Trespassing(103)

I do my best to nod. “Mick.” I think to divert him with a nice-to-meet-you, to show him we’re family, to hope he recognizes that fact over and above his reasons for being here. But he’s no idiot. He knows I realize he wouldn’t drop in at this hour, with a gun to Natasha’s head, simply to meet me.

The door opens, and Lincoln shoves Natasha inside.

I tighten my grip on her daughter’s hand, but Mimi tears away and runs to her mother anyway.

“Where’s Micah?” I ask.

“That’s the question of the day, isn’t it?” Mick says. “Where can he stay out of trouble?”

Italy, I suppose. Switzerland. Where else did Guidry say the computer records revealed a home search?

“He’s been sighted here on the island.”

“So he’s alive?” I dare to ask.

“A lot of that depends on you,” Mick says. “On whether you’re prepared to tell me what you know. On whether I find him before our business associates do.”

“I don’t know anything.” I’m about to plead my case, but Lincoln silences me when he holds up a prescription pill vial with my name on it. Xanax.

I think of the details Guidry shared about Gabrielle and the boys: traces of benzodiazepine, lungs filled with lake water. I’m guessing disposing of our bodies might be a little easier than getting rid of Gabrielle’s. We won’t have to be flown to an ocean to get the job done.

Mick waves at Lincoln to take it down a notch; Lincoln pockets the pills. “My son is running. I assume you’re following him. The authorities have a car full of my son’s blood. Eventually, when he fails to turn up, and when all of their leads take them nowhere, the police will have no choice but to declare him dead, and the insurance will pay the death benefit. Where do you plan to be when that happens, Veronica?”

It feels as if my blood is pooling in my legs. I’m dizzy, and it’s hard to focus, hard to formulate a thought, let alone words.

“Considering your history, do you think anyone will question it, if you turn up dead in a bathtub?”

“Please,” I say. “Not in front of the girls.” The irony is enough to kill me. Despite all my efforts to avoid it, history is about to repeat itself. My child will grow up wondering if there’s something she could’ve done. Wondering why she wasn’t important enough, special enough to keep me alive.

“It doesn’t have to happen that way,” Mick says. “It’s up to you.”

“I’ll cooperate. But I don’t know—”

“My son misplaced something valuable. His survival depends on my finding it.”

“But I don’t know . . .” I swallow over the Sahara in my throat. “Your men told me he was dead, and I believed them. I’m mourning my husband. I don’t know where he is or where he put the money, if he put it anywhere at all.”

“They were testing you,” Mick says. “They knew you’d show up at the bank. They knew you’d leave with money . . . to get it to Micah. So where is he?”

“I didn’t—look. I didn’t expect to find that much money in the box, and I wasn’t getting it for Micah. I was trying to pay the bills. We’re in debt. Lots of debt.”

He continues, as if I haven’t said a word: “I value my son’s life, but the value of yours depends on how helpful you’re willing to be.”

I glance at Lincoln—if I’d let him take the money in the bank that day, would this all have been over then? Not likely—$50,000 isn’t a substitute for $5 million. “You can have it—everything that’s left from the box. I didn’t know he stole from you. The police told me later, but if I’d known . . . Is that what this is about? Money he stole from you a decade ago?”

“Tsk, tsk,” he says. “Is that what you think of your husband’s character? He was honest enough that it took a certain amount of persuasion to bring him into the fold. Fifty thousand, to be exact, planted to make him look guilty. His mother assumed he was.”

The picture is becoming clearer. Mick staged it to look like Micah had stolen the money. When Micah said he was putting five grand in the deposit box, it was actually fifty.

“I made a deal with him,” Mick continues. “I’d drop the charges, and he could keep the money, as long as he did what I needed him to do. And he’s been doing it, until recently.”

My mind is flipping in circles as I piece together what might have happened. Mick needed someone to transport for Diamante. Micah didn’t want to do it, so Mick found a way he’d have to do it. Was that why Micah lost his job at United? Because Mick had him transporting something illegal? After that Micah didn’t have a choice but to go to work with his father—what other airline would hire him?

But something still doesn’t make sense: “If he did what you wanted, why are we here? What else is going on?”

Mick flashes a lupine grin. “Micah’s more of a chip off the old block than I knew. I set you up in that pretty little house on the golf course. Gave him enough to finance more grandbabies. He’s been taking money almost since the beginning. Ten grand here, ten there. Sharing my name only made it easier to access the accounts.”

I glance at Natasha. If he stashed money in the kiln, where else might it be? Then I look around—$1 million to buy this house.