Chapter Sixteen
Maria
I wake up to an empty bed, cold sheets beside me and the only reminder of him the scent on the chill pillow.
I wake up to the urgent beating of my heart and the screams of my conscience: as good as Ozzy makes me feel, everything he does for me is built on a lie. I’m taking his kindness and I’m using it, all while I’m working behind his back just to protect my career.
I can try and justify it all I want — I can say that this is for some kind of fucking greater good — but even those excuses sound flimsy to my ears while those files incriminating his club burn a hole in my bag.
I can’t do it.
He deserves so much better.
I get up and get dressed in a hurry. I can hardly look at myself in the mirror, knowing what I’ve come so close to letting happen.
I can’t allow David to bring down Ozzy’s club.
Whatever else happens, whatever the cost, I need to find a way to save him.
Success isn’t worth the price of losing the people that love me.
I thud my way down the stairs in a hurry.
I call out: “Ozzy?”
I want to feel his arms around me. I want to see that unwavering confidence in his eyes. I want the warmth of his voice as he tells me he believes in me.
The kitchen’s empty. Deserted.
I walk through the rest of the house, checking the living room, the bathroom, and all the rooms upstairs. The house is empty.
I’m alone.
Puzzled, I make my way back to the kitchen and go about getting ready for the day. As confusing and disappointing as it is not having him here, maybe it’s for the best. In the state I’m in, I don’t know if I could see him and not tell him about the testimony David Ardoin is planning to give.
There’s a note on the half-empty coffee pot next to an open bag of dark roast beans: “Borrowed your car earlier. We didn’t have any coffee. Have a good day at work. Ozzy.”
Breakfast goes by in a flash. I hardly eat — I’m too focused on getting in to work and getting to David Ardoin to try, somehow, and convince him to change his testimony.
Scenario after scenario races through my mind, each more implausible than the last. I have such little hope of a happy ending.
It’s then I realize that I need to get to him before he reaches the US Attorneys office. Get him alone. Do whatever it takes. I’ve spent so long only looking out for myself, that if I have to sacrifice to feel right with the people I love, it’s worth it.
Turning the key in the ignition of my shitty rental car, I pump the gas and tear out of the driveway. The engine screams as every weak cylinder in this stupid sedan fires to life and sends me hurtling down the highway.
No matter how hard I press the gas, it doesn’t feel fast enough.
Still, I make the hour drive from Missoula to the state prison in short time and speed into the visitors parking lot, not even bothering to find a space and instead ditching my almost-smoking car right by the curb.
I’ve bought myself maybe twenty minutes before they start David on his daily drive in to Missoula. It’ll have to do.
I run inside, heart thudding against my ribs.
I have to get him alone.
I have to change his mind.
That thought alone echoes through my mind as burst through the main entrance to the prison. Inside, it’s all tile floors, bullet-proof glass, and a dour-looking guard at the front desk.
“Visiting hours don’t start till two,” he says, in a very fuck off tone of voice.
Fuck him.
“I’m not just a fucking visitor,” I say, not in the mood. Ripping my ID out of my purse, I press it to the window. “I’m the attorney for David Ardoin. It’s urgent that I meet with my client.”
“Now? You know that they’ll be bringing him in to town for you in like ten minutes?”
“Yes, fucking now. If it wasn’t fucking important, I wouldn’t be here. But, seeing as this is a serious fucking deal, I’m here. Let me see my client. Now.”
He picks up the phone at his desk, buzzes someone, mumbles something about some ‘crazy-bitch lawyer’, and then waves me through. “Meeting room is down the hallway, third door on the left. Your client will be in shortly.”
He sits back down at his desk, turns back to his screen, and gives me a shoulder so cold I nearly get frostbite.
“Thank you,” I mutter in his direction.
I head into the meeting room.
It isn’t long before David’s brought in and handcuffed to the table.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” he says. “Here to buy my silence? You know what you need to do. Though you picked a strange location — it’s much more romantic back in town.”
I shake my head. “Let’s get this straight: I’m not sucking your dick. But I am here to ask you to reconsider your testimony.”
