Confessions Of An Old Lady (14 page)

Chapter 26

“I have to check in with Renley right now or he’ll seriously send a team over here to check on me. I have no choice. What in the hell am I going to say to him?”

“You don’t have to figure that out right now. I mean, eventually you’re going to have to face the music, like you said, but right now, just check in, so he doesn’t worry about you and then we’ll go from there,” Sonny said, holding my hand and squeezing it tightly.

This was so much better than I could have hoped for. When Jimmy made that phone call, I knew that my acting days were over. I just didn’t know if I was going to be able to pull off one last act and convince Sonny not to kill me. But I got more than I could have wished for. Not only did he let me live, he realized that he loved
me
, regardless of what my name was, it was
me
that he wanted. Had he completely forgiven me yet? Probably not. But now we’d have all the time in the world together to work on that. That is, if we could figure out how to elude the Monsters of Mayhem.

“You’re right. Here goes nothing.” I went to the bookshelf, grabbed the fake book, picked up the white iPhone as I’d done dozens of times over the past several months, and said, “Hey Siri. Call Agent Renley.”

“What is that phone?” Sonny asked curiously.

“It’s my Agency phone. I use it to contact Renley and headquarters so that I could…” I didn’t finish my sentence. This was a subject so sore, it hadn’t even begun to scab over yet.

“…give them information on me and the club.” Sonny finished his sentence.

I nodded my head, ashamed of myself.

“Have you had it this whole time?”

Again I nodded my head.

“Of course you did,” he answered, giving me a look that said
I’m so tired of finding out new secrets about you.

Finally, after four or five rings, Renley picked up. I stood in the corner of the room so Sonny couldn’t be seen on FaceTime.

“Rockford! You okay?” Renley answered. Even though it was past one o’clock in the morning, he was obviously wide awake and awaiting my call. “I was beginning to worry! I thought I’d hear from you sooner. But whatever, I got you now, so tell me you’re okay.”

“Yes, yes. I’m fine. How about you? Did everything go as planned? How’d the raid go?” As if I didn’t already know.

“Well, it went mostly as planned. We got about twenty crew members between the Lords and the Monsters. Leroy Jackson’s in the wind. Neither Sonny Jackson nor Eddy Walters were there. Strange. Can’t imagine why they wouldn’t show. Do you know why Sonny wasn’t there? Do you know where he is?”

Shit
. I hadn’t prepared for that question. In fact, I hadn’t prepared for any of Renley’s inquiries. “I think he stayed behind, just in case something like this did go down. Something about preservation of the club or legacy or something like that. But no, I don’t know where he is tonight. Maybe he just stayed home.”

“Well, it’s no big loss. We arrested several of the gang members and picked up about thirty kilos of coke and over a hundred automatic weapons. Overall, it was a good sweep. Your information turned out to be spot-on, Rockford. Excellent job.”

I looked over at Sonny, who was hanging his head and shaking it, hands on his hips. Guilt racked my body from head to toe and I wanted to vomit. “Thanks.”

“Your job is done, Rockford. Time for you to come home. I’ll make arrangements for you first thing tomorrow morning. Let’s get you out of there before anyone figures out your role in all this madness.”

“But what about Sonny Jackson? Don’t you want me to stay here a while and try to get something on him so you can take him in too?” I knew he didn’t, but I was grasping at straws to try to delay the inevitable.

“Oh no. We’ll get him eventually. He won’t be able to resist taking over if his father never shows up. Oh, he’ll run his club as clean as he can for a while, but eventually, he’ll slip up. They always do,” Renley said with a chuckle. “Plus, it won’t take long for that asshole to figure out you aren’t really who you say you are. And trust me, you don’t want to be there when he does.”

I had no other arguments to use for staying behind a minute longer. I had nothing at all to say. “Okay. So when do I leave? In a couple of weeks?”

“Hell no. We can’t risk having you there a minute longer than necessary. It won’t take Sonny long to put two and two together and once he figures out who you really are, that bastard will kill you sure as my name’s Kerry.”

“Your name is Kerry?” For a split second, I was amused at the idea that this whole time I’d never even known his first name. But the look on Sonny’s face was enough to snap me back to reality.

“Yeah. It’s hilarious, I know. Anyway, we’ve booked a jet to pick you up at the Bluegrass Airport and bring you to Midway Saturday morning—a red-eye. It’s the soonest we could get you out of there. You need to be on the tarmac no later than six thirty. Wheels up at seven. Until then, lay low. You read me?”

