IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: CHAPTER 32 WAS PRIVATE
~*~*~
Julie shifted from one foot to the other, her eyes darting back and forth down the long row of storage units. Her breath was coming fast, and Danny was on the verge of smacking her to get her to chill out.
"Danny," she whispered urgently, "how much longer?"
"Shut it, Jules," he grunted, "I'm trying to concentrate."
"Someone is going to come!" her voice went up an octave, grating on his already tenuous control.
"Julie, I swear to God, I will shoot you here if you don't shut your fucking mouth."
That did it. Her mouth slammed shut, but she was still shifting around anxiously next to him. Still, it was better than listening to her nag him to death. He doubted they would find anything here, but it was better than nothing. When she came back with the slip for the storage unit, he was less-than pleased. He was hoping for a lot more, but it couldn't be helped.
The bitch got herself caught. She was lucky Emma hadn't called the cops, and he was lucky she'd left his name out of it. For that reason alone, he managed to control his trigger finger.
His eyes shifted in her direction. Something was off with her, though. Admittedly, it might have something to do with her life being under constant threat, and not being able to use her used-up pussy to weasel her way out of it. Still, he was keeping a close eye on her. She was wound way too tight to be trustworthy. He almost wished for the cold, conniving snake he used to know. At least she was predictable.
Blowing out an exasperated sigh, he reached for the large bolt-cutters. Security in this place was laughable. There wasn't even video surveillance except at the entrance, and no guard on duty. They cut through the lock with ease, and it fell to the ground with a dull "clunk." He quickly pocketed it, and motioned her to follow him.
"Come on," he bit out after shoving the cutters into the small duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He pushed the door up and waited for her to move. When she just stood there, he grabbed her arm roughly, jerking her inside, startling her out of wherever her mind was. "You losing your nerve, Jules?"
"N-no," she stuttered, digging her thumbnail into the cuticles on her other hand.
Stepping close to her, he leaned forward until they were eye to eye, and mere inches apart. "Get it together," he ground out. "If you can't snap out of it, I will end our little partnership. Permanently. Do you understand?"
"Ye-yes," she nodded, her head jerking like a bobble-head doll that was on the dash of a car, bouncing over a rough gravel road.
"I don't know what your problem is, but I will not let you fuck me over this time," he warned. "Start looking through those." He indicated a pile of boxes toward the back of the unit. Once he was satisfied that she was busy, he headed over to some file boxes in the middle.
~*~*~
Danny lifted his cap, pushing his sweat-drenched hair back, before replacing it. The temperature inside the little metal box had to be at least a hundred degrees. His already bad temper was rising with the heat, and lack of results. Smashing the top onto another box, he stood up from a crouch.
"Well?" he snapped in Julie's direction.
"Nothing," she answered feebly. Her shirt was stuck to her body and every line of her bony frame was visible through it.
"Shit!" he kicked the box across the room, making a loud scraping sound on the concrete floor. "We aren't even half-way through these, and it's fucking boiling in here."
"What are we going to do now?" Julie asked timidly, cautious of making herself a target for his rage.
"Now..." he seemed to contemplate this for a minute. "Now, we are going to grab the boxes we haven't gotten to, and go through them back at the motel. If we still find nothing, then we will have to be more aggressive."
"What... Um, what do you mean, more aggressive?"
His eyes flickered over to her, reveling slightly in the fear he could feel wafting off of her in waves. It was intoxicating to finally have this much control after so long. "It means that we're done sneaking around. We need results."
A thick, uneasy feeling settled in her belly, but she didn't question him further. She was as much afraid of the answers she would get, as she was of his reaction to her incessant questions. They gathered the boxes they hadn't yet examined, she, carrying two stacked on top of each other, and he with another five. She followed him silently as he led her out of the unit, and watched as he closed the door. He fished a new lock out of the duffel and locked it up, and then walked out to the car, nonchalantly carting away the pilfered goods.
"I thought you cut the lock," Julie followed him, her face a mix of confusion and fear.
