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SEVENTY

Erica’s ass hurt from sitting in what had to be the hardest and most uncomfortable chair on the planet for hours, maybe days. As interrogation rooms went, this one was pretty clean and it had an actual carpet, but it still smelled weird. Like body odor and onions. She wondered what kind of fat-ass perverts sat in this chair before her, sweating while the pretty blonde detective tricked them into confessing to their disgusting crimes. As police detectives went, Heather Loughlin was pretty savvy but Erica would have preferred the one from Denton with the short, spiked brown and gray hair.

“Erica? We’re almost finished here.” Heather had her notepad out again. “You’ve told me how you started dating Holden Doyle. He took you to one of Mace Phelan’s parties at his Lewisburg residence. Holden, Mr. Phelan, and two of his associates held you against your will for one week, during which they kept you at the hunting lodge. They later transported you to the children’s hospital construction site. As you understood it, they were going to kill you and dispose of your body there. Gina Phelan found you while she was inspecting the site and tried to get you off the site without anyone noticing. Holden saw you two fleeing and pursued you. He tried to stab you but Gina Phelan put herself in front of you and told you to run, which you did, hiding out until Denton PD located you.”

As recaps went, it was pretty good. “Can we take a break?” Erica asked. “I’m hungry and I want to see my dad.”

She thought they’d arrest her as soon as they rescued her but instead, they’d had her checked out at the hospital, put her and her dad up in a hotel, provided clean clothes, and some takeout, all so she would be cooperative in this never-ending interview.

“I’ll order a pizza,” Heather answered. “Your dad went back to the hotel to get some sleep.”

Erica tried not to think about how much work he’d missed. He’d told her it didn’t matter but she knew it was going to put him deeper in debt. “I like pepperoni,” she told Heather. “And can we get some Cherry Coke?”

She thought Heather would leave to put in the order, but she merely nodded toward the camera on the wall above them and kept on asking questions. The ones Erica really didn’t want to answer.

“I just want to fill in some blanks. What happened at Mace Phelan’s party that led to you being held against your will?”

Erica squirmed in the chair again. “Can I at least get a cushion for this thing? Or a sweatshirt or something I can fold up and sit on?”

Heather looked like she was fighting a smile. Then she ignored the request. “Why didn’t Gina just call 911 when she found you? I know you told her that her brother was involved but if she’d just called the police, they could have shown up before Mace or the others had a chance to cover anything up.”

“I told you.” Erica sighed. “I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you call the police after you escaped?”

Round and round they went. “I told you. I panicked.”

Heather placed her notepad on the table and took off her reading glasses. Oh boy. Shit was getting serious now. “I talked with Josie Quinn. Noah’s wife?”

Erica drew her knees to her chest, balancing on the chair. “How is he?”

“Fine. I’m not sure if you’re aware but Detective Quinn has some history with your biological mom, Lila Jensen.”

She knew, all right. From the time she was old enough to be curious about her mom’s special box, she’d been told all about how Josie ruined her mom’s life. It was only when Erica got older and had some distance from her mom that she wondered how Josie could possibly have ruined her life when she was only three weeks old. It took Erica a long time to figure out that her mom was seriously deranged and kind of evil.

“I didn’t know her as Lila Jensen,” Erica said. “I found out her real name when she went to prison and the Datelines aired, the same time as the rest of the world did.”

Heather blew right past that. “Detective Quinn told me that your mom blackmailed a lot of people. Most of those activities aren’t documented. She was never charged, but I’m inclined to believe it’s true.”

Erica’s body rocked back and forth.

“Did your mom ever tell you about her biological parents?”

Holy whiplash. “Yeah. I know about them.”

“She told you that Clint Phelan was her father?”

Her eyes bulged. Walked right into that one. Did it matter though? DNA wasn’t illegal. “She thought he was, yes. I don’t know if she had a DNA test, or what. My whole life she said she didn’t know her bio-dad but one day she saw him on TV and she was sure it was him.”

“Did she ever make contact with him?”

