Kade needed to know what happened.
There were two dead bodies—one of them a man he’d thought a friend. Ginny had almost been raped, almost been killed.
He glanced at her as they sat together on the bed in the ER. Her eyes were glazed over, and she stared at the curtain separating them from the rest of the space. He hadn’t been there for her exam, so he didn’t know enough about how she’d been hurt. He did know she winced when he hugged her too tight. She’d rubbed her shoulder a few times. There were angry red marks on her wrists where she’d been bound.
It looked like she hadn’t processed any of that.
He rested his hand, palm up, on his leg, and she slid hers into it.
“You okay?”
She nodded, looked away again. “Sorry. I’m so tired. I just want to go home and sleep.”
“I’ll stay at the house with you while you rest.”
“I can’t… I can’t go back there. My house is in shambles. They tore it apart.”
He processed that, tamped down the quick flash of anger at everything those men had done to her. “You can come to my house. I’ll stay with you. You’ll be safe there.”
After she refused a prescription for pain medication, they were released. They walked out of the hospital hand in hand to find a uniformed police officer leaning against his cruiser waiting for them. “Chief wants me to take you to the station.”
Brady had told them to expect this. Kade didn’t know if Ginny could handle it, but when he’d argued his point with Brady, the man had only shaken his head. “The sooner we get the details, the more she’ll remember. It’ll be hard, and then it’ll be over.”
So they slid into the backseat of the cruiser and rode to downtown Nutfield in silence, Ginny’s head against his shoulder.
He’d do anything to make this easier for her.
They were taken to a conference room with a long table surrounded by cushy chairs. On one side sat a table with a coffee maker, cups, napkins, and a few plastic utensils. Beside it rested a small refrigerator.
They rounded the table and sat facing the door. Neither one of them could handle any more surprises today.
A moment after they arrived, Brady joined them and sat at the end of the table. He rested a file and a notepad on the table. He added a recorder beside it. “I know you guys are wrung out,” Brady said, “but we need to know exactly what happened. And we’re recording this. Okay?”
Ginny and Kade both said, “Okay.”
Kade squeezed Ginny’s hand. “She saved our lives.”
Ginny shook her head and took her hand back. “No. Kade had it well in hand. I only grabbed the gun so Pavlo couldn’t. But then… Petrovich still had a weapon. I thought I might be able to shoot the gun from Petrovich’s hands. I tried, and it worked.”
Kade smiled at her. “You were awesome.”
“You taught me how to shoot. And before that, you saved me. Pavlo was in my house that day. You saved me from…”
“You’re safe now.” Kade wiped tears off her cheeks. Would she ever stop crying?
“Okay,” Brady said. “Suffice it to say, you’re both heroes. Ginny, you start. Tell us what happened. Leave nothing out.”
Kade listened closely, tried to put all the pieces together. She mentioned Russian mobsters whom her father had worked for.
“Wait,” Kade said. “How do you know they were Russian mobsters?”
Ginny looked at Brady, who said, “I’ll have to fill you in. I did some digging, told Ginny what I’d learned.”
Oh. He’d been way out of the loop.
She talked about a duffel bag full of cash that apparently her mother had given her. “I shouldn’t have given it to them,” she said. “I know what terrible people they are. But I was trying to save Kade. And myself. Honestly, I was trying to save us both. And they didn’t give me any time to think. I handed it over. But it wasn’t what they were after. They left the bag at my house.”
“My officers found it,” Brady said. “Your house is a crime scene, by the way. It’ll be cleared soon.”
“Any chance your men’ll clean it?” she asked.
Brady smiled. “Probably not, but I bet we can find some friends to help.” Brady asked question after question, and Ginny told the whole story. She told how Sokolov had threatened her, had gone into her home in the middle of the night, yanked her from her bed, and bound her hands. How they’d searched her house, then taken her to the trailer to search there. How Pavlo had murdered Sokolov, then turned his evil toward her.
Brady focused on Kade. “And how did you find out what was going on?”
“Pure luck,” Kade said. “I happened to see the car when they went to the clubhouse.”
“Not luck.” Ginny swallowed hard. “Not luck. God. The God Who Sees.”
Kade kissed her head. “Yes. He took me there.”