"Yeah, but this way, no one will realize it's been broken into for a while. It'll buy us more time," he answered back without breaking stride.
With the sun beating down on them, it wasn't much cooler outside, but he seemed oblivious to the heat. They stowed the boxes in the trunk and backseat in silence, though she was as skittish as a mouse getting eyed up by a hungry hawk. Once inside the car, he started it and rolled the windows down. There was no air-conditioning, and she silently pleaded for him to start driving. Between her fear and the heat, she was starting to feel extremely nauseous.
Finally, he turned to her. "Is your daughter staying at the house alone?"
His question surprised her. "I think so," she said, eyeing him warily. "I spoke to Evan last night. He's flying back to California today." That conversation was actually kind of strange. Danny let her take the call when they saw who it was, and she was fully expecting him to be angry about her breaking into the house, but he never even mentioned it. Why wouldn't Emma tell him she was there?
"Good," Danny's eyes glinted dangerously.
"Good?" Now she was on full-alert. "What are you going to do, Danny?"
"Nothing... at the moment," he replied cryptically.
Julie shivered despite the heat. She didn't say another word the whole way back to the motel. Fear coiled in her gut; she had no illusions about who Danny was now, or what he would do to get what he wanted. Before, she might have even jumped at the chance to sacrifice someone else to save her own skin. But now... somehow, things were different. Staring out the window, her mind was racing. There had to be a way out of this. If not for her, then for Emma. Whatever he had planned, the tone of his voice and the ruthlessness in his dark eyes left her under no illusion. It was no good.
Maybe if she could get a hold of a phone, she could at least warn Emma to be careful. But then she remembered the way her daughter had looked at her the day before, and acknowledged it was doubtful she would pay her any heed.
In Emma's eyes, she was the monster who cried wolf. The bullheaded girl wouldn't be able to see past the things she had done, in order to comprehend the real danger.
Her pale eyes slid sideways, toward the real monster.
What the hell was she even thinking? If he caught her, that would be it. Bullet to the skull.
If they found something in the boxes, that would be the best scenario. No need to involve anyone else. However, the likelihood of that was thin, simply for the fact that it seemed nothing was ever meant to go her way.
She snorted, leaning her head against the doorframe, and drawing a suspicious glance from Danny. She shifted uncomfortably, and turned her gaze to the passing scenery. If she was going to get out of this, and keep Emma from getting hurt, she was going to have to get her shit together. He was already twitchy, waiting for any excuse to finally take his revenge. Somehow, she was going to have to muster up her cold-hearted bitch persona. It shouldn't be too hard, right? I can do that with my eyes closed... She wasn't too sure about that anymore, though. That was before she cared about anyone but herself.
~*~*~
A plane roared overhead, shaking the parking ramp, and the tiny little car with it. Emma was still sitting in the airport parking garage, holding her phone in her lap, trying to decide what to do. Evan had caught his plane already, promising to call her when he got in. That left her with time on her hands, and nothing that immediately needed her attention. What she wanted to do more than anything else, was to drive straight up to the cabin and smack Ryan upside his big, stupid, handsome head.
She closed her eyes, and leaned her head back against the headrest.
Frustration and anger warred with concern inside of her. Evan had finally spilled the beans and told her where Ryan was, but only under threat to his beanbags, and after making her promise to leave him alone until he was ready to talk to her. Her brother assured her he just needed some time so that he could work through some things on his own.
Just some time... that's all. Like it's no big deal. She blew out an annoyed breath. Could he ask her to do anything more difficult?
The answer to that, was a definitive, "Nope." Patience definitely did not rank on her list of strengths. She attacked a problem, faced conflict head-on. This "wait and see" BS was completely foreign to her, and it was making her jittery and anxious. Admittedly, she'd never had a successful, long-term relationship, either, and something told her that if she wanted one, she was going to have to learn to figure it out.
She pinched her nose to stem an oncoming headache and growled. This was going to be harder than she'd anticipated.