Erica hadn’t understood what her mother had been doing at the magical house right away. She was young and scared. It wasn’t until she got older that she asked what had happened that day. “She went to his house—the lodge—when I was eight. I don’t know who was in there or what happened. She made me wait outside. When she came out, she was all bloody and messed up. I didn’t know who owned the house until later. She had taken this bag of these weird little metal things. I don’t know why. They were important to her. I don’t even know what they are but about a week after she was there, Mace Phelan showed up at our apartment and tried to kill us both. We got away. She left me with my dad because she said it was too dangerous for me to stay with her.”

“Why was it too dangerous?”

“At first I thought it was because she stole those metal things but later she told me that Mace wanted her dead because she was his sister and with her mother being a baby-killer and all, he didn’t want that kind of scandal for his old man.”

Heather arched a brow. “It wasn’t also because your mom tried to blackmail the Phelans? Convince them to give her a large sum of money and she’d keep her identity secret?”

When Erica didn’t answer, Heather said, “Lila Jensen is dead. You don’t need to keep her secrets anymore.”

For as obvious as that fact was, it hit her like a slap to the face. Why was she keeping her mom’s secrets still? She’d loved her mom so much but nothing good had ever come from her or their relationship. Even now, years after her mom died in prison, Erica’s dad was still paying the price for her crime. He’d be paying it for the rest of his life because he’d taken responsibility for his actions, even though he hadn’t wanted to embezzle money. What kind of person was she that she couldn’t take responsibility for crimes she had committed? That made her just like her mom, and Erica didn’t want that. She wanted to be like her dad.

“Fine,” she said, voice trembling. “You’re right. My mom did try to blackmail her dad except that she couldn’t get access to him. Mace handled it and he beat the shit out of her and made her afraid. He brutalized her. Broke her in a way I didn’t think was possible. I still don’t understand it but blackmailing her bio-dad was the one thing she never went through with. She even warned me off. I was never to have anything to do with the Phelans.”

Heather leaned forward. “Then how did you end up at Mace’s party?”

She rocked so fast that the chair creaked. Maybe it would break. No chair this uncomfortable deserved to live. “I tracked him down. Researched him. Spied on him. Figured out who his people were, asked around certain places.” Her mother had taught her well. “Mace hired guys to work security on his sites, but he kept a handful of guys on the payroll who were security guards on paper but in reality they just did whatever illegal shit he wanted done. Score drugs. Lure young girls to his parties. Shut people up when necessary. Did you know that after that football player in Denton died on the children’s hospital site, Mace told Holden and two of the other guys to cause a distraction? That’s why they were doing the armed robberies.”

She could tell Heather hadn’t known this. The reading glasses went back on. She scribbled on her notepad as Erica continued.

“I tricked Holden into dating me so that I could get access to Mace. It took a few months, but I finally got him to invite me to one of the parties.”

Heather looked up. “For what purpose?”

“You really can’t tell where this is going?” Erica said dryly.

Now Heather gave her a real-deal smile. “It’s better if you tell it.”

“Right. I went to the party to blackmail Mace. The same exact way my mom tried to do it. Pay me three hundred thousand dollars or I’ll tell the whole world that I’m your niece and that your dad knocked up my grandmom six times while she was living out in the woods like she was raised by wolves or some shit. Oh, and I’ll also tell the whole world how she hated having his babies so much that she killed them all—except for my mom.”

“I don’t want to encourage you to follow in Lila Jensen’s footsteps,” said Heather. “But you’re an impressive young woman.”

Erica’s posture straightened. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone besides her dad gave her a compliment. Especially a badass female detective with a big gun. “Um, thanks.”

“You should use your powers for good.”

Wait. Did telling the truth unlock some kind of alternate dimension?

“That’s the plan,” she said, infusing her voice with as much confidence as she could muster.

“Mace didn’t take your ultimatum very well, did he?” asked Heather.

Erica scoffed. “That’s an understatement. I knew he was violent but I just thought…I don’t know what I thought. That somehow it would be different when I did it than when my mom tried, but he was going to kill me right in the basement of his house. Well, not him. One of his meathead minions.”

