Page 80 of Broken Daddy

Hayes heard a car approaching.It turned onto their level. Thankfully, both he and Donovan had moved so they were hidden as the beams of light hit the building.

Hayes peered around the thick concrete post. The driver didn’t pull it into a space like Stein had.

Stein got out of his car and approached the vehicle. The driver got out to meet him.

Dumb move. But helpful for them. Hayes brought out his phone to take a few photos as he watched the two of them. Shit. Not close enough to hear. He spotted movement to his right and saw Donovan creep forward to where there was an old car. It looked like it had been abandoned. Fuck. Hayes stuck to the shadows as he slowly headed toward the next pole. Risky as fuck.

If they both survived, he was going to kill Donovan.

“I want to get out of the country!” Stein said.

“Why? You got a good thing going here. Nice business. Pretty wife. Good house. Why you need to leave?” the guy drawled.

He sounded relaxed but Hayes could see the tension in his body. The way he kept looking around.

Paranoid.

“And I told you to fucking stop contacting me,” the other guy said. “Do you want to get caught?”

“Of course not! I broke the law for you.”

“Broke the law for me? Is that meant to be a joke? Since when did you care about the fucking law? You’re more crooked than I am and I grew up in a fucking gang.”

Shit. Fuck.

Who was this guy?

“I took your job. I fumbled the case so that Dawson went inside for a nice long time. But now I’m getting fucking death threats. And I’ve got bodyguards. Do you know how hard it is to get any work done with guys right up my ass all the fucking time?”

“So get rid of them.”

“And have whoever is threatening me take me out? I don’t want to fucking die! Which is why I want out.”

“And what’s that got to do with me?” the other guy said. He was leaning back against the hood of his car, watching Stein as he paced. There was something about his pose that put Hayes on edge.

Oh, he didn’t like where this was going.

“You need to pay for it. You have to help me.”

“You have money, Stein. Just leave.”

“I don’t have enough for a new identity and to set myself up. I can’t just leave as myself. Sondra will come after me for her share of everything. I have to have time to set things up and I don’t have that luxury since someone is threatening me.”

“Really, Alan, do I have to solve all your problems? Get rid of Sondra. Make it look like an accident, then leave town.”

“I can’t . . . I can’t kill her!”

The guy shrugged. “Then I guess that’s a problem. You shouldn’t have mismanaged your money. Then you’d have enough for an escape.”

“I got in deep with your father and there was no way out.”

“You got a taste for hookers and gambling, you mean. You’re shit at gambling so you’d drown your sorrows at Sin in pussy and ass. And apparently, you were no good at fucking either.”

“You . . . you . . . I’ll tell your father what you did! That you paid me to throw Dawson’s trial. To get him thrown in jail. He was your father’s favorite, wasn’t he? How would he feel about what you did? How do you think Dawson would feel? Hmm, knowing that you paid me to fucking make sure he stayed in jail for a good long while. Why didn’t you have him killed?”

“Listen, you fucking asshole,” the other guy snarled. “You don’t think I wanted to? But who was I going to get to do that? No one around here would touch him. Everyone fucking loves him. So that left out-of-towners. But any asshole worth his salt would have cost a fucking fortune. This was cheaper. And easier. Plus, it got rid of Marcus at the same time. He was starting to suspect me. He came at me that night and I killed him. Didn’t really plan to. Then I figured why not set up Rohan as the murderer? It worked perfectly. All I needed was to send a text to Rohan, which I then wiped. And I got one of my cop friends to wipe the message off Rohan’s phone. No one suspects me. Not my father, not Rohan. The only person who knows what I did is you . . . and you’re starting to annoy me, Stein.”

“So? I helped you.”