Confessions Of An Old Lady Page 16

  “There wasn’t much to tell, really. Not at first. You wouldn’t really tell me much about the club’s activities. That is, until Melanie’s murder. That’s when you first confided in me about the drugs.”

  “And you told…”

  “Agent Renley. He’s my supervisor. But he’s not my boss, necessarily. My boss is a man named Supervisory Agent Warren Kingston. I work for him out of Chicago.”

  “So, you’re not even really from around here, either? And I bet the whole thing about your dad was bullshit too. Right?”

  “My cover story. Renley came up with all the details…in case you got curious and looked into my history…there’s a paper trail backing up everything, including—”

  “Your so-called criminal history,” he said, finishing the sentence for me.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded his head solemnly. “It all makes sense now.”

  “What does?” I didn’t know if I was allowed to ask any questions, but I did anyway. I figured it didn’t matter much at that point, anyway.

  “Everything. Looking back now, everything just…clicks. Like when you kicked Nicole’s ass that night at the Jamboree. At the time, I thought it was just pretty bad-ass that you could do that, but now I can see you were just using your agent training, or whatever.”

  “What else? You said it all makes sense. What else?” I had to know in what other ways I had given myself away, since I had blown the entire operation. Even though it no longer mattered.

  He must have forgotten for a split second that he was going to kill me, because he simply answered my question like we were having a casual conversation on a boring Tuesday night by the fireplace.

  “Well, then there was the time we were talking by the barn about how to get revenge on the Monsters after Melanie…you know. I was impressed by your ability to come up with a plan like that on the fly. Then there was the bullet you pulled out of my arm. No one knows bullets like that unless they’re a cop…or a fed.”

  I decided to try to take advantage of the momentary lapse in his determination to kill me.

  “Sonny…” I stood up from my squatting position. “Listen, Sonny. I’m so very sorry. But like I said in the beginning…I do love you. That’s not a lie. I truly—”

  “Don’t!” he shouted, raising the gun back up into the air and pointing it at my chest. “Just…don’t.”

  I raised my hands up in front of me as if my hands alone could ward off any flying bullets. “Okay. Sonny, okay…”

  We stood there, facing each other for what seemed like an eternity. Then I saw it. My first glimmer of hope in the form of a single tear forming in the corner of Sonny’s eye.

  Chapter 25

  But what did that tear mean? The best I could realistically hope for was that he was going to feel at least some level of regret in having to kill me and that he’d do it quickly. There was no way he could let me live. Not after learning I was a DEA agent and that I was solely responsible for the takedown, and kill, of his entire crew. I stood there, frozen. I wasn’t sure what to do next. I had told him everything he wanted to know and there wasn’t really much more he could ask me, so I figured he was probably debating my cause of death, even though the manner of my death had already been determined as soon as he figured out I wasn’t who I said I was.

  Finally, he spoke again. And I was shocked at his choice of words. “Why?”

  Excuse me? Why ask me why? What was the point? What did it matter?

  “Why what, Sonny? If you’re asking why I lied to you, then the answer is that I didn’t have a choice. I had no idea when I was given this assignment that—”

  “No. It’s a rhetorical question, Trish. Or Olivia. Why did this have to happen? Why did you have to be…who you are? Why put me in this position? You know what I have to do now.” He walked backward until the back of his legs hit the couch and he sat down again, looking defeated.

  “I…Sonny…listen to me…I love you. That wasn’t a lie. I mean, sure, I was assigned to infiltrate the club. And sure, I came into this thinking I would, despite you, and I was ready to do my job and help take down the club—”

  “And me,” he added.

  “Yes, and you. That’s the God’s honest truth. I’m sorry. But somewhere along the way, it became real to me. It stopped being just an assignment and became my new life. I got to know you and I fell in love with you, Sonny. That’s real. Please believe me.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Trish…Olivia…whoever you are…”

  “It’s still me, though, Sonny. My name may be different, and maybe my story is a little different than you thought, but I fell in love with you and I know you fell in love with me too.”

