The Bad Judgment Series: The Complete Series (37 page)

W
alker called
April late that night; I called Alexa a little afterwards. Neither of them was happy to hear from us.

I couldn’t blame them.

“I need you to get in touch with Tammy. From your private cellphone,” I said.

“I don’t have a private cellphone,” Alexa said.

“Then go get one, like I told you. Tomorrow,” I hissed.

“I liked you a lot better when you were mousy. Not like you are now, all getting regularly, properly fucked by a billionaire, thinking you’re hot,” Alexa said. “You’re so
bossy
now.”

I sighed and counted backwards from ten, so I didn’t call her the litany of nasty names that I had queuing in my head. “I’m being bossy because we don’t have much time, and what I’m asking you to do is extremely important.” I paused for a beat and pressed my hands against my eyes. “You miss Mandy, don’t you?” I asked. “Neither one of us wanted her to get hurt. But they killed her, Alexa. And we’re close to figuring out who did it and why. I need you to get a phone and call Tammy tomorrow. We’re going to find a space for you to work. Someplace safe.

“Tell Tammy I got her note and that she was right. Tell her it won’t be safe until we do something and catch the people who did this,” I said.

“Of course I miss Mandy,” Alexa said. “It’s a fucking horror show. But I don’t want to get involved, Nicole. Do you understand that? It’s not that I want you and Walker to get hurt — I don’t. It’s not that I want guilty people to go free. It’s just that I don’t want to be caught in the middle of this. I like my life. I like it normal, without people trying to hurt me. It’s like the military — I believe in protecting our country, but I’m not gonna go out there and
volunteer
. I’m a keep-your-hands-clean kind of girl. Sorry.”

I stood there, gripping the phone. I could feel a headache coming on.

I understood what she was saying. Of course I did. But if Alexa didn’t help us, we were going to have a very difficult time closing the loop between Lester Max and my firm. It sounded like Tammy wasn’t working there anymore; her passwords would have been pulled. She would have no security clearance and she wouldn’t be able to access the system.

Walker came into the room and could tell I was upset. He strode over to me. “Alexa?” he whispered, and I nodded.

He grabbed the phone from my hand. “Hello there, Senator Blake’s daughter,” he said, smoothly, like he was seeing her at a cocktail party. If she could see him right now, she’d faint: he was wearing a tight, white tank top, which showed off his ripped pectoral muscles and enormous biceps, along with his new, striking tattoo. He looked dangerous, like he was about to grab someone and hold them down — and I couldn’t help hoping that person was me.

If my hair had still been long, I would have twirled it.

“Listen to me,” he said, and there was an urgency to his tone that he’d been keeping below the surface. “Nicole and I have reason to believe that someone from my company has been colluding with someone from your firm — or possibly more than one person — for some time. They’ve been embezzling funds from me. I don’t know what else they’re up to.

“We have records from my company to back this up. But in order to find out what’s really going on, we need the records from Proctor. You could be the key here, Alexa. The person who turns this around. I know you were close to Mandy. If you help us, we might be able to bring the real killers to justice.

“And think about how that would look for your father,” he continued. “If his daughter was directly responsible for bringing down embezzling corporate terrorists….”

“All right, all right. I’ll do it,” Alexa snapped. I could hear her from where I stood. Walker smiled and handed the phone back to me without saying another word to her. “But you’re going to have to pay me, too,” she continued. “This can’t just be about my goodwill. If I get caught, I’m going to lose my job.”

“If you get caught,” I said, and I heard her sigh indignantly at the sound of my voice again, “losing your job is going to be the least of your worries. But we’ll compensate you. Walker’s got enough money to make this worth your while. You might even be able to fund your father’s next campaign.”

Alexa sighed again, but this one sounded more enthusiastically resigned. “What do you need me to do,” she asked, flatly.

“Go buy a new laptop tonight. And a wireless utility network thingy. Get two TracFones — actually, get six, ‘cause we might want you to throw them out on a regular basis. You need a scanner. And a printer.