“Not interested. The only sound I want to hear from you is you gagging on my cock.”
I sigh, working up my nerve. The whole morning, I’ve been thinking about how to change his mind. Despite what he says, I know he doesn’t care about getting his dick sucked. Guys like him rarely do.
He wants to break me. He wants me to feel small and powerless.
I steel myself.
“I have eighty-seven thousand dollars combined in my savings and retirement account. It’s all I have and it’s all yours if you will just change your statement.”
He lets out a laugh that turns my stomach sideways.
“Whose dick are you riding that it’s got you so desperate to spare those biker pricks?”
I stand up, start pacing. Time is slipping through my fingers and all this guy wants to talk about is who I’m sleeping with.
“This isn’t about that. These people are going to kill you if you keep fucking around. The Kings will get to you and you will not like the consequences. You need to be smart.”
He shrugs. “You know what I want.”
My mind scrambles, searching for some other way I can sweeten the deal — things I can sell, money I can borrow. “I can probably make it one hundred and fifty thousand. All you need to do is implicate someone else. Anyone else. Please.”
This whole affair sickens me. That man repulses me to my soul, and I loathe the fact that I’m practically on my knees, begging him.
There’s a knock at the door. Heavy, loud. It startles me.
An unfriendly face pokes in through the door. “Time to go.”
Two other officers — David’s police escort — come in and start to lead him away. I follow them down the hallway, out into the parking lot, and into the waiting police van, babbling the whole way, trying to spark some kind of reason in his brain.
Time is running out.
They load him into the van, check his shackles and then I hop inside after him.
“What are you doing?” one of the guards says, sharing a concerned look with his companion.
“Riding with my client,” I say, then I sit down next to David. I drop my voice low and keep my words vague. The last thing I want is anyone else picking up on just why I’m debasing myself like this. “Please, David. You need to seriously consider my advice and my offer. It’d ruin me, isn’t that what you want? All you have to do is change your statement. Your testimony could have a real impact — positive or negative — depending on the choices you make.”
He smiles at me. Gloating. Every bit of my groveling pleases him just as much as it would if I sucked his putrid cock.
“Keep going, Ms. Houlihan. Beg me. You just might convince me.”
The heavy doors of the van shut, locking us inside. Unfriendly officers and an unfriendly prisoner stare at me.
Time is running out.
The van rumbles to life and chugs its way down the highway. I move to sit across from this despicable man, staring at him in earnest urgency. I am doing everything to change his mind except for prostrating myself on the steel floor in front of him.
And he is lapping it up.
He is wallowing in my shame. In my fear.
I swallow my pride.
This is for Ozzy.
“Please, David. You’re not going to get a deal better than this. You need to think, you need to be smart. Taking my advice is not only going to work out better for you in the end, but it’s going to keep shit like what happened the other day from happening to you again. I really, really think you should take my advice.”
“I like what you’re saying, Ms. Houlihan. But I think I’d love it even more if you begged me from your knees.”
The two cops share a look.
Fuck, my cheeks are burning.
David’s smile grows.
I take a breath and lower myself to my knees.
“Sit tight,” the driver says, turning around in his seat to look back at the four of us through the armored grating of the prison van. “There’s an accident on the freeway. Some car is blocking both lanes going into Missoula. We’ll be taking the backroads.”
I shift and look out the front windshield.
Black, billowing smoke rises in a pillar from somewhere up ahead.
I turn back to David. He’s staring right at me, smiling, lording over me what little power he has.
He’s probably hard right now.
I clear my head and prepare myself to grovel even more. I know that’s what he wants. He wants to see me squirm. And I will. I have to. I have to change his mind.
I take a breath.
Staring up at this filthy, soulless man, I start to plead my case.
And the world goes sideways.
There’s a crash. Steel grinds against steel and the sound of a hundred angry lead hornets crashes into the walls of the armored prisoner transport. A shuddering thud rips through my body as the van collides face-first with the solid rock cliff face of the mountains lining the highway.
Bullets tear through the windows of the prison van. High caliber death from atop the cliff lining the highway.
We’re under attack.
Time’s up.