While Kade and Ginny talked, people came in and out, gave Brady updates, handed him information. When they were both done, Brady said, “Petrovich is in surgery. When he gets out, we’ll charge him. He’ll spend the rest of his life in prison.”
“Have you looked at the information on the pendant yet?” Kade asked.
“We’ve given it a cursory look. I have people getting it on paper. The Feds will be interested. To me, it’s irrelevant. Petrovich ordered his men to kidnap you. He ordered them to kill you. Your testimony will put him in prison for life.”
Kade said, “But if he’s a mobster and she testifies against him, will she be in danger?”
Brady was shaking his head before Kade finished the question. “I told Ginny this the other day. Petrovich had gone rogue. He had a small operation. There were some underlings, low-level hired hands who’ve crawled back into their holes like the cockroaches they are. The top level of the organization was Petrovich, Sokolov, and Pavlo. Petrovich ordered Pavlo to take Sokolov out, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he planned to do away with Pavlo when the opportunity arose. Although we can never know for sure, my guess is that he planned to get his money and get out of the country. Most of their operation in California had been shut down. The mafia out there was squeezing him out.”
Ginny said, “So you’re saying…”
“You’re safe,” Brady said. “It’s over.”
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath as if pulling the information in.
She opened her eyes and focused on Brady again. “And you found out about my mother how?”
“A detective in San Francisco called me this morning after I made some inquiries. Turns out, your mother was killed in Baton Rouge a few weeks back. Authorities there didn’t know how to contact you.”
“They murdered her,” Ginny said. “She told them what they wanted to know—that I was the one holding the information—and they murdered her anyway.”
Kade wrapped his arm around her shoulders, careful not to hurt her, and pulled her close.
“My father caused all of this,” Ginny said. “He gave me that stupid necklace. I was so proud of it, so sure it meant he loved me. It nearly got me killed. Why? Why would he do that and not even tell me?”
Brady shook his head. “How long before he died did he give it to you?”
“A week,” Ginny said. “Not even… It was five days. He told me when he gave it to me that there was a story behind it, but…” She sat straighter. “Our lunch got cut short when his phone rang. That’s when he went outside and got into the car with Petrovich.”
“So he was going to tell you,” Brady said.
Ginny nodded. “That makes sense. I never saw him again after that lunch. But what doesn’t make sense is why he gave it to me instead of Mom.”
The grim set of Brady’s mouth warned him Ginny was about to hear more bad news. “You weren’t living at home at that point, right?”
“I never moved home after college.”
Brady took a piece of paper out of his folder and turned it to face her. It looked like a rental agreement. “I’ve been doing some digging. It looks like your parents had separated. Your father had leased an apartment in San Francisco a couple months before he died.” He added another piece of paper to the pile. It had a mixture of Chinese writing and English. “He’d rented an apartment in Hong Kong as well. I made a call and found out he’d moved a few things in. A woman lived there with him. He’d only been there a few times before his death.”
So Sokolov had been right. Dad had planned to leave Mom. And Mom had known. They’d been separated, probably planning to get a divorce, and they hadn’t told her.
“My guess,” Brady said, “is that your father didn’t trust your mother, considering they were going to get a divorce, and didn’t trust Li Min enough yet to give it to her. He trusted you. He gave you the information and intended to tell you what it was but was interrupted. And then he died.”
“So he put me in danger and planned to leave me?” Ginny couldn’t imagine.
Brady said, “We can’t know what he was thinking.”
Kade had a theory. He took a deep breath and swiveled her chair to face him. “I think he was trying to protect you. Once he told you about the information, you’d have been able to turn it over to Petrovich, and none of this would have happened. It was Petrovich’s presence at the memorial that triggered all these events. He must have asked your mother for the information. She didn’t know where it was, and she didn’t think you would know, either, so she’d sent you away. She did it to protect you.”
“That makes sense,” Brady said.
Ginny’s smile was forced, unconvinced. And why should she have any faith in her parents now? All she knew was that the two people who should have loved her and cherished her and protected her had lied to her and put her in danger.
And now, they were both dead.
“I guess I’ll never really know.” Ginny shook her head. “Some family I come from, huh?”
Kade started to speak, but Brady scoffed. “Ginny, your parents were liars and criminals. You’re obviously nothing like them.” He patted her hand and smiled. “You’re a hero.”