“We’re going to get you a secure place to work, probably in Southie, near downtown.”

“
Southie?
” she practically screeched.

“You might want to pack a bag, too. A big one,” I said. “Go get that stuff tonight. And Alexa….”

“What?” she snapped again, all traces of enthusiastic resignation gone.

“Be careful.”

A
pril was probably even more
upset with us, and that was saying something.

“I need you to check in at The Majestic tomorrow,” Walker said to her, patiently. “Do it while Lester is asleep, or at work, or on the phone. You need a room there for tomorrow night. Yes,” he said, and I could hear him getting exasperated, “I
know
that Lester has reservations for you at that other hotel. It doesn’t matter, you won’t be staying there.”

He sighed, squeezed his eyes shut and held out the phone to me. “You deal with her,” he said. “She’s a pain in the ass.”

“April,” I cooed.

“Oh, great,” she said. “If this is good cop-bad cop, you guys seriously need to work on your routine.”

“Remember when you were with us last?” I asked. She grunted her assent. “Remember what we said to you — about your eyes? About waking up dead?”

“Yes,” she mumbled.

“We weren’t fucking around, April,” I said, suddenly seething. Seriously, these people. We were dealing with life and death and it was like they were worried about chipping their nail polish. “I hate to threaten you — again,” I continued, “but let me remind you that you are back out in civilization per Mr. Walker’s good graces. We need you to be loyal, and polite, and efficient. Do you think you can do that? ‘Cause my patience is really wearing thin.”

I almost called her ‘Red’ again, but then I thought better of it. When I was done with all of this, I was just going to vote Alexa and April off the island, together. They deserved each other.

“I’ve made arrangements, through the lobby manager at The Majestic, to get you some roofies,” I said. I watched as Walker’s jaw almost hit the floor; he’d been in the shower when I’d spoken to Louise earlier. “You need to go there tomorrow afternoon, check in, get the package from Louise, and then spend the afternoon at the office with Lester Max. Afterwards, I want you to take him out for a drink. Don’t drug him then, even though he’ll probably start pawing you. Take him back to The Majestic — tell him you have a thing for seedy hotels, or something — and once you get him upstairs, give him the drug. Louise said these are pretty heavy, so he should pass out quickly. Do not, under any circumstances, give him so much that you kill him. Do you understand?” I asked.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she asked, her voice icy.

“No, April, I am not.” It wasn’t like I was asking her to sleep with him, or anything. She didn’t have to be such a prude about it.
Sheesh
.

“Louise is going to have a car for you. She’ll help you carry him out. Blindfold him first. I also asked her to have handcuffs: handcuff him to something in the backseat of the car. I’d have you put him in the trunk but the ride here isn’t that long — he should stay passed out. I’m worried he’d suffocate in the trunk. That would ruin everything.”

“Of course it would,” April said. She was talking gently to me now, as if I were a crazy person.

“We need you to drive straight through to the address Louise is going to give you,” I said. “It’s about three hours. I expect you to leave by ten so you’re here no later than one-thirty. Don’t speed, don’t stop for gas, and don’t call anybody for help. Do you have any questions?”

“Just one,” she said. “Exactly how much is Mr. Walker going to pay me? Because I’m pretty sure I need a raise.”

“
R
oofies
?” Walker asked me, later.

“The date-rape drug,” I said, and shrugged. “We studied a case about it in law school — whether or not the woman was consenting to taking it, and to subsequently getting sexually assaulted, because she said she was ‘up for anything.’”

“Someone actually argued that in court?” Walker asked, incredulous.

“Lawyers can be really slimy,” I said. “Anyway, I was thinking about how we could get Lester here without shooting him, and I thought this might work.”

“You might not just be a genius — you might actually be an evil genius,” Walker said. “Plotting and scheming do seem to suit you.”

“I
am
a lawyer at heart,” I said. I looked out the window; it was very dark and peaceful.

