Collateral(9)
My chest feels like a heavy weight is pressing down on it, making it hard to breathe. My hands are shaking. I’m so livid I can barely sit still. “Maybe at the beginning? Like how you came to be involved with the DEA, Dad? You’ve known all along, haven’t you? You’ve known all along that Alexis was alive and you haven’t said a goddamn word. That’s why you reacted so weirdly when I came to the house to tell you and Mom I’d found her. God!”
“Sloane.”
“What, Dad? Don’t take the lord’s name in vain? What the hell am I supposed to say? You’ve been lying to us. Lying to us for years.” I brace my elbows against my knees, leaning forward, trying to clear my head. Pointless though. I can’t fucking believe it. “You haven’t even denied it,” I whisper. “You haven’t even told me it’s not true.”
His remorse rolls off him in waves that practically pull at me. Like Zeth, Dad’s never been one to lie. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I really am. But it was imperative you didn’t know where Alexis was.”
“And Mom? Was it imperative she didn’t know where her freaking daughter was? She thought she was dead, Dad!”
“I know, Sloane. I know. But you have to understand, I did what I had to do. It was the way it had to be. It wasn’t going to be forever.”
I sit up straight so I can look him in the eye—the man I’ve respected my whole life. The man whose footsteps I’ve wanted to follow in since I was a little girl. The man who taught me love and justice and honesty. My stomach twists, and I realize something terrible is about to happen. “Oh, no. Dad, pull over.”
“What is it?”
“Dad just pull over the damn car!”
He swings the station wagon over to the side of the road, just in time for me to push open the door and part company with the contents of my stomach. I throw up so hard my eyes cloud over with tears. Dad places his hand in the center of my back and rubs up and down, just like he did when I was sick as a kid. The action doesn’t make me feel any better. It makes me feel even worse.
I hear a car pull up behind us and the crunch of footsteps on the gravel at the side of the road, then a deep voice saying, “We can’t stay here. She can throw up back at the field office.”
I don’t know the man that voice belongs to, but I already hate him. I swat the tears from my eyes and look up into the face of the tallest guy I’ve ever seen. His generic SUV is parked right behind us, the passenger door still yawning open. Lowell’s at the wheel, staring at me with an impassive, unaffected look. The same one she was wearing when she showed me the bodies of the many men she says Zeth killed. I flip her off, and then I spit on the ground, ridding myself of the foul taste of vomit.
“Tell your boss she can go fuck herself,” I inform the giant in front of me. I swing my legs back into the car and then slam the door so violently the whole car rocks.
“You don’t know the truth, sweetheart. I think as soon as I explain everything, you’ll understand,” Dad says softly.
If he thinks that, then he has another thing coming. “I don’t care what the truth is now, Dad. It’s too late. Both you and Alexis have totally betrayed any trust that might have existed between us. You’ve destroyed everything. I just…I just don’t wanna hear it.”
A car horn blares behind us—Lowell bitching about our lack of movement. Dad puts the station wagon into gear and pulls back out onto the road. We’re apparently headed to a field office. Somewhere I can be righteously preached at about my recent life choices. I wouldn’t have gone anywhere with my father or Agent Lowell given the choice, but it was either this or getting my ass arrested and my assets seized until I complied. I haven’t touched my bank account in weeks. It seems that whenever I’ve needed something it was simply there, provided to me by either Zeth or more often than not by Michael. But at some point I am going to want access to my money, and I am definitely going to want to go back home. But when the hell will that ever happen? The very thought of being able to step back inside the sanctuary I created for myself without towing a whole heap of trouble right after me is laughable.
Besides, my father promised me he’d drop me off wherever I wanted after I’d heard him out, so this seemed like the best option at the time. We drive for another forty minutes passing turnoffs to Mountlake Terrace, Lynnwood and the Paine Field Airport until we arrive in Everett. I haven’t been here since I was a kid—a birthday party for either Alexis or myself, I can’t recall now. The place reminds me of screaming children and the smell of hamburgers.