Out in the middle of the summer house, Sadie and Rod perfected their go-dog-go finale.
“And scene! Good job,” Hobbit said, stepping forward to give them notes.
Maybe that was what Jules needed. His own go-dog-go. A chance to say what he’d been too shocked, too stunned to say during that chaotic, heart-stopping one-minute break-up before David had left for the west coast.
Have a nice life.
Fuck you, David, indeed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Present Day
Palm Springs, California
Mission Day Three
Mick grabbed an outside table at the coffee place—a quirky mom-and-pop called Caffeinated Cathy’s—while Emily waited in line to place her order.
He’d run about an eighth of his normal distance, at about half of his usual pace, but he’d loved every minute of it and it was clear that Emily did, too. She was tall and athletic and it totally made sense that she’d love using her body in this way. When they got back to LA, he’d take her on some of his favorite trails, far from the busy streets.
Where her mom should’ve gone to train for her race—although in no universe was Marina’s death her own fault. It was one thing to train for a half-marathon on the trails when you had a few million dollars in the bank—another entirelywhen you had to get up hours before work to do it. No, Emily’s mother’s death was entirely on his father, who’d been behind the wheel of the car that had hit her.
Mick had gone back into the old man’s library office to confront him about that, shortly after his unsuccessful visit to Frank Santana.
He’d first made sure, though, that the evidence he’d stumbled across was safeguarded. He’d put digital copies into the hands of Etta Caldwell, the lawyer he’d found through an internet search—the same lawyer who then helped him change his name. Attorney Caldwell had no connections to his father—he’d been certain of that not merely from her reassurances, but because she was a woman of color. In no universe would his bigoted shit-stain of a sperm-donor have ever hired her for anything other than housekeeper, maid, nanny, or nurse.
Mick had gone into the estate library while his father was on the phone. Just opened the door and walked on in, sat down in one of the chairs in front of that big wooden desk and waited.
The old man scowled at him and made shooing motions with his hand. And when Mick didn’t move, he ended his call with a rather huge mad-on.
“What is wrong with you?”
It was a perfectly pitched question—it came in sweet and fat and steady, right over the proverbial home plate, flawlessly positioned for Mick to hit it clean out of the park. So to speak.
So Mick smiled, his own anger compressed tightly down into this glittering, hard diamond of action. This action would achieve an outcome that was not even close to fair, but would be tolerable, considering the unsurmountable challenges that true justice would require.
What waswrongwith him?
“I dunno, Dad, finding glaring evidence that proves you set me up to take the blame for Marina Santana’s murder has made me a little... snippy.”
Ah, the look on his father’s face...
“I think I’m probably entitled to move up in priority—at least above a phone call to the club reserving a tee time for tomorrow, I mean,that’sreasonable, don’t you think?”
“Whatever you think you’ve found?—”
“Oh, it’s notwhatever, Dad. It’s everything. Fact—I’d sayfun fact, but four years in prison was certainly not fun forme—I was in Las Vegas on the night of the murder.”
“It wasn’t a murder?—”
“Oh, excuse me. Vehicular manslaughter, although who could know the killer’s true motivation—oh wait, that would be you! Andyouinsist itwasn’tmurder. I’msoglad we clearedthatup.”
His father was silent now, so he kept going.
“Fact: You drugged me and made that video of me in the driveway, sitting in your car, and you forged the timestamp to that of the night of the accident. Kinda crazy that you saved the original, but it was probably your first murder cover-up—excuse me, vehicular manslaughter cover-up—so you made some newbie mistakes. Completely understandable.”
“If you have this evidence, why tell me, why not go to the police?”