“Want to grab a couple of beers and go out and finally sit on the boat?” Walker asked. “There’s not a lot of other tenants here right now. I think it would be safe if we just went for a couple of minutes.”

“I’d love to,” I said. I hadn’t been out of the condominium since we’d gone to the grocery store; I didn’t think I’d be leaving anytime again soon.

Walker grabbed two beers and my hand, and we went down to the mooring under the cover of the darkness.

“
This
is the boat?” I asked, flabbergasted, when he pulled me up alongside a mammoth motor boat. It wasn’t quite a yacht, but it wasn’t just a boat. It was huge and white, and it looked like it had been a very expensive purchase. “I thought you were buying a fishing boat,” I said.

I saw the outline of him as he shrugged in the darkness. “I told you it was nice,” he said, and helped me on board. “I don’t want to turn on any lights, or use a flashlight, but I can’t wait for you to see it. There’s a cabin below, a little kitchen.” He pulled me up to the bow and we sat down, cross-legged. He opened my beer for me and we looked up at the stars.

“This is nice,” I said, enjoying the quiet rocking, the fresh air, and being so close to him. “But why do we need so much boat?” I asked.

“In case you decide you want to run away to the Caribbean with me,” he said, and kissed my neck. Electricity shot through me and I shivered;
damn my stupid period
. “I wanted us to have something that we could stay on for a while. If we needed to.”

I leaned back up against him and looked at his face. “Is that what you want?” I asked.

He wrapped his arms around me and kissed my neck again. “Yes,” he said, and he sounded sure of himself. “But only if that’s what you want, too.”

I looked back up at the stars and relaxed into him. “I can’t picture wanting something without you beside me,” I said, and although I had to be brave to say it, I made myself. It was true. “And right now, with everything that’s happened, I can’t picture us going back.”

“I know,” he said, quietly.

“But we can’t let them win — we can’t just run away,” I said. “I have plans for them, now. I’m just getting warmed up.”

“I feel like we’ve switched,” Walker said. “I feel like before, I was the one who was hell-bent on fighting. But now it’s like I’ve gotten soft. I can’t muster enough need for revenge to want it more than I want you. Plus, I can’t stand to think about you getting hurt,” he said, and stroked my hair. “I want to hide you away from the world. Keep everybody away from you.”

“But the only way to do that is to finish what they started,” I said. “We’ll never be safe if we don’t find out who was responsible for the deaths back home. Someone will always be after us — us, my dad, my brothers. Adrian. We can’t just leave it all behind. We’re still implicated and we have a responsibility.”

“It’s your sense of duty that’s kicking in,” he said. “You can’t handle letting the injustice stand.”

“I can’t,” I said, agreeing with him. “So as much as I want to run away and live with you on a white sand beach, where we could have sex every hour, on the hour — which sounds really, really good right now, by the way — I have to know we’re going to finish this.”

I held his face in my hands. “You said being with me has made you softer? Well, I think being with you has made me harder. But in a good way. I can’t stand what they did to your company. I can’t stand how they ripped apart your home, bugged you, followed you, framed you. And that’s not even the worst of it. Everything that happened after — the people who died, the people who betrayed us — that’s changed me,” I said. “I can’t look at the world the same way anymore. But I can’t turn my back on it, either. Not yet. Not until we’ve put things back in the right order, first.” I leaned up and kissed him deeply on the lips and he stirred against me. “Do you understand?” I whispered.

“Of course I do,” he said, and kissed me back, fiercely. “Run away with me,” he said, and I could tell he meant it.

“I will,” I said, “I promise. And then we’ll have sex every hour, on the hour. But for now, we just need to get off this boat and start lining the bad guys up. And go knock them down, like so many dominoes.”

“
T
oday’s the day
,” Walker said the next morning. He came in and put a mug of coffee on my nightstand, rousing me from a lovely dream I was having about something that escaped me the moment I opened my eyes. I felt lost for a second, but then Walker sat down next to me, and looking at his face in the morning sunlight made it all better. That, and the fact that things were finally moving. We were getting documents and building an actual case, instead of just plotting and running and hiding.

