Confessions Of An Old Lady (13 page)

Chapter 24

I tried to remind him that I was his girlfriend and that he knew exactly who I was, even though I knew the jig was up. But if I admitted who I really was, that I was a DEA agent who was responsible for what had just happened to his friends and his father tonight, I was pretty certain he’d forget whatever feelings he’d developed for me and drop me where I stood.

“
Who the fuck are you
?” he repeated through gritted teeth, pressing the barrel of the gun harder against my forehead.

Tears began to stream down my face, my bottom lip was quivering and my knees felt like they would give out any second.

I had two choices in that instant and for the life of me, I couldn’t make a decision as quickly as I should have. I could have tried to keep up the ruse and convince him I really was Trish Sanders. In that case, there was only the slightest of chances that he would eventually believe, me, drop his gun, and hold me in his arms again, apologizing profusely for doubting me. Most likely, though, he would never again believe me and he would shoot me right between the eyes.

The other option was to fess up…tell him I was really a federal agent and that I’d been playing him for months, lying to him, in order to use information I gleaned from our whirlwind romance to bring him and his club down. In that case, there was a small possibility that he would appreciate my honesty and let me live. I mean miniscule. But most likely I would still wind up dead.

Choices. Choices.

I rolled the metaphorical dice.

“Please, Sonny…listen to me. I’ll tell you the truth. Just…put down the gun. Please. Don’t kill me.”

I had never begged for my life before. It was more terrifying than I had imagined. Although, despite all of the possible scenarios I had played out in my head as to how this whole thing was going to end, I had never even once considered
this
a possibility. I never once imagined that he’d figure out who I was until
after
I was pulled back to Chicago, nor that I’d have the cold barrel of a Smith & Wesson revolver pushing into my skull.

He didn’t answer. He just looked deep into my eyes, seemingly searching for answers to questions he never dreamed he’d have about me. His eyes seemed to bore holes into mine. I could almost literally feel the anger emanating from him and drilling right through to my soul.

“Please. Let me explain. Just…don’t kill me. Please. Just lower the gun so we can talk.”

For a split second, I was sure he was going to pull the trigger and blow my brains out all over the already hideous wallpaper. Amazingly, however, I heard the click of the hammer being pushed back where he had previously had it cocked. The pressure from the gun barrel lessened slowly until finally, I saw him pull the gun back and point it toward the ceiling instead of my head.

“Talk. Now.”

I felt like I was going to faint from the relief and I was glad for it, no matter how temporary. I slid down the wall until I was squatted with my knees pulled tight to my chest. I wiped the torrent of tears that had covered my cheeks, as well as the snot that was now running down my nose and over my top lip.

Sonny stood hovering over me, the gun now resting at his side, but I noticed he never removed his finger from the trigger.

I drew in a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly.

“Okay. Before I explain, I want you to know that I love you. That is as true as true can be. Nothing will ever change that for me. Nothing. My love for you was not,
is
not a lie.”

I paused and looked up at him. I don’t know what I had expected…maybe for him to say he loved me too and sweep me up into his arms, forgetting that I had lied to him and set him up? I can be such a romantic fool sometimes.

When I realized what an idiot I was and that this was still happening, I began again, slowly. “Sonny…please sit down. What I have to tell you is going to be hard to take, but I want you to listen to me and give me a chance to explain.”

“I’ll stand, thank you.” Still, nothing but contempt in his eyes. The love I had seen in those eyes so many times over the past few months had completely vanished. Maybe it never really existed at all and I had been fooling myself all along.

“Who. Are. You?” he asked slowly but sternly. It sounded more like a statement than a question. I remember thinking what a good question it was, though. Did I really even know the answer? No. If I was being totally honest with myself, I really didn’t.

“I’m an agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency.” There. I said it. I closed my eyes, waiting for him to put the gun back up to my forehead and pull the trigger, but after several seconds passed without the feeling of the barrel against my blood-drained skin, I opened them again.

I had assumed I’d see a look of shock and horror on his face, but what I saw instead scared me even more. I saw nothing at all. He looked at me as if to say “I already knew that, you dumb bitch.” Had he just figured it out when Jimmy called or had he possibly suspected me all along?

