All He Has Left(40)

The football coach had done a good job staying off the radar thus far. But he couldn’t hide forever. Eventually, he would reach out to someone who would come back to bite him. They always did. Gervais had never tracked anyone who stayed off the grid forever—it just took patience. So Gervais had been sitting there, enjoying his cigarettes, the view, and some soul-enriching jazz.

But finally, Gervais got an interesting hit.

His laptop dinged. Pulling it over, Gervais studied the screen. The alert came from the key words Sarah Slater. Gervais’s eyes narrowed. An unidentified phone number had reached out to someone on his list by text message. The strand was peculiar and certainly put him on high alert. Someone was demanding a meeting and threatening the contact person if he didn’t show up. Using his phone, Gervais pulled up the location mentioned in the text exchange. Alliance Children’s Garden was in the heart of downtown and only five minutes away from him.

Setting his laptop aside, Gervais put the car in drive.





TWENTY-EIGHT


Jake sat in his truck, which was parked in a lot next to the Palmer Events Center downtown, and stared wide-eyed at the shocking breaking news he was just now reading on his burner phone. What the hell? Judd McGee was dead? Jake couldn’t believe it. And the police suspected that Jake had shot and killed him early this morning? Why? How did this happen? Who would’ve shot him? Jake’s head was spinning. Could it have been Judd’s stepdaughter? Had the little girl pulled the trigger and then pinned it on Jake? That theory was so far-fetched, but he could come up with no other explanation as to why the man was dead only hours after Jake had accosted him.

One thing was clear. The police and media target placed squarely on Jake had just grown exponentially in size and scope. More photos of him were posted—most of them taken from various social media channels—and there was now a toll-free hotline set up by the police for people to call who spotted Jake in the city or had more information that led to his arrest. While he had been under the microscope before, Jake now felt like he had a thousand spotlights on him. But he couldn’t go into hiding. He had to keep moving forward to find answers that would lead him to Piper. And that meant him walking into a public park right now.

Jake had no idea if Brent Grisham would actually show up at the location he’d indicated in his terse text earlier. The attorney had not responded to his threatening message. For all Jake knew, the guy could’ve already brushed off the whole thing as if it had originated from some random whack job. A man in his position with the governor might get a lot of nonsensical texts and emails and probably smartly ignored most of them. But Jake hoped the fact that he’d specifically mentioned Sarah by name would make the difference. There had clearly been something going on between the two of them when she’d died last year. An affair? Jake couldn’t be 100 percent certain, but he had a bad feeling about it. But even if it was an affair, that was still a long way to murder. Either way, Jake knew he’d need to keep his cool to get the information he wanted. A difficult task was at hand no matter what direction this went—if Brent showed up.

Getting out of his truck, Jake walked down a maze of sidewalks that cut through wide-open fields of green grass. Alliance Children’s Garden was set in the middle of beautiful Butler Metro Park, which hugged the downtown running trails along the river. Built next to a large pond, the children’s garden was two acres of recreational space that included a variety of climbing and exploring apparatuses mixed among hills, bridges, and water fountains. Jake had been there several times with Piper when they just wanted to hang out together in a fun play space and goof off. Piper would run full speed in the plush grassy area and do as many back handsprings in a row as she could pull off. Her record was twelve—but that was before the crash last year. He thought about how difficult it had been for his daughter to get it back.

Jake woke, sat up in bed. What’s that noise? Grunting? He looked over at the digital clock on his nightstand. Thirty minutes after midnight. He heard it again. More grunting. Piper? Jake got out of bed and moved to the bedroom window, which was cracked open. Piper was in the backyard, standing on the twenty-foot inflatable tumble track wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and her acro athletic shoes. Why was she out there right now? He watched as she bent down and then exploded upward, throwing her hands back, jumping off the ground, spinning backward, hands now tucked on her knees. She got three-quarters of the way around with her back tuck but couldn’t stick the landing. She fell forward onto her knees and hands. “Dang it!” she yelled, clearly agitated.

Jake watched her for a couple of minutes. She tried again. Failed again. A third time. Another fall. Piper used to be able to easily nail her back tuck. But she had not been able to get it back yet with the loss of strength in her leg. Physical therapy was helping, but it had been slow. He knew his daughter was so frustrated. This was her joy. And it had been stolen from her this past year.

Grabbing a pair of jeans, Jake pulled them on and then walked out onto the back porch of his father’s house. He could hear the crickets and see the stars in the sky. The stars had been one of the benefits of moving out of the city and to a country town. Although Piper had not seemed to be that impressed with them.

Piper went for it again. Another fall. This time she yelled, “I hate this!”

Jake moved down the steps and into the grass. Piper saw him for the first time.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you,” she said.