If things went as planned, April would be delivering Lester Max to us tonight.

“How do you feel about seeing him?” I asked. Walker and Lester had never really been friends, but they’d certainly worked together for a long time, so they did have a relationship.

“I’m actually looking forward to it,” Walker said. “It’ll be pretty fun to have him wake up here. I expect he’ll be surprised.”

“I expect he will be, too,” I said, and laughed. “But what’s our play, here? He’s not going to have much choice — he’s going to have to talk, and at least tell us part of the truth. But then what? What are we going to do with him?”

“We,” he said, and took my and hand, “are going to send him back in. And he’s going to work for us. He is going to get me all of my money back, without alerting the government or your firm to what’s going on. And after I get every penny, and quite possibly some admissible testimony from him, I am going to pay him off. And then say goodbye to him for good.”

“You can’t pay him for his testimony,” I said. “It would make it automatically inadmissible.”

“Then I’ll pay him and look for other evidence,” Walker said and shrugged. “I still want you to take his statement while he’s here. It might be the last chance we get. And if Lester plays it right, David Proctor and whoever else is involved won’t know he’s working for us until he’s long gone, sitting somewhere in a foreign country on a beach, with a daiquiri in his hand.”

“He’s not coming with us, is he?” I asked, wrinkling my nose.

“Oh hell no,” he said. “He’ll be banned from our side of the equator.”

“Works for me,” I said. “But what if Lester was directly involved in one of the deaths? We can’t just let him go, then.”

“Well, maybe we could kill him after he gets us the money,” Walker said casually. “An eye for an eye — natural law, if you will.”

I just looked at him for a beat. As much as I was breaking lots of laws in pursuit of our enemies, I couldn’t bring myself to agree to the ultimate act of vigilante justice: killing someone. I could never be judge and jury like that — not over someone else’s life. Even though Lester Max was bad, even if he’d done something horrible that directly contributed to the three murders at home and possibly the Miami secretary, I couldn’t kill him. I couldn’t let Walker kill him, either. Because it would be wrong.

An image of Lester drugged, blindfolded and passed out in the back of a stolen car, with an angry April driving through the dark night, flashed into my mind. That was bad, I reasoned, but it still wasn’t as bad as killing someone.

“I don’t think I could live with that,” I said, apologetically. “Even though it would make this a whole lot easier.”

“Easy come, easy go,” Walker said. “And I don’t think I could do it, anyway. At least…I’m pretty sure I couldn’t.” He sounded doubtful as he stood up and grabbed his coffee.

“I am looking forward to scaring the shit out of him, though,” he said and smiled.

A
few hours later
, we got a call from Levi. Walker relayed their conversation. “He said that he’d found an apartment, in one of the newer buildings in Southie. There’s security, cameras, the works. It’s high-end, so at least Alexa will be happy.”

“So when can they move in and get started?” I asked. I was desperate to be able to talk to Tammy, to find out what it was that she knew.

“Tomorrow,” Walker said. “We’ll call Alexa first thing in the morning. I’m going to have Levi make contact with Tammy tonight. Her house might be under surveillance, so I want to wait until it’s dark.”

“Is that safe?” I asked. “For either of them? We don’t want Levi getting picked up, and I don’t want anyone to think Tammy’s working for us. At least, not until she’s actually working for us, and she’s someplace we can keep her safe.”

“Levi knows what he’s doing,” Walker said. “This is right up his alley.”

“He’s not that crazy, right?” I asked, hopefully. “I mean, is he going to scare Tammy? And Alexa?”

“Anyone who isn’t wearing an Armani suit probably scares Alexa,” Walker said. “But Levi is a good guy. He’s just been alone for too long. He just needs a woman around to take care of him. He needs to lighten up a little.”

I nodded at Walker, trusting his opinion. “Once we get them all set up, do you think we can have them send word to my dad and your sister?” I asked again, hopefully. Then the phone rang, and I lost the moment.