It was obvious he wanted more from me, so I continued.

“I haven’t been an agent very long. I joined the DEA about two years ago. Earlier this year…I…I was given an assignment…”

Sonny backed away from me slowly, understanding beginning to register on his face. “What assignment?” he asked.

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure how to explain the rest of the story in a way that would satisfy his curiosity, yet lessen the odds that he would shoot me as soon as the words came out of my mouth.

“What fucking assignment?” he said, much louder this time.

“I was assigned to…to…”

“Spit it out! Trish, or whatever the fuck your name is! Speak or I swear to God I will put a bullet between your eyes right now!”

Would he? Of course he would. Fifteen minutes ago, he wouldn’t even have considered it. In fact, he might well have taken a bullet for me then. But now? Now he was ready to kill me without thinking twice. But I had no idea how to tell this story in a way that would convince him he shouldn’t shoot me and dump my body in a deep well somewhere.

“I was assigned to get to know you, and…”

“And…”

“And the DEA has been investigating the Lords of Chaos for a while now and I was supposed to get to know you and…and get as much information as I could from you about your drug and weapons operations.”

He took a stunned step backward. Then another. He was nearly stumbling backward over his own two feet, but quickly regained his balance. He wiped his brow with the hand that held the gun.

“Let me get this straight,” he began. “You are a DEA agent? You have been lying to me…for three fucking months…about who you are and what you wanted from me? And what, you report back to your boss man, or whatever, with everything you found out about my club?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“But nothing, Trish! What defense can you possibly come up with? You’re a fuckin’ narc!” He sat down on the couch finally and put his head between his hands, his elbows on his knees, the gun still held tightly in his right hand. “Jesus Christ, Trish!” Then he looked up from his hands as if something had just occurred to him. “Wait…Trish probably isn’t even your real name, is it?”

“No,” I said, despite what that answer might cost me.

“What the fuck is it?”

“It’s…it’s…Olivia,” I admitted.

“Olivia…what?”

“Rockford. I’m Agent Olivia Rockford.” I braced for whatever was coming next, but I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to leave that old house alive, so there was no point in holding back information any more.

“Jesus Christ,” he said again. “So, what exactly did you tell your superiors, or whatever the fuck they are?”

I decided there was no reason to delay the inevitable any longer. I had to just tell him the whole story, get it over with, and pray to God that he at least made it quick and painless. My death was inevitable at that point. The only thing I could hope for was that Sonny still cared about me enough not to torture me and kill me slowly.

“There wasn’t much to tell, really. Not at first. You wouldn’t really tell me much about the club’s activities. That is, until Melanie’s murder. That’s when you first confided in me about the drugs.”

“And you told…”

“Agent Renley. He’s my supervisor. But he’s not my boss, necessarily. My boss is a man named Supervisory Agent Warren Kingston. I work for him out of Chicago.”

“So, you’re not even really from around here, either? And I bet the whole thing about your dad was bullshit too. Right?”

“My cover story. Renley came up with all the details…in case you got curious and looked into my history…there’s a paper trail backing up everything, including—”

“Your so-called criminal history,” he said, finishing the sentence for me.

“Yes.”

He nodded his head solemnly. “It all makes sense now.”

“What does?” I didn’t know if I was allowed to ask any questions, but I did anyway. I figured it didn’t matter much at that point, anyway.

“Everything. Looking back now, everything just…clicks. Like when you kicked Nicole’s ass that night at the Jamboree. At the time, I thought it was just pretty bad-ass that you could do that, but now I can see you were just using your agent training, or whatever.”

“What else? You said it all makes sense. What else?” I had to know in what other ways I had given myself away, since I had blown the entire operation. Even though it no longer mattered.

He must have forgotten for a split second that he was going to kill me, because he simply answered my question like we were having a casual conversation on a boring Tuesday night by the fireplace.

“Well, then there was the time we were talking by the barn about how to get revenge on the Monsters after Melanie…you know. I was impressed by your ability to come up with a plan like that on the fly. Then there was the bullet you pulled out of my arm. No one knows bullets like that unless they’re a cop…or a fed.”

I decided to try to take advantage of the momentary lapse in his determination to kill me.

