Chapters (46)
- COVER PAGE
- PRAISE
- DEDICATION
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- SNEAK PEEK: EXIT .45
He found a t-shirt, and Vincent fetched three more chairs from the kitchen table, and they sat in a group of four out by the pool, Leo with his feet in the water.
Forsyth said, ‘I heard what happened. Obviously. And it’s horrific. It’s … I don’t know what to say about it.’
Erin said, ‘You could say where the truck is.’
Forsyth said, ‘It’s in the barn over there.’
Just like that. Vincent had expected more evasiveness. He glanced at Erin, but she was watching Forsyth. He had his hands in his lap, fingers interlinked, and he looked down as his thumbs swapped places a few times. ‘This wasn’t some get-rich scheme. It wasn’t about making money. It wasn’t that at all.’
He looked up and found Leo’s eyes.
Leo took a foot out of the water and ran a toe down Forsyth’s shin. ‘It’s okay, Wayne. Just tell them.’
Forsyth looked at Vincent. ‘What are you, anyway? A PI?’
Vincent shook his head. ‘I’m the new you. I’m Lamar’s head of security. Or I was, at least.’
‘So what’s in it for you now, then?’
Erin said, ‘He’s helping me. And I need to know what happened.’
For a second he looked like he had a retort, but then he looked down at his hands again and shut up, as if his resistance to coming clean had been dismantled by Erin’s simple phrase.
I need to know what happened.
Forsyth said, ‘Freeman set it up. He had the contacts. He had a guy connected to Sylvester Crow who could on-sell the product. I’ve known Casey Freeman thirty years. Twenty-eight, actually. He was in a support role when I was at Chicago PD, running numbers for the fraud squad. And when he told me about it … yeah.’ He shrugged, pursed his lips and let his breath out. ‘I was in. I wanted in. It was just … when you think about that kind of money, it does things to you. When you think about what you can do with it. But then … oh, God.’ He looked at the water in the pool, and Leo gave him another toe-stroke. ‘When you actually think about it. I mean, whether you’ll actually go through with it. And I just knew that I couldn’t. It’s just so wrong, isn’t it? We had a … Deborah and I lost a son. We lost Simon to LSD. And I thought, how could I? What sort of service am I doing his memory, doing him, if I create that kind of risk for someone else’s boy? I couldn’t profit off that kind of thing.’ He shrugged. ‘So we brought it up here. Leo and I …’ He looked at Leo. ‘We’d been thinking about doing something for a long time. Just being together. And this just felt right. Didn’t it?’
Leo nodded.