  “You’re just saying that now to save your own skin. You’d say anything just to make it out of here alive. Don’t fuck with me. I’m not an idiot.”

  “I’m not lying to you, Sonny. It’s the truth. In fact, I think I fell in love with you at the coffee shop that day. That’s when the struggle became real. From that point forward, I was conflicted about what to do. I’ve spent the past two months trying to figure out how to save both of us. Why would I do that unless I truly loved you?”

  Silence. I don’t know what I expected, but I guess the hopeless romantic in me had hoped he’d say he loved me back and this would all be over with. Hey, even when your life is in danger, a girl can still dream, right? Then the sight of the gun, still tightly gripped in his right hand, brought me back the reality of my situation and reminded me I still had to fight for my life.

  “Sonny…you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to kill me.”

  He looked up at me, bewildered. “How can I not, Trish? You didn’t just lie to me about who you are…you put me and my family in jeopardy. Now because of you, Harry’s dead. Weasel’s dead. Dad’s…hell, I don’t know what happened to my father. I assume he’s on his way to prison, probably for life this time! Even if I thought for a second I could let you go, the rest of the club would hunt you down. Not to mention the Monsters! Everyone’s going to want your head. You’re a dead woman either way, Trish.”

  “Olivia.” As soon as the word came out, I slapped my hand to my mouth, realizing I was not really in a position to be correcting anybody. Let alone the man who literally held my life in his hands. “They can’t get to me, Sonny. I’m a DEA agent. If you let me go, I’ll be safe and sound in Chicago within three hours. No one would find me and even if they did…no one wants to kill a federal agent.”

  “Maybe my guys wouldn’t, but Eddy Walters would shoot you right in front of the entire DEA and never think twice about it. All that aside…Olivia…I just can’t let you walk away from all of this. You betrayed the club! You betrayed me!”

  “But Sonny…my supervisor, Agent Renley, he’ll be looking for me. They’d know exactly what happened to me. I’m supposed to be reporting to them…” I looked at the clock on the wall. One a.m. “…right now, actually. If I don’t check in and tell them I’m okay in the next few minutes, they’ll send the tactical team right over here to this house and they would never stop until they found you. And do you think they’d arrest you when they found you? Not after you’d killed a federal agent. They’d plant a drop gun on you in a heartbeat and claim you drew first. Think about it, Sonny. Plus…”

  I took two cautious steps toward him, half-waiting for him to point the gun at me again.

  To my great relief, he didn’t. Instead, he looked up at me from the couch and said, “You’re right.” The two most blessed words I’d ever heard in my entire short life.

  “I am?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “I can’t kill you. I don’t think I could anyway.” Then, suddenly, that lone tear I had seen moments ago in the corner of his eye slowly spilled out over his cheek. “You broke my heart…Olivia.”

  “Sonny, I am sorrier than you could ever imagine. But you have to believe me when I tell you that I did love you…I do love you. If you don’t believe anything else I tell you, beli
eve that.” Then, with much trepidation, I reached out my trembling hand and wiped the single tear from his face. Amazingly, he didn’t push me away. He grabbed my hand, which was resting on his cheek, and squeezed it.

  “I know. I may be a fool. And I may regret this one day, but Goddamn it, I believe you.”

  “Sonny. Put down the gun. Please. You’re not going to kill me, so just put it down,” I whispered.

  He looked down at the gun, turned it over once, then again, as if he’d never even realized he was holding it in the first place. Then, he reached over and laid it down on the end table under the tacky, fake-Tiffany lamp.

  “What are you going to do now?” I asked him.

  “No, Olivia. The question is…what are you going to do now? My life is in your hands.”

  Funny…only moments before, it was quite the opposite, but I realized what he meant and that I had no idea how to answer his question.

  He looked me with wet eyes. “I can’t kill you. I won’t kill you. So, what are you going to do now? Are you going to arrest me?”