“Louise,” Walker said, after he answered his prepaid phone. “What’s going on?”

He listened to her for a minute and then let out a bark of laughter. “That’s perfect,” he said. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Lester Max lasted longer on the roofies than they’d expected,” Walker said. “He just kept going — he wouldn’t pass out. April had to lock herself in the bathroom. Louise finally found him asleep on the floor in his underwear. He’d been banging on the door, yelling at April to come out.”

I looked at him, horrified. “That’s not really funny,” I said.

“If you’d known how long Lester had been trying to get April into bed, you might find it slightly humorous,” Walker said.

This gave me an idea. An evil-genius sort of idea. “Hmmm…” I said.

Walker arched an eyebrow at me. “That’s your scheming and plotting voice. What’re you planning?”

“Nothing yet,” I said, the gears in my mind turning. “But April might really come in handy. More than we even thought.”

A
s planned
, April showed up shortly after one a.m. Even though we were waiting for her, the headlights coming down the single-lane drive at that hour of the night made my heart pound in fear. “Let’s go,” Walker said, and he handed me the handgun I’d used on our drive to Boca. “Put it in your waistband, like I showed you,” he said, gently.

I grabbed it and as soon as I touched it, my hands got sweaty again. I was still scared of using it, even though I knew how to, now; I wasn’t sure that was ever going to change. I wasn’t sure I wanted it to.

“Let’s go,” I whispered. I wanted to get out there and get April and Lester inside the house before any of the older residents at the condominium saw us and immediately called the police. There was no way we could explain away a handcuffed, taped up, passed-out Lester Max.

Walker grabbed my hand and pulled me silently down the stairs to the parking lot. There were a few streetlights, but for the most part it was dark and quiet. April was driving a black, four-door sedan; she got out and held up her hand to us tersely. Walker pulled his gun out and motioned for me to stay where I was. I stood there, frozen, watching him as he approached her. He held up the gun so she could see it.

“He’s passed out,” she hissed, “and
I’m
not gonna hurt you.”

Walker motioned to her and she went to him. “I’m going to search you,” he told her quietly, and he turned her around, leaning her over the car. He patted her down and even though there was nothing sexual about his touch, my heart lurched to see her bent over, prone before him.

“She’s clean,” he said, and handed her to me. He leaned over and kissed me quickly on the cheek; it was getting scary, how well he could read me, how he knew that I might need reassurance, no matter how silly it was.

“Is he awake?” Walker asked her.

“No. Not even close,” she said. “The keys are in the cup holder in the front. Our bags are in the trunk.”

“Are there any surprises in here?” Walker asked, pausing before he opened the door.

“I know better than that, Mr. Walker,” she said. “But Lester’s in his underwear.” She turned to me. “You might not want to look. It’s not pretty.”

Walker opened the back door of the car and leaned in; I held my breath until he came back out and gave me a quick thumbs up. Then he went in and rummaged around through the front, grabbed the key and proceeded to unlock Lester Max’s handcuffs from inside the car. In the darkness, all I could see was Walker’s broad back and one pale foot sticking out of the car. It resembled a dead fish and clearly belonged to the body of Lester Max. Still, I wasn’t prepared when Walker pulled out Lester’s almost naked, limp, pale frame and threw him unceremoniously over his shoulder. I could see Lester’s big belly bumping against Walker’s chest, his pale legs and feet dangling like he was a child — a rather large, pot-bellied, balding child — who’d fallen asleep in the car and was being carried up to bed.

If only it were something that simple, that innocent.

“I hope he packed some sweat pants,” I said. “I really don’t want to look at that.”

“Try having
that
trying to break into the bathroom where you’re hiding, so he can have sex with you,” April said and sniffed. She turned to look at me and even though it was dark out, I could see that she was slightly disheveled — her normally smooth hair was mussed and her usually perfect eye makeup looked smudged. “I meant it about the raise.”

I patted her sympathetically on the back and she flinched, not trusting me. “I think you’ve earned it,” I said, simultaneously thinking that she was not going to care for the plan I was forming at all.

