My Cop Boyfriend Killed My Father

Chapter 8

Right then the floor dropped out from under me.

My hands were shaking so hard I could barely hold the Red Notice. I couldn't make myself believe it.

My father — Arthur Smith — was the head of an international money-laundering ring.

In a daze, I thought back to when I was little, when my mother was still alive. My father used to wrap his arms around her and say, "Yes, yes, my wife's a hero — a real public servant. Clara and I have got your back, always. Best support crew you could ask for."

A father like that — how could he ever have done this?

I didn't want to believe it. But every word on that page went into me like a blade, and I had no choice but to take it in.

I don't even remember sliding the Red Notice back into the folder and setting it down exactly where it had been.

I just sat there, numb, my hands and feet gone cold.

I was still like that when Ethan woke up. He looked at me. "You're up."

I tried to smile the way I always did, but the corners of my mouth wouldn't move. In the end all I got out, hoarse, was, "Did you find my dad?"

Ethan pressed his lips together, like there was something he wanted to say.

Then his phone rang. He looked down at it and got up fast. "I've got a callout. I have to go."

He grabbed the folder on his way out the door.

I followed him to the doorway and watched him go, my hand tightening on the frame.

I didn't know what the callout was, or whether it had anything to do with Arthur. My heart was in my throat and it wouldn't settle.

After a long time, when I couldn't stand the waiting anymore, I got up and went down to the Interpol field office in Aldridge.

I wanted to know what was actually happening with my father.

But Ethan wasn't there. Grace was gone too, and every other officer I knew.

I thought about the call he'd taken before he left, and I got out my phone.

His thread was pinned at the top of my messages. After we got back together I'd added him again, and this time he hadn't cut me off.

I opened it. The last message was still the one I'd sent.

Looking at it, I could still feel exactly what I'd felt the day he blocked me. That panic. That helplessness.

My thumb sat over the screen a long moment. In the end I didn't send anything. I put the phone away and decided to wait for him to come home.

One day. Two. Three.

A week went by like that, and Ethan still wasn't back.

Late at night I lay there watching the clock tick over on my phone, wide awake.

I hadn't slept right since the day he left. I was on edge, wound tight, and everything in me kept sliding toward the worst version of things.

It got bad enough that my chest went tight, like I couldn't get a full breath. In the end I dug out the sleeping pills my doctor had put me on a while back and took one.

The pill pulled me down slowly, and I dreamed about the day my father left.

It was an ordinary evening. Arthur had picked me up from school and dropped me at my grandfather's.

Standing in the doorway as I went in, he smiled and made me a promise. "Dad's got to head to work now. Soon as I'm done I'll come right back for you, Clara. And when I do, I'm bringing you that Barbie you wanted."

I was twelve. I believed every word.

Arthur never came back.

And I stood there in my grandfather's doorway watching him walk away, screaming after him as loud as I could. "Dad! Dad, come back!"

However hard I screamed, he never turned around. Not once.

I wouldn't give up. I tried to run after him — and I tripped, and dropped straight into the dark.

"Dad!"

I shot upright in bed, staring at my own familiar room. My throat was bone-dry, and the dread in me was building by the second.

I couldn't get back to sleep. I lay there with my eyes open and watched the heavy dark outside the window thin out into morning.

Then I got up and went back to the Aldridge office.

The streets were washed in the gray of early light.

In the middle of the office courtyard, the white Interpol flag was snapping in the wind.

Nothing like the quiet of the last few days. The whole place was buzzing.

I followed the crowd streaming into the main hall, and there was Ethan — gone a whole week — up on the stage under the emblem, in full dress uniform, looking every inch the part.

On the screen behind him was a photo of my father. The caption underneath: CRIME LORD — ARTHUR SMITH.

Right then the dread in me hit its peak.

I took a step forward without meaning to — and a voice rang out over the hall, strong and clear.

"Let's hear it for Captain Ethan Davis, who took down the crime lord Arthur Smith in Operation Headwind — and has earned the Medal of Valor."