“You talked him out of it?”

“I told him to forget about the blackmail thing. I’d keep the secret and in exchange for him not killing me, I’d give him something in return. Then I told him that my mom had this box of stuff she kept from people she screwed over and that she had something incriminating inside. Something that would be very bad for his dad and if he wanted it, I could get it for him.”

Heather made another note on her pad. “What was in the box?”

Erica smiled. “Nothing. I made that part up. I was trying to get the hell out of that house.”

“Lila never had anything incriminating on Clint Phelan?”

“No. I mean, the worst thing she had on him was his DNA but that’s not illegal.”

Heather tapped the end of her pen against her lip, staring at her for a moment that stretched out a little too long. Erica got the feeling that Heather knew something she didn’t.

“Mace Phelan believed you though.”

“Yeah. I had to make something up so I said that my mom had tracked down a hunter who’d witnessed Clint Phelan raping my grandmom and gotten a written statement from him. I told him that it was hidden in that box and if anyone ever found it, they would know the truth. It was pretty weak but Mace is pretty dumb, so he believed me.”

Erica could see Heather trying hard not to smile again.

“Anyway,” she continued. “He wanted the guy’s name, tried to choke it out of me, but I told him I didn’t remember it. Said it was some old dude my mom found in a nursing home and if he wanted the name, he’d have to let me go and I’d bring him the signed statement.”

“He didn’t let you go,” Heather said.

Erica sighed. “Guess he isn’t a complete dumbass. No, he wouldn’t let me retrieve it. Instead, he made me tell Holden where to look for the box. I had no idea what happened to it but I had to send him somewhere. I could only remember two names of the people my mom used to talk about a lot: Dexter McMann and Josie Quinn. I told Holden that one of them probably had it. I was just trying to stall—to stay alive. I told him what to say—the sob story about being one of Lila Jensen’s victims looking for his grandmother’s jewelry.”

Heather wrote something on her pad. “Holden and his associates took photos from the box. They also took the jewelry. Do you know why?”

“There was a photo of Clint Phelan in the box. Mace, too, I think. That’s probably why they took those.” Erica used a thumbnail to scrape off the last of the purple nail polish on her pinky. It had taken tons of hand-washing to get the blood out of her cuticles. “I’m sure they took the jewelry because they thought they could sell it. They would steal anything if they thought they could make money from it. I had no idea what was happening. A week passed and it became pretty clear that regardless of whether Holden found the box, Mace was going to have me killed. I figured that out when they brought me to the construction site. All hell broke loose from there.”

Heather nodded. “Gina Phelan?”

Tears pricked Erica’s eyes. Gina’s death was her biggest regret in all this, and she would carry the guilt of it for the rest of her life. “I told her the truth. Everything. She wanted to hide me until she could figure out how to handle everything without Mace finding out right away. She told me he got away with a lot of stuff and she was tired of cleaning up his messes.”

“Thank you for being honest with me,” Heather said.

“That’s it?” Erica put her feet back on the floor. “You’re not going to arrest me or send me to prison?”

Heather grimaced. “That’s not entirely up to me. What happened involved multiple jurisdictions. The investigations will take a long time, and then the facts will be reviewed by prosecutors who will decide whether or not to bring charges, but given all you went through, and your assistance in rescuing Lieutenant Fraley, I doubt you’ll be charged with anything.”

Erica felt a sense of relief so profound, she thought she might start floating.

“I’m just curious about one more thing,” said Heather. “Why did you ask for three hundred thousand dollars?”

More tears. She blinked them back and looked at her lap. “I wanted to help my dad. It’s what he has to pay back from the embezzlement thing. I know everyone thinks he’s a horrible person because he stole money from a hospital charity and he should reap the consequences—and he is, gladly, but…well, I can’t tell you more than that.”

Erica had thought about telling the police the truth about that, too, but it wouldn’t change anything. Regardless of the circumstances, her dad had still embezzled the money. His motivation didn’t matter to anyone but her.

“Just know that he did what he did to protect me.”