Part of her wondered if they even could have a relationship. After all, they were using Evan as a go-between. They couldn't even talk to each other.
But the thought of not having him in her life wasn't something she considered a possibility anymore. She had to at least try.
She opened her eyes and her fingers closed a little tighter around her phone. She would keep calling until he came home or answered. At least he couldn't say she was sending him mixed messages now. The call went straight to voicemail, so she left him another message, doing her best to keep the irritation out of her voice. She could be just as stubborn as him, and she was determined to prove it:
"Ryan, it's me," she paused, suddenly unsure of what to say exactly, before forging ahead. "So, here's the deal. You love me, and I love you, and we both suck at this stuff. But I don't suck at being stubborn—as you have kindly pointed out multiple times over the years—so this is me being stubborn. I won't come up there, but I'm going to call you every single day. I'm going to tell you I love you, and that you can talk to me whenever you're ready, and I'm going to try my hardest to be patient."
She sucked in a deep breath. "Since you know me, though, you know my patience won't last forever. I will come up there and shove your stubborn ass in the lake and make you face me if you don't at least tell me you're alive soon. I'm sorry for what happened at the service. We were both at fault, and we need to talk about it in person... I love you, Ryan, and I'm here for you whenever you're ready."
You can run, but you can't hide, you big, dumb, gorgeous, annoying idiot, she muttered to herself.
Once she hung up, she turned her car toward home. Ever since she'd found her mom in the office, she'd felt an urgency to go through the paperwork from the safe with a fine-tooth comb. Remembering the way her mom acted that day gave her chills. She always had an angle, always had a scheme or a plan. And she was never vulnerable, scared, or worried about her kids. Emma just couldn't reconcile the way she acted that day, with the woman she had known her whole life.
Initially, she meant to tell her brother about it, but after giving it some thought, the idea lost its appeal. For one thing, if she told him about her mom breaking in, and her strange behavior, he wouldn't have boarded that plane. As much as she wanted him here, she knew it would only delay his move. He had to finish tying things up in San Diego.
Plus, while Evan needed to go, Ryan needed to stay where he was. She didn't want him coming back from his retreat out of obligation. If she told Evan, Evan would tell Ryan, and those two would probably never ever treat her like an independent woman, capable of taking care of herself, in spite of their best intentions.
But the reason that weighed on her most heavily, was the last thing her mom said to her that day. That warning, accompanied by the unmistakable glimmer of fear in her eyes, wouldn't let her brush it off the way she wanted to at the time. Something about how scared she seemed nagged at Emma. If there was real danger, she didn't want anyone else in the way. If something happened to Ryan or her brother... she bit her cheek and closed her eyes. They were her family. Her only family.
There had to be something in that safe to help explain everything that was going on. Everything that had happened, especially with Danny turning up, pointed to some connection to the past, and she was determined to find it.
~*~*~
Brrzzzzztttt!! Brrzzzzzztttt!!
Loud clattering and vibrating against the hard wood of the desk, resembled a jackhammer busting up concrete right next to Emma's face, breaking the empty silence in the office. Her head shot up, and she whimpered, immediately regretting the abrupt movement, as pain shot through her neck and lanced through her skull. Twisting her body, and gingerly rotating her neck to try to work the kinks out of it, she saw her phone flashing from underneath a pile of papers. As she reached for it, she glanced at the time—it was already after midnight. The desk in front of her was scattered with the contents of the safe. She'd been working for hours, only taking a break to eat a quick sandwich before getting back to her task.
She checked her messages, hoping that one of them was from Ryan. Her face fell when she realized she had texts from everyone but him. She must've slept harder than she realized. Evan let her know he'd arrived safely, Rosie wanted to know when they could get together, and Jeannie at the bookshop wanted to know if she could stop by the next day.
After replying to all of them, she saw she also had a voicemail, and her heart jumped hopefully. Unfortunately, it was from Greta's lawyer, asking her to stop by the office at her earliest convenience. Her eyebrows knit together as she listened to the message. It was perplexing. Why would the lawyer want to see her?