“Saturday? Technically today is Friday! I can’t get all my stuff packed and ready by Saturday morning!” Although I knew the argument was futile, I was trying to buy Sonny and me every spare second I could before I’d have to tell Renley the truth and find a place for us to hide until the heat from the Monsters died down, if it ever would.

“Is there a problem, Rockford?” Renley didn’t sound suspicious necessarily, just a little confused.

“No, no. That’s fine. I’ll be at Bluegrass Saturday morning on-time for the flight.”

“Great. I’ll be at Midway waiting for you. Beauford’s coming too. He says he can’t wait to shake your hand, but between you and me, I think he wants a hug.”

“Can’t wait to see you both.” I tried to sound convincing.

“Oh, and Agent Rockford?” He paused.

“Yes?”

“Great work. Don’t worry yourself over Sonny. I know you had a crush on the guy and all, but we’ll get him eventually. You did better than anyone could have hoped. Sorry I ever doubted you.” He sounded sincere, which made my guilt double in its intensity.

“Thanks.” I ended the phone call and turned to face Sonny, who was standing, listening to the entire conversation with Renley, about four feet away from me. A distance which felt more like a thousand feet in that moment.

“What now?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders.

“Well, we’ve got to find a place to hideout for a while, until we get a handle on the situation with the Monsters.”

“Okay, you’re right, but I don’t think we’ll ever have a ‘handle on the situation’. Eddy’s gonna hunt us both down and kill us…uh, Olivia. He won’t stop until he finds us. Where could we possibly go? You’re the secret agent…tell me what we need to do next.”

I rubbed my eyes then planted my hands on my hips, inhaling, then exhaling hard enough to blow my long bangs up off of my face. I was tired. Dead tired. But there was no sleep in the near future for either one of us. We couldn’t afford the time. We had to pack our stuff and find at least a temporary hideout. I thought long and hard before answering him.

He looked at me as if to say
hurry the hell up and come up with a plan already
. We couldn’t go to Chicago. Even though I’d be close to the DEA, I’d have already been fired or resigned by then so we wouldn’t be getting any help from them. Staying in Kentucky was out of the question. The moment that thought crossed my mind, my stomach sank at the thought of possibly never getting to see my family again. I mean, who knew how long we’d have to be on the run. Months? Years? Forever?

I thought about driving out West—somewhere like Texas or Colorado. Texas is big enough to get lost in and Colorado is nothing but mountains. Then of course, there was Kansas and the Dakotas. No one would think to look for us there. Somehow, though, I was pretty certain that anywhere in the continental United States was going to be a bad idea. We didn’t have fake IDs or time to locate any, so we’d be easy to trace the first time we used our drivers’ licenses or credit cards. True, we weren’t going to be on the run from the American government, but most gangs have at least one resourceful person on their payroll who can hack computers and locate anyone just about anywhere, especially if you’re in America leaving a paper trail.

So staying in the contiguous United States was impossible. Alaska or Hawaii maybe? Or I had always wanted to visit Russia. I’d been working on my Russian for about six months, mainly so I could learn the language my sister and brother-in-law always spoke behind my back, so that seemed like a logical place to go. But the more I thought about it, I realized that number one, I didn’t want to
live
in a country that was still struggling to overcome its communist history, and number two, I still only barely spoke the language and I’d have to teach Sonny the little bit I knew. Russian was a
hard
language to learn. We’d be totally and utterly lost there.

Since I spoke Spanish fluently, my next thought was Mexico. Many people have successfully disappeared in Mexico, but then again, there was Andrew Luster, the makeup mogul who fled jurisdiction to Mexico, only to be recovered by Dog the Bounty Hunter. The Monsters would surely hire someone to track us down and Mexico would be on the top of their list of places to search. In my mind, that left only one place.

“We’re going to Spain. Valencia, actually.” I threw the words out there as if I’d dropped a grenade right in Sonny’s lap and I was dangling the pin by my pinky finger. I wasn’t sure how he’d react, but I really believed it was our only option. Plus, it would only be temporary. The DEA would hopefully track Eddy Walters down before he could find us and then we could return home to America. And if for some ungodly reason that never happened, and we had to live our lives on the run, Spain wasn’t a bad place to be “stuck.”

“Spain?” He looked at me, confused. “I thought you were going to say California or anywhere else in America, frankly. I don’t speak Spanish.”

“Luckily for the both of us, I speak it fluently,” I informed him. “And it’s not hard to learn. Trust me.”

“Of course you do. What else am I going learn about you now that I know who you really are?” He didn’t look pissed. In fact, to my extreme relief, he looked a little amused.

I decided not to take the bait. “Do you have a passport?” This was important.