Well, you couldn’t please everybody.

But I was going to have to try to be nicer to her, just to soften the blow.

Walker carried Lester up the stairs and April and I got the bags out of the car. She locked up and I made her walk ahead of me; part of me was still worried that she would still try to run away. I probably would have. But April seemed resigned now, even if she was still a tad bitchy. She’d given her boss illegal drugs for us and brought him here, handcuffed and in his underwear. I might not like her, but I was starting to think she didn’t totally suck.

“Wait,” Walker said when we got to the entrance. I saw Lester on the couch, his head rolling to one side. “Leave the bags outside. April, go stand in the kitchen in the light. Nic, you go with her — you’re armed, hold your gun out at her.” We moved into the kitchen and April eyed me warily as I got the gun out of my waistband and pointed it towards her, shakily.

She didn’t tease me about the shakiness; perhaps she was worried that I might accidentally fire the gun and kill her. I had to give her a little credit for that.

I watched as Walker dragged the bags into the entryway and pulled them apart; he tore apart every compartment, toiletry bag, and sock roll, searching for something contraband — I wasn’t sure if he was looking for a weapon, a tracking device or some sort of illicit phone, or all of the above.

Satisfied, he closed and locked the door behind him. I happily put my gun away and went over and inspected Lester, who was lying, pasty and limp, on the couch. I went to his suitcase and dug through it, finding some pajama bottoms. Walker helped me struggle them onto him as he lay there in a coma-like state. I looked at his prone form, worried that he might never wake back up.

Walker took his pulse and then nodded at me. “He’s okay,” he said, answering my unasked question. “He just doesn’t look okay.

“How long has he been out?” Walker asked, turning to April. In the light of the condo I could see that she was more than slightly disheveled; she was positively rumpled.

“Since ten,” she said, and shrugged. “I gave him the drink at nine-thirty. I thought he would pass out right away, but he didn’t.”

“Louise told me,” Walker said, his face breaking out into a wide grin. “He must have been thrilled while he was still conscious.”

April sniffed. “He was a little too thrilled for my taste,” she said. “He chugged the bourbon and took his clothes off about two seconds after we went into the room. By the way — next time, pick a nicer place, okay? The Majestic is a dump.”

“We know,” Walker and I said in unison.

“Louise is pretty helpful, though,” I offered.

“Hell yeah, she is,” April said. “After Lester ripped his clothes off, I told him I needed a minute to freshen up. I figured I’d just wait in the bathroom until he passed out. But I was in the there for about one minute before he started knocking on the door, telling me he wanted me. Then he heard me turn the lock and he went crazy. He was banging on the door, yelling at me to come out, that I was a whore and that he was going to give me what I was so obviously in need of. Louise heard the shouting and came up. Right before she came in he stopped yelling and I heard him hit the floor.”

April raised her eyes at me and I shook my head at her. “Best date ever,” I said.

“Oh, it got better,” April continued. “Louise and I had to carry him down the back stairs and out to the car — and even though he’s little, he was dead weight, and it wasn’t fun.” She turned and looked at Walker. “I already told Nicole — I expect a raise,” she said. “I nearly threw out my back.
And
I touched him when he was only wearing his underwear.
And
he’s really hairy. All over the place.” April and I both looked over at the couch, inspecting him, and I wrinkled my nose. Lester
was
hairy all over the place.

“Sounds like it might be worthy of a bonus,” Walker said, looking over at Lester and wincing. He got up proceeded to stalk around, anxiously, clearly wishing our hostage would wake up so he could interrogate him.

“What time did Louise say he would come to?” I asked April.

“Seven hours,” she said. “So I think we have until about dawn.”

“Why don’t you get some sleep?” I asked. I grabbed her bag and led her to one of the guest rooms. “Do you want anything to eat, first? Or do you want to take a shower?”

April shook her head at me. “Can I just please have five minutes to change and brush my teeth? Then I’d really love a drink.”