She stifled a deep yawn, and leaned back in the office chair. It was just one more question to add to the mountain she already had. After spending hours poring over the contents of the safe, she was no nearer to having any answers. Just more and more questions. The only things she'd been able to determine for sure, was that everything in there was somehow related to each other.
The robbery was the common theme, but there was also a lot of stuff from before the robbery ever took place. Months before the museum was even scheduled to have the jewels on display. Most of that material seemed to place her mom in a starring role. It seemed clear to her that somehow they were connected—her mom and the theft-or at least, her dad thought they were. There wasn't anything concrete tying them together, but her gut told her she was on the right track.
If there was a link, she deduced, it must have something to do with that journal. At first, she couldn't see how, because the shorthand he used was so cryptic. After reading through the P.I.'s report, though, coupled with those disgusting pictures, it was apparent that her dad was having her mom followed. After she realized that, the entries in the journal started to make more sense. She was able to decipher some of the initials as her mom's, and, she assumed, Daniel's. Other initials seemed to indicate places, but she wasn't sure what the locations stood for. Still others were dates, days, and times. Further confirming her overall theory, the entries went right up to the date of the robbery.
Once she'd been through everything with a critical eye, she sat in the old leather chair, staring out the window, letting her mind roam. It was a lot of information, a lot of details that needed extrapolation and explanation, and her brain was busily trying to fit the pieces together like a complicated jigsaw puzzle. A picture was starting to take shape, but she couldn't be sure without something or someone to confirm it.
Thoughtfully, she considered her options, mentally kicking herself for not taking an interest in all of this earlier. How many years had she wasted being bitter and angry toward her father? And now answers might not be so easy to come by. She couldn't ask Greta anymore, or Grandma. While she hadn't known about the existence of the safe before, she might have had a clue as to what really happened all those years ago.
Her eyes settled on the paperwork before her. Maybe she could go to the police—speak to the detectives who investigated the robbery. But how likely was it they would talk to her, or have any more information than what she already had here? After her dad was killed, they closed the case, assuming he was guilty. His murder was still unsolved, and she suspected they hadn't looked too hard for the culprit.
He was murdered at a time when murder and street crime was rampant due to massive quantities of heroin and cocaine making their way into the Twin Cities. Combined with budget cuts for law enforcement, they didn't waste time on crimes they couldn't solve. No, she decided, they won't help me.
Her gaze wandered to the P.I.'s report. He was a different matter, though. If she could find him, he might remember her dad. Might have an explanation for what her dad was thinking, and be able to tell her if the investigation was simply to prove Julie's infidelity, or if it was something more. Not that she believed he'd remember the job from that long ago, but it was worth a shot. After a quick Google session, she finally tracked him down. He was retired now, but he was still living in the area. Glancing at the clock, she realized, he might not appreciate her impatience at nearly nine p.m. on a Sunday. That phone call went to the top of her to-do list for the next day.
That was when she'd rested her head on her arms. Just for a moment, she told herself. But her body had other ideas, finally giving in to the fatigue that had been building up all week long. From Greta dying, to dealing with Ryan, planning the service, running into her mom, and trying to untangle and sort out all the information in front of her now, it was a wonder she hadn't fallen down standing up earlier.
Rubbing her palms over her bleary, burning eyes, she yawned again. She needed sleep, and she wasn't going to get any more answers tonight. After straightening up the desk, she switched off the light, and headed downstairs. Carefully, she checked the locks on the doors and windows, and then sleepily climbed the stairs. Too exhausted to brush her teeth and wash her face, she went straight to her room. Stripping out of her clothes, she fell on top of her bed, and was out cold in minutes.
A/N:
Happy Friday Lovelies!
We are gearing up for the big finish of Untethered. In the coming weeks, events will start to unfold, new characters be introduced, and revelations will be made! I'm giddy with excitement.
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Jessa xx