The things they’d done after she lost her badge…
Charlie headed for the shower, needing the stinging spray to clear her thoughts. She kept thinking she wanted justice, but that wasn’t strictly the truth. The truth was that she wanted the ones who’d hurt her to pay. Getting a cop indicted was damn near impossible—something she’d been glad of when she wore the badge. It was very easy for civilians to only see the bad cops, the ones who couldn’t be trusted. It was even easier for them to paint all cops in the same light.
They didn’t know how goddamnhardit was to go outinto the streets night after night and hold on to her honor. How difficult it was to trust the law to do what was right—and to see the times when the law failed. Theirs wasn’t a perfect system, but it worked more often than it didn’t.
Until she got on the wrong side of it.
She scrubbed harderwith the sponge. Sometimes it felt like there were two people living in her skin—the one who still had stars in her eyes, believing that the good guys always won, and the one who saw the world for what it really was. The good guys didn’t always win. They didn’t evenusuallywin.
The ones with power did.
She stepped out of the shower and dried off, looking around the room for the first time since she’d been led here.This is what power looks like.There was nothing overtly proclaiming that the person who lived here had more money than God, but the knowledge was there just the same. It was in the high-end furniture stained a delicious dark brown, and in the thick carpet beneath her bare feet, and in the luxuriously high thread count of the blankets she ran her hands over. There was the old saying that if you couldn’t beat them, you should join them.
Well, she’d done more than join them.
She’d gone and gotten into bed with them.
Her phone rang as she pulled a ridiculously expensive pair of pajamas out of one of the many bags that had mysteriously appeared in the room while she was in the shower.
Charlie’s chest tightened at the sight of her dad’s number, despite the fact that she’d considered calling him earlier. The last thing she wanted to do was fake a smile and pretend everything was fine.But then, that’s what I’ve been doing for years. What’s one more time?She smiled—it wasso much easier to fake a happy tone if she was grinning—and answered. “Hey, Dad.”
“Is everything okay?”
He knows.She fought down the impulse to confess. He’d used that trick on her more times than she could count while she was in high school. Finally, she’d caught on to the fact that he often didn’t know a damn thing untilshetold him.Confess nothingbecame her mantra after that. “Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?” How closely did he keep watch on the O’Malleys and the other families in Boston?
Her dad laughed, but it was as fake as her cheery tone. “No reason. I just worry about you, you know.”
He just lied to me.
“I know.” Bitterness threatened to choke her. Her fall from grace wasn’t her dad’s fault. He should have been in her corner, though—the one person who would back her up no matter what. She’d known one of John Finch’s unforgivable sins was being a dirty cop. She just hadn’t expected him to turn onherbecause of it.
The truth was he’d always loved his job more than he’d loved anything—anyone. Including her. Any chance she’d had of changing that disappeared with her career in law enforcement. These days, all she had was their regular dinners, complete with strained conversation and quiet judgment.
When she was branded a dirty cop, she’d lost two families.
Maybe she hadn’t even had them to begin with.
She cleared her throat, not liking the way her thoughts were headed. “I’m fine.”
“I stopped by the bar, but Jacques said you were on vacation.”
She frowned. “You were checking up on me.” In the years she’d worked for Jacques, he’d neveroncegone there. Even before she was kicked out of the force, she and her dad had led separate lives. They’d had their dinners, but that was it. And after…Well, there wasn’t much to talk about without a mutual career in law enforcement. Anyone sane would have stopped trying after the first few months, but if the Finches had nothing else in common these days, they had sheer stubbornness.
To have him suddenly showing up at the bar the day after she agreed to help Aiden…
Charlie didn’t believe in coincidences.
“I’m your father. I was worried about you, so I dropped by.”
She hated his high-and-mighty tone, the one that said he had no intention of explaining himself. He was always so damn sure he knew best, and he thought that gave him permission to do whatever he pleased. Getting him to admit that maybe he’d been wrong was a lesson in impossibility.
Charlie forced the tension out of her voice, though it was a struggle. “It’s been several years. I needed a vacation, so I took one.”
“Spur-of-the-moment, without sending so much as a text to tell me where you’ve gone.” The suspicion in his voice was so thick, it was a wonder he could speak at all.
He definitely knows.
Maybe he had someone watching her, or maybe one of his contacts who monitored the O’Malleys had reported back—but her dad knew exactly where she was. She could keep pretending that everything was peachy, or she could drop the veil and hope he did the same. Even though she knew better, she said, “This is the only way, Dad.”