“Uh…yeah…I did. I’m not really sure where it is or if it’s expired or not, but I had one a few years back when I went to visit relatives in Ireland.”

“You have relatives in Ireland? Now who’s keeping secrets?” I hoped the joke was accepted in its intended manner. “Too soon?”

He paused for a second and then finally, the first smile I’d seen since
before
started to spread across his face. “Yes. My grandparents are originally from a small town called Killarney. My aunt and uncle still live there.”

“Well, you need to find that passport and we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed that it’s still valid, because we don’t have time to wait for a new one. We’re going to have to leave within a couple of days at most.

“When are you going to talk to your boss at the DEA…tell him the truth and resign?”

“I’ll call Renley back tomorrow. But right now, let’s start getting our stuff packed and find your passport. Luckily, I’ve got a go bag here, ready to take off on a moment’s notice, but we need to get you packed up and we need to get our hands on as much cash as we can. Thank God it’s Friday and the bank will be open in a few hours. You’ll need to draw out every dime you have once it opens. I’ll do the same. Plus, in my go bag is about ten thousand in cash for emergencies. Between that and what we both draw out of the bank, we should easily be able to get our flights over there and live for a while until we figure out something else.”

There. We had a plan. It was made on a dime, but it was the best I could do under pressure.

As soon as he’d left to go pack his things and get cash, I began packing up my belongings. Whatever I could fit in an overhead bag. Then I pulled out my laptop and opened up a new page. I went to Travelocity.com and began searching for flights to Spain.

Chapter 27

I was able to find us a flight from Louisville International Airport directly to Valencia, for only a thousand each, which was very reasonable, considering the last-minute plans. We’d leave Saturday morning at eight o’clock. That would leave enough time for us to get our money and pack all day Friday and then I’d be able to call Chicago before Renley and Beauford left to meet me at the airport. The thought terrified me. It was going to be the second-hardest conversation I’d ever had in my life. The first being the one with Sonny when he found out who I really was. There would be a third difficult conversation, it occurred to me, when I called my parents to lie to them and tell them that my next assignment with the DEA was taking me to Minsk, Belarus. Of course, that was an utter lie, but I didn’t want them to know my real location, in case anyone tracked them down and tried to get the information out of them. A cold chill ran through my body. All I could do was hope and pray that the Monsters never figured out my real identity and that they’d never figure out who my parents were. But I still had to be cautious.

Around five in the morning, I checked my go bag to make sure everything, especially the money, was all there and accounted for. I opened up the black duffle bag that I had kept packed ever since I joined the DEA—Kingston had taught me about go bags and emphasized the importance of having one ready at all times. Inside I was relieved to find my passport, a first aid kit, a change of clothes, a liter bottle of water, a flashlight, a Zippo lighter, and ten thousand dollars in cash.

In my suitcase, I had packed all of my clothes, but they were all of my Trish Sanders clothes. I’d almost forgotten what my Olivia Rockford clothes even looked like, so I was fine with it.

Sonny called right as I was sitting on my suitcase trying to zip it up. I reached in my back pocket and pulled out my black phone.

“Hello?” I said.

“Okay, so I got most of my stuff packed. And I found my passport. It’s still good.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” I had been ready for some good news.

“I’m headed back over there. Do you need me to bring you anything?”

“No, no. I’m good. I just finished packing too. Come on over and we’ll try to catch a couple hours’ nap before the banks open. There’s not much we can do until then, anyway.”

“Sounds like a plan. I’m on my way.”

Fifteen minutes later, Sonny walked in through my front door, a huge duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

“I didn’t have a suitcase.” He shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s fine. Whatever works for you. Did you pack your underwear?” I joked.

“Oh, ha ha. Very funny.” He dropped the blue duffel bag onto the floor in the hallway and took a step closer. For the first time since we met, I felt butterflies when he stood close to me. There was a moment of awkward silence as we stood inches apart, looking each other in the eye without flinching or saying a word. I wanted him to make the first move, considering everything that had transpired in the past twelve hours, so I stood there with my arms at my side, waiting for him to say something or touch me…anything.

Finally, he did just that. He took hold of my waist with both hands and pulled me close to him—so close our bodies were pressed up against each other. He looked down at me and brushed the hair off my face the way he had many times
before
.

“This is going to be hard for me,” he said. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt me and that you were only doing your job. I do believe that you love me, and I love you too. But it’s going to take a while for me to get used to the new you. Well, I guess it’s actually the
old
you, but it’s new to me.”