  Arrest him? It’s not like I had a pair of handcuffs in my jeans pocket. And even if I did, could I arrest him? Just as he was unable to do what he should—kill me—I was unable to do what I should and arrest him. I had no idea where that left us or what to do next.

  “No, Sonny. You’ve spared my life. I’m not going to arrest you. Like I keep saying, I love you. Ever since the moment that I realized I was in love with you, I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out how to save you from all of this.”

  “That’s why you didn’t want me to go tonight, isn’t it?” I could see this revelation spreading across his face. “You weren’t worried just about my safety. You didn’t want me to be caught up in the raid you knew was coming.”

  “Well, both, actually. I was worried about you getting caught in the crossfire if things went sideways, but mostly, yes, I was trying to keep you out of prison.”

  “You risked your career…for me?”

  “Well…yes. I mean, I told you, Sonny. I love you, and that’s real.” I sank down next to him on the couch, his hand still holding mine. “At some point, things got complicated. I realized I had fallen in love with you and I was torn between my assignment, my career, and my love for you. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t tell you who I was and risk the entire assignment, but I didn’t want to lie to you, either. I knew I had to give Renley the information about the meeting and that there would be a raid, and I didn’t want you to be arrested, or worse. So, I did the best thing I could think of and convinced you to stay home with me. Only I don’t know what to do now. All I know is I still love you. I hope you still love me? Or is that too much to hope for?”

  I could tell he was listening intently and pondering my words. It took him a minute to answer me, which was totally understandable. But finally he said, “Yes. I do love you, Trish. Or, Olivia.”

  “Oh, Sonny.” I threw my arms around his neck. At first, I could tell he was unsure how to respond, but after I squeezed him tightly for a good ten seconds, his posture softened and he put his arms around me too. “What are we going to do?” I began crying again. Only this time they were tears of relief mixed with tears of confusion. How was I going to get us out of this? Was it possible for us to have a life together now? It didn’t seem likely, but I knew in my heart of hearts that I couldn’t just turn off my feelings for him and arrest him. In fact, the more I thought about it, there weren’t even really sufficient charges to bring him in on. Only the suspicions of the DEA. I never really witnessed him doing anything illegal and he wasn’t at the meeting tonight, so he wouldn’t be charged with possession, trafficking, RICO, or whatever other charges they would throw at the arrested members to see what stuck. When I realized this, an idea flashed in my mind like a sparkler that had just been lit on the Fourth of July.

  “Sonny…we can run away together.” Yep. It sounded just as crazy when I spoke the words out loud. But what choice was there?

  “Trish, I mean, Olivia…sorry…that one’s gonna take me a while…we can’t just run away. You have a career. I have the club to run now that Dad’s either dead or missing. It’s a crazy idea.”

  “First…what career? Do you think they’re going to keep me on at the DEA now that I’ve chosen you over the assignment? They’ll know I warned you about the raid, even if I didn’t tell you the whole truth about it. They’ll be pissed they couldn’t arrest you too. No, my career is over. Second…Sonny there is no more club. Yes, your dad and everyone who was arrested tonight will pull life sentences once the feds are done with them. Other than a couple of nobodies who stayed behind, you are all that’s left of the Lords of Chaos. We’ve both lost everything we’ve worked so hard to build. It’s all my fault, I know that, but neither one of us can return to the lives we were leading before we met each other. It’s just not possible. We don’t have a choice. But maybe we don’t have to run away. Maybe we can just start a new life together, here in Nicholasville. My real family is in Lexington. I’d be close to them again and you’d still be in your hometown.”

  “No, you were right. We have to run away. Think about it. If Dad made it out alive, and if he figures out who you really are and what happened, he’ll want you to pay. That’s not to mention the Monsters of Mayhem. Jimmy said their leader didn’t show for the meeting. His son was also killed in the raid. He’ll pull out all the stops to find you and me both.”

