“Don’t you think Virgil and I have considered that? We have. Lots of times. But there are too many of them. We could pick off one or two, maybe even three or four. But we can’t get to the most powerful members. They’ll just keep sending more foot soldiers until we screw up or get too tired to run. Then they’ll get us.”
She didn’t want to hear that. As logical as it was, it pushed her into a corner. “Maybe that’s a chance we have to take. Maybe we have to risk our lives to make our lives worth living.”
“That sounds fine and good for us,” he responded. “I’m willing to take that risk. But what about Jake and Mia? And Virgil’s kids?”
“That’s exactly what The Crew’s counting on, that we’ll offer no resistance, play it safe.”
“Or, by killing your mother, they could be trying to coax you out of hiding. Which is why you can’t contact anyone, least of all the LAPD.”
She threw up her hands. “Oh, come on. The Crew can’t have moles everywhere.”
“They can in L.A.! That’s their home turf.”
She couldn’t even go to her mother’s funeral? “Then who’ll bury her?”
“Natalie.”
Ellen’s sister. “You think she’d bother to interrupt her life, to put herself out for us?” Natalie lived in Texas with her husband, who’d been in the air force for most of his career. She’d been very careful to keep her distance, didn’t want the taint of what had happened to ruin her life, too.
“If there’s no one else,” he said. “She remained loyal to Ellen throughout it all, right?”
Natalie believed that Gary had killed Martin as a favor to Ellen, but that Ellen had no foreknowledge of it. According to her, Gary only implicated Ellen because Ellen didn’t give him more of the money, and his ex supported this theory, which was another reason Ellen had never been charged. But letting Natalie take over the funeral arrangements meant conceding yet another battle to The Crew. “She was my mother. That makes her funeral my responsibility.”
He raked a hand through his hair, which was longer than she’d ever seen him wear it, longer than hers. “Doesn’t matter. You can’t go back to L.A. The Crew could be watching and waiting for you to do just that.”
Or they could be here in Montana. That was the problem. She didn’t know.
“I’ve…had it,” she said. “I don’t know how else to explain what’s going on with me.”
He sat on the edge of the closest picnic table. “You don’t have any other choice, Laurel—Vivian,” he corrected before she could protest. “You have to do what you have to do in order to survive.”
“No. I could fight back. I have that choice.”
“But do you know what fighting means?”
“It means I’ll endanger my children, like you’ve already pointed out. But what if you took them to Virgil?”
He got up again. “That’s crazy. I’m not leaving you here alone.”
He had to. He wasn’t well. “If I don’t have to worry about my kids, I’ll be able to defend myself.”
His expression said he didn’t think she stood a snowball’s chance in hell. And he was probably right. But she had to at least try to break free, didn’t she? Running wasn’t necessarily any safer. The Crew could find her again. And maybe next time she wouldn’t have the warning she did now.
“Against how many?” he asked. “One? Two? Don’t you remember what happened in Colorado?”
She’d never forget. But she couldn’t allow the fear inspired by that event to define her whole life. She could no longer live behind the boundaries of that fear, not anymore. “However many they send.”
Instead of arguing with her, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed. No doubt he was hoping Virgil could talk some sense into her.
“Bad news,” he said into the phone. “She’s okay. But…she’s talking crazy. And she has something to tell you.”
At first Vivian refused to take the phone. She knew what Virgil would tell her. But Rex insisted they wouldn’t leave until she had this conversation, and she had no hope of getting the keys from him, even in his weakened state.
“Tattletale,” she muttered to Rex, then gave him a dirty look when he grinned at her. “Hello?”
“What’s going on?” Virgil demanded.
Tilting her head back, she stared up at the sky and breathed in the scent of pine. “Mom’s been murdered.”
His response, when it came, was so low she could barely hear it. “I’m sorry, Laurel.”
Suddenly the tears that’d been so conspicuously missing began to burn behind her eyes. Determined not to shed them, she blinked rapidly. She was done crying. She was done allowing herself to be frightened and intimidated, too. This was her life, damn it. She was taking it back.
“How’d it happen?” he asked.
“She was stabbed. Sonja Ivey found her on the floor of the laundry room.”
“The Crew got hold of her?”
“Who else? With Ink out of prison, that has to be it.” Tears leaked out despite her efforts to dam them, so she simply squeezed her eyes shut and relied on her glasses to hide them.
“I haven’t told you this, but…I tried to warn her.”
This took Vivian aback. “You called Mom?”
“I went to see her. Right after we left Washington, D.C.”
Her eyes popped open. If he’d contacted Ellen, he hadn’t been as impervious to the doubts that had plagued her as he’d pretended. “What did she have to say?”
“Nothing more than she always said. She didn’t know Gary was planning to kill Martin. She’d never be party to such a thing. She only thought it was me because of what the detectives told her.”
“And you said?”
“What could I say?”
“You could’ve said you believe her.”
“I tried. It just…wasn’t there.”
Vivian understood. How many times had she hovered on the brink of forgiving Ellen? Too many times to count. And yet, even when she wanted to believe, when she made up her mind to trust, Ellen’s story rang false. “Weren’t you afraid that showing up there might be exactly what The Crew wanted you to do?”
“I was careful to minimize the risk.”
“Meaning…”