“I know, Sonny. And I don’t blame you. Take all the time you need. I won’t push you. I’m so sorry I hurt you. I didn’t want to. As soon as I realized I was in love with you, I did everything in my power to try to spare you. If I had known what was going to happen…that I was going to fail so miserably at my job, I would never have taken the assignment.”

“Bullshit,” he said smoothly. “You still would have taken the job. You love what you do. I can tell. Plus, we would never have met if you hadn’t.”

“But I’m still sorry you have to go on the run now. I’ve turned your life upside down. Your father is missing because of me.” Tears started to well up in my eyes.

“First, my father lived his life on the edge. He was bound to get caught up in something like this at some point. If he’s still alive, he’ll figure something out. Second, I’ve always daydreamed about running away…just starting over…making a new life for myself and someone special. Now we get to go on an adventure…together. It’ll be fun.” He smiled.

“I don’t know how much fun running for our lives is going to be, but I get your point. Again, I’m just so sorry that—”

He stopped my words with a kiss. It was a kiss I wasn’t sure I’d ever experience again and now that I was, it was so much sweeter than ever before.

We lay down on the bed to take a nap. I set the alarm on my phone for eight a.m., only two and a half hours away, but we needed to catch sleep whenever and wherever we could.

***

The ear-piercing alarm went off precisely at eight and I shot bolt upright out of bed. It took me a second to realize where I was and that, for the moment, we were still safe. Sonny hadn’t budged at the sound of the alarm, so I shook him vigorously until he finally roused and turned over and opened his eyes.

“Wake up, sleepy head. We’ve got to go!” When he grumbled, I reminded him, “We’ve got to get to the bank right away.”

He sat up on the edge of the bed and began putting his boots back on while I threw my Harley Davidson pink hoodie on over my white lace tank top and grabbed my own boots from the closet. I threw my hair back into a high ponytail to keep it out of my face and then Sonny and I were out the door, on his bike, and on our way.

We arrived at the Chase bank only moments after it had opened and were greeted by the branch manager, who held a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and shook our hands with the other.

“What can I do ya for this morning, folks?” The manager was a bit pudgy, so his belly hung over the top of his khaki pants. His hair was dark brown, but I could see the beginnings of grey hair starting to sprout in various places.

“We both need to make withdrawals. Big ones. And we’ll need to close our accounts,” I informed him.

“Oh, well, I hate that we’ll be losing your business. Is there some sort of problem I need to be aware of? Have we treated y’all well as customers?” He motioned for us to follow him over to his office, which we did.

“No, no,” Sonny responded for me. “Just going away for a while and we’re not sure when, or if, we’re coming back.”

“A trip? Splendid!” He sat down behind his wooden desk and turned to face his computer. “Where ya headed, if I may ask?”

We both looked at each other, but Sonny was the first one to speak. “A cruise. Mediterranean.”

“Well, how nice is that? Let’s just get started so you two can get on your way and have a wonderful cruise.”

I gave him my account information first. My personal balance was $2,073.14. I withdrew every penny and closed the account. Sonny was next. I don’t know what I was expecting, but when the manager told him his balance, I nearly fell out of my chair.

“Poor ol’ mechanic boy, huh?” I jabbed him in the arm playfully. The balance was $102,311.52.

“What can I say…I’ve made some good investments.” By investments, I knew exactly what he meant, but it’s not exactly like he could say to Mr. Manager, “Yeah, I got all that money by selling cocaine and guns.”

After shaking hands with Mr. Manager again, we left the bank and got back on his bike. “Where to next?” he asked.

“Well, we can’t exactly haul our suitcases and bags on the back of this here chopper, can we now? We’ll have to rent a car to get us to the airport.”

“There’s not a Budget or a Hertz in Nicholasville. We’ll have to go to Lexington for that,” he informed me.

“That’s okay. We’ve got until tomorrow morning before we have to leave for the airport. Let’s go.”

***

We drove the twenty minutes or so that it took to get to Lexington and it was so cold, considering it was mid-February by now. A car was going to be a welcome change.

Sonny pulled the bike into the Hertz rental car store on Nicholasville Road in Lexington right around ten a.m. After a bit of haggling with the clerk, who looked like she couldn’t have been a day over eighteen, we walked out of Hertz with a 2013 Chevy Malibu. I agreed to drive the Malibu back to the house and Sonny would drive the Harley. But as we were walking to the car and bike, something started tugging inside me and I had a sudden realization. There was something I had to do before we left Lexington. It might not have been the smartest move ever, but it had to be done.

We pulled up to the last house on the left on Hartland Parkway just in time to catch my father walking out to grab the paper from the driveway. For the first time in two years—and maybe for the last time ever—I was home.