Page 34 of I’ll Be Watching You

“Did you know?” I asked Rita directly.

“I can’t discuss the case,” she said. “I’m your father’s lawyer.”

Mom said, “We didn’t tell Rita anything about the threats. We told her only what we had to so she could negotiate the plea deal.”

“I have known Cooper practically since your mom met him.” Rita gave Mom a sad smile. “I know his heart, and he would never kill anyone. I am glad I was right.”

Rita and Mom exchanged a look that said more than words, then Rita hugged her again. “I’ll call you as soon as I get definitive word on Cooper’s situation. I’ll make the flight reservations and we’ll leave tomorrow, sometime in the morning. I’ll text you.”

“I like Nico’s idea to use Quincy,” Jack said. “He’s a federal agent, he can smooth over any issues with the prison, plus he is better positioned to get information out of the US Attorney’s Office. Maybe he would agree to escort you up there.”

“I can’t ask him to do that,” Mom said.

“You don’t have to,” Jack said. “Nico has already talked to him. He’s working on getting answers from his end, and I’ll ask him about doing a protection detail.”

Mom closed her eyes. She looked exhausted. I felt for her and was trying real hard to push back my anger over the decisions she and Dad made that directly affected us.

They did the wrong thing, even if for the right reasons. Three and a half years was a long time to cover up a crime. I was skeptical that there would be anything left for me to find. And if I found something, would that information get Dad released? Would it be enough to prove someone else killed Devin Klein? Was there even any evidence left?

Yet . . . the conspirators clearly had made a mistake if Liz Swanson saw something suspicious on Monday. Maybe others saw the same thing, even if they didn’t know why it was important.

I thought about her patient. Did he know what was in the file—or missing from the file? Maybe Liz had asked him questions about the missing data. Was he in danger? How were we going to identify him?

“Mom, we’ll find the truth,” I said. “We deserve it, Dad deserves it, but more importantly? If Dr. Klein was right and there was a tainted drug trial involving veterans, they deserve to know the truth so no one else is hurt.”

Chapter Twelve

Jack Angelhart

Jack picked Austin up from school that afternoon and talked to his teacher, who was happy to give Austin the work he would need to do to keep on task for the week. Jack promised he’d get the homework done and thanked her.

While driving to the West Valley, he’d weighed what to tell his son. Austin was eleven. What should he know and in what detail?

When his dad went to prison, Jack had been going through a whirlwind. Whitney demanded a divorce, he was leaving the force for a variety of reasons, and then there was Austin, who had worshipped his grandfather. He knew Cooper was in prison—Jack brought Austin down to Eyman once a month to visit. And he knew why, in as simple terms as Jack could tell him when he was not yet eight.

Grandpa hurt somebody and has to go to prison for a little while. He feels really bad for what happened.

Because it was nearly impossible to explain that his beloved grandfather had shot and killed a man—a friend—in cold blood. Or that he had confessed to murder and might be innocent.

Austin knew more now, but Jack wasn’t quite sure what he knew because he had never asked Jack questions. And Jack didn’t know what Whitney had told him, especially when she was angry with Jack—as had been the case more often than not even after their divorce. Admittedly, it had gotten better since Jack sat down with her two months ago to tell her he was seeing someone. And Whitney had been seeing more than one someone, which Jack tried to ignore. As long as it didn’t impact Austin, he had no say in how Whitney lived her life.

When they arrived at the house Jack had bought when they first married fifteen years ago, Whitney wasn’t home. She worked part-time for the local public school district in the mornings. Jack knew she hated the job, but he had insisted. He paid the mortgage and child support, but he was not going to support her when she had a master’s degree and was perfectly capable of holding down a job. When Austin turned eighteen, they would sell the house and split the proceeds fifty-fifty, which irritated Jack but those were the terms of their divorce agreement; in exchange, he received liberal visitation.

A note on the counter explained her absence.

Since you’re taking Austin early, Wendy and I are adding a couple days to our Sedona spa trip.

Wendy was Whitney’s younger sister and the person, Jack believed, who was most responsible for Whitney’s dissatisfaction with their marriage. Wendy had married a wealthy older man and divorced him five years later with a huge settlement. She dated a long list of wealthy older men and had brought Whitney along on expensive double dates. Jack didn’t see how these relationships could bring joy to either of them, but he tried not to be judgmental. Whitney had agreed to keep any men out of Austin’s life unless she was serious about one of them, and so far, there had been no one serious.

Austin was talking a mile a minute, excited about spending time at Logan’s large Cave Creek property. “Do you know that Logan has a giant theater? Cody said we can watch all the Star Wars movies with surround sound and it’s like we’re in a real theater! And he even has an arcade with, like, a whole bunch of video games.” He glanced at Jack, hedging. “I know, I can’t play more than thirty minutes on school nights, but since I don’t have to go to school, does the rule still apply?”

“You’re free to play within reason. Laura will decide what’s within reason.”

Austin grinned. “And he has a swimming pool that’s, like, five times bigger than Grandma and Grandpa’s.” He hesitated for a minute, then asked, “This job you’re doing, it’s not dangerous, is it?”

Austin shoved a second pair of shoes into his suitcase. Jack reorganized the clothes so they would fit.

“No more dangerous than my other cases, but it’s more important than any of them.”