, when noon rolled around, my black phone rang and sure enough, it was Sonny.

  “Hey sweet thang. What are you doing? You up yet?”

  I laughed a little. If only he knew the truth. I fake-yawned. “Oh, yeah. Finally. Just got up a little bit ago. What are you doing?”

  “Working on this bike. I laid it down the night I was shot and now it’s making a funny sound when I get up above thirty.”

  “So…did you talk to Leroy yet?” I didn’t have to say about what. He knew what I was referring to.

  “Uh…yeah. I did, actually. He didn’t take it too well at first, but once I told him he might have a bouncing baby grandson or granddaughter on the way, he agreed.”

  “So you’re not going?” I shrieked with more excitement than I meant to. I was more relieved than I should have been.

  “Nope. Gotta stay home and protect the family line, you know? And the club, of course. You were right. Even Dad agreed that in case anything went down with the Monsters, it’d be wise to have someone here to keep things running if…”

  I knew what he was thinking. “You mean, if something happens to your dad.”

  “Yeah. That.”

  “See…that’s precisely why I didn’t want you to go, Sonny. You know as well as I do that anything could happen at this meeting and I don’t want to lose you.” Now that we were talking about the meeting, I thought there was no time like the present to see what he was willing to tell me, so I dove in head-first. “Where are they holding this big meeting, anyway?”

  “Why? I’m not going, so what does it matter?”

  Shit. I thought. Great question.

  “Just curious, that’s all.” That’s it? I thought. That’s the best you can come up with?

  But it was a gamble that paid off in spades. “Down at the old abandoned factory out past Spears Point, near the river.

  I knew exactly where he was talking about. On one of our drives down by the river, he had taken me by the old factory and pointed it out as the place his father had worked intermittently for nearly thirty years, until they shut down after a series of strikes. The county had been squabbling for years over what to do with the monstrosity that was considered an eyesore; however, no one had really come up with a solution as to what to turn it into.

  “I see,” I said in response, but I did a mental cartwheel for figuring out the location of this big sit-down without much effort at all. “So when does this whole thing go down? Tomorrow night? Will you come stay with me tomorrow? Just so I know you’re safe and sound?”

  “I don’t need a babysitter, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said, but with a hint of humor in his voice.

  “I know that, silly. I just want to have you here with me, so I know nothing bad will happen to you. It’s the whole reason I wanted you to stay home in the first place.”

  “Of course I’ll stay with you. But I’ll have to stay close to the phone in case Dad needs me. In case something goes south.”

  “What could you do even if it did, Sonny?” I asked him with no hint of humor in my voice. “You going to hop on your bike and ride down there? Bust down the doors and kill them all by yourself? I don’t think so.”

  “Have a little faith in your man,” Sonny said. I could imagine the shit-eating grin on his face, even though I couldn’t see it.

  “This is no joke, Sonny. You have no idea what’s going to happ
en tomorrow night. Even if things do go sideways, I want you to stay put with me and we’ll call the police if we have to.”

  “No cops!” he said, very seriously now. “Never. I will never trust the police. They wouldn’t help us anyway. They’d haul all our asses to jail.”

  “Okay, okay. No cops.” I realized I needed to change the subject before Sonny got any hotter about the police.

  “Well, just please tell your dad to be careful. Tell all of them. They’re like family to me now and I can’t imagine what I’d do if anything happened to any of them.”

  All the while, I was thinking about how, in reality, I was working with the good guys to bring down this newfound family of mine and come Friday morning, they’d all be behind bars…or worse…dead.

  Chapter 23

  Thursday rolled around and my nerves were as frayed as the hair on a scared kitty cat. At midnight, many things were going to be taking place. For one, Sonny’s dad, Leroy, and his cronies—my newly adopted family—were going to be putting themselves in harm’s way in a feigned attempt at peace. In reality, their only goal was to gain a monopoly on the area’s drug trade and exact their pound of flesh for Melanie’s murder. Secondly—and only I knew this—the DEA was preparing to swarm in on said meeting and clean house. They were going to arrest everyone in attendance at the meeting. Not only that, it was not at all unlikely that some of them, either the Lords or the Monsters, would draw their weapons in response and that those members would likely be shot and killed. I couldn’t help but worry about “my guys” and hope that at least none of them would have time to think about turning their guns on federal agents and that they would at least walk out of there alive, if no longer free men.

  Sonny and I spent the day canoodling in front of the fireplace, my right cheek resting on his firm, blue-jeaned thigh. He was laid back against the back of the couch, one arm folded back behind his head, the other laid across my chest, twirling a piece of my hair between his fingers. We were two laidback people, save his left foot, which was twitching nervously and shaking his whole leg, despite his continued efforts to stop it.