  I thought about this for a second and the truth was terrifying. He was right. I hadn’t thought about it, but no one in either of the clubs was going to let us just walk away after what went down at the warehouse. Especially once they learned how and why Sonny managed to avoid the raid. But what was I going to do about Renley and the Agency? I couldn’t just run away without at least talking to them and turning over my badge and gun. If I didn’t, we’d also be hunted by the DEA, if not every single federal agency out there. No, I’d have to face the music as far as the Agency was concerned, but after that, Sonny and I were going to have to make a run for it. But where could we go that the Monsters wouldn’t find us?

  “Well, we’ll figure out where to go later. Right now, you’ve got to deal with your job and I’ve got to tie up a few loose ends here in town then you and I are on the next thing smoking out of this godforsaken town.”

  I looked into Sonny’s eyes, and if there had ever been a doubt in my mind as to what I wanted to do, it dissipated in that moment. Somehow, some way, I’d managed not only to spare Sonny from prison or worse, but I’d managed to convince him not to kill me. To add icing to this beautiful multi-layered cake, I’d managed to make Sonny realize that he still loved me. Me. Olivia Rockford. Former DEA agent. And we were going to have to build a life together.

  Chapter 26

  “I have to check in with Renley right now or he’ll seriously send a team over here to check on me. I have no choice. What in the hell am I going to say to him?”

  “You don’t have to figure that out right now. I mean, eventually you’re going to have to face the music, like you said, but right now, just check in, so he doesn’t worry about you and then we’ll go from there,” Sonny said, holding my hand and squeezing it tightly.

  This was so much better than I could have hoped for. When Jimmy made that phone call, I knew that my acting days were over. I just didn’t know if I was going to be able to pull off one last act and convince Sonny not to kill me. But I got more than I could have wished for. Not only did he let me live, he realized that he loved me, regardless of what my name was, it was me that he wanted. Had he completely forgiven me yet? Probably not. But now we’d have all the time in the world together to work on that. That is, if we could figure out how to elude the Monsters of Mayhem.

  “You’re right. Here goes nothing.” I went to the bookshelf, grabbed the fake book, picked up the white iPhone as I’d done dozens of times over the past several months, and said, “Hey Siri. Call Agent Renley.”

  “What is that phone?” Sonny
asked curiously.

  “It’s my Agency phone. I use it to contact Renley and headquarters so that I could…” I didn’t finish my sentence. This was a subject so sore, it hadn’t even begun to scab over yet.

  “…give them information on me and the club.” Sonny finished his sentence.

  I nodded my head, ashamed of myself.

  “Have you had it this whole time?”

  Again I nodded my head.

  “Of course you did,” he answered, giving me a look that said I’m so tired of finding out new secrets about you.

  Finally, after four or five rings, Renley picked up. I stood in the corner of the room so Sonny couldn’t be seen on FaceTime.

  “Rockford! You okay?” Renley answered. Even though it was past one o’clock in the morning, he was obviously wide awake and awaiting my call. “I was beginning to worry! I thought I’d hear from you sooner. But whatever, I got you now, so tell me you’re okay.”

  “Yes, yes. I’m fine. How about you? Did everything go as planned? How’d the raid go?” As if I didn’t already know.

  “Well, it went mostly as planned. We got about twenty crew members between the Lords and the Monsters. Leroy Jackson’s in the wind. Neither Sonny Jackson nor Eddy Walters were there. Strange. Can’t imagine why they wouldn’t show. Do you know why Sonny wasn’t there? Do you know where he is?”

  Shit. I hadn’t prepared for that question. In fact, I hadn’t prepared for any of Renley’s inquiries. “I think he stayed behind, just in case something like this did go down. Something about preservation of the club or legacy or something like that. But no, I don’t know where he is tonight. Maybe he just stayed home.”

  “Well, it’s no big loss. We arrested several of the gang members and picked up about thirty kilos of coke and over a hundred automatic weapons. Overall, it was a good sweep. Your information turned out to be spot-on, Rockford. Excellent job.”