Ever After by Annie Jocoby Read Free Book Online Page B

second ring. “What’s up?” he asked.
    “Hey. Listen. I need you to make some phone calls.”
    “Sure,” he said. “Who do you need me to call?”
    “Those Senators you’re working with. I need for you to ask them to keep their ear to the ground. Find out if those Senators that Mr. Lucas is chummy with know anything about what is happening with Scotty. I have a feeling that there’s a rat or two in that police station, and I’m gonna find out who it is.”
    Ryan was quiet. “I was afraid of that,” he said.
    “Afraid of what?” I said. “Out with it.”
    “Nothing,” he said. “I have my suspicions on what’s happening, though.”
    “What kind of suspicions?”
    “Well, there’s a pork project that concerns that precinct and others around it. They’re considering some block grants that would increase the funding for the beat cops and the detectives. Nobody wants to interfere with that, if you know what I mean. It’s going to mean millions in additional spending, which is desperately needed of course.”
    I did know what he meant. All too clear. When there’s going to be a vote on something like that, nobody could risk have Senators defecting. Which Mr. Lucas’ Senators would surely do if that precinct made an arrest.
    I rubbed my temples.
    “When is this thing going to come up for a vote?”
    “Not until the next session, so it’s going to be several months at least.”
    Several months? Several months? And then, after that issue is resolved, there were bound to be other things that would crop up that would preclude Mr. Lucas being arrested. I started to feel extremely angry about the injustice of it all. Not that I didn’t expect this. I did. But I somehow thought that, at the very least, the bastard would be arrested. I really didn’t think that he would serve prison time, because he would hire the best attorney to keep him out of prison, but I really wished that, at minimum, his name would be dragged through the mud and he would lose his friends and hangers-on because of it.
    I thought that there would be some kind of punishment for him, even if he never served a day in prison. Yet, if there wasn’t even an arrest, he was going to get away with it completely.
    Well, not if could help it. Plan B was looking more and more likely.
    “You still there?” Ryan asked.
    “Yeah,” I said. “I just have to figure out what I can do. Thanks for the honest assessment,” I said.
    I hung up, feeling a little bit defeated. I poured myself a glass of Scotch, and pondered my options. It was looking increasingly unlikely that there would even be an arrest made. Well, maybe there would be, after the funding issue was passed. But, I was starting to doubt it.
    I drummed my fingers on the desk. I could hear Scotty upstairs, hanging out with Jack. Aaron was in the living room, watching television. Scotty didn’t know how many times I had called Angie, because I didn’t want to worry her. She called frequently, as well, but she had no idea how fruitless this was all starting to seem. She was charmingly naïve, and honestly thought that there would be an arrest made at any moment.
    I thought about the possibility that Scotty might be able to press charges down on St. Croix. But that was tricky. The bastard would have to return there, willingly, as there generally was not going to be extradition for something like this. And he apparently only went there once a year. It would be difficult to know when he might be returning there. Not to mention the fact that Scotty was going to have a revisit a place that held a great deal of pain for her.
    No, that wouldn’t work.
    I was trying, in my mind, to think of a way, any way, that I could avoid my other plan. That other plan was dangerous, to say the very least, and risky. One false move, and it could all go to hell, and I would be the one in prison. Or dead.
    And Scotty would be left to face her terrors all alone.
    “Loverboy,” Jack was shouting down from the