“Sonny…” I stood up from my squatting position. “Listen, Sonny. I’m so very sorry. But like I said in the beginning…I do love you. That’s not a lie. I truly—”

“Don’t!” he shouted, raising the gun back up into the air and pointing it at my chest. “Just…don’t.”

I raised my hands up in front of me as if my hands alone could ward off any flying bullets. “Okay. Sonny, okay…”

We stood there, facing each other for what seemed like an eternity. Then I saw it. My first glimmer of hope in the form of a single tear forming in the corner of Sonny’s eye.

Chapter 25

But what did that tear mean? The best I could realistically hope for was that he was going to feel at least some level of regret in having to kill me and that he’d do it quickly. There was no way he could let me live. Not after learning I was a DEA agent and that I was solely responsible for the takedown, and kill, of his entire crew. I stood there, frozen. I wasn’t sure what to do next. I had told him everything he wanted to know and there wasn’t really much more he could ask me, so I figured he was probably debating my cause of death, even though the manner of my death had already been determined as soon as he figured out I wasn’t who I said I was.

Finally, he spoke again. And I was shocked at his choice of words. “Why?”

Excuse me? Why ask me
why
?
What was the point? What did it matter?

“Why what, Sonny? If you’re asking why I lied to you, then the answer is that I didn’t have a choice. I had no idea when I was given this assignment   that—”

“No. It’s a rhetorical question, Trish. Or Olivia. Why did this have to happen? Why did you have to be…who you are? Why put me in this position? You know what I have to do now.” He walked backward until the back of his legs hit the couch and he sat down again, looking defeated.

“I…Sonny…listen to me…I love you. That wasn’t a lie. I mean, sure, I was assigned to infiltrate the club. And sure, I came into this thinking I would, despite you, and I was ready to do my job and help take down the club—”

“And me,” he added.

“Yes, and you. That’s the God’s honest truth. I’m sorry. But somewhere along the way, it became real to me. It stopped being just an assignment and became my new life. I got to know you and I fell in love with you, Sonny. That’s real. Please believe me.”

“Don’t lie to me, Trish…Olivia…whoever you are…”

“It’s still me, though, Sonny. My name may be different, and maybe my story is a little different than you thought, but I fell in love with you and I know you fell in love with me too.”

“You’re just saying that now to save your own skin. You’d say anything just to make it out of here alive. Don’t fuck with me. I’m not an idiot.”

“I’m not lying to you, Sonny. It’s the truth. In fact, I think I fell in love with you at the coffee shop that day. That’s when the struggle became real. From that point forward, I was conflicted about what to do. I’ve spent the past two months trying to figure out how to save both of us. Why would I do that unless I truly loved you?”

Silence. I don’t know what I expected, but I guess the hopeless romantic in me had hoped he’d say he loved me back and this would all be over with. Hey, even when your life is in danger, a girl can still dream, right? Then the sight of the gun, still tightly gripped in his right hand, brought me back the reality of my situation and reminded me I still had to fight for my life.

“Sonny…you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to kill me.”

He looked up at me, bewildered. “How can I not, Trish? You didn’t just lie to me about who you are…you put me and my family in jeopardy. Now because of you, Harry’s dead. Weasel’s dead. Dad’s…hell, I don’t know what happened to my father. I assume he’s on his way to prison, probably for life this time! Even if I thought for a second I could let you go, the rest of the club would hunt you down. Not to mention the Monsters! Everyone’s going to want your head. You’re a dead woman either way, Trish.”

“Olivia.” As soon as the word came out, I slapped my hand to my mouth, realizing I was not really in a position to be correcting anybody. Let alone the man who literally held my life in his hands. “They can’t get to me, Sonny. I’m a DEA agent. If you let me go, I’ll be safe and sound in Chicago within three hours. No one would find me and even if they did…no one wants to kill a federal agent.”

“Maybe my guys wouldn’t, but Eddy Walters would shoot you right in front of the entire DEA and never think twice about it. All that aside…
Olivia
…I just can’t let you walk away from all of this. You betrayed the club! You betrayed me!”

“But Sonny…my supervisor, Agent Renley, he’ll be looking for me. They’d know exactly what happened to me. I’m supposed to be reporting to them…” I looked at the clock on the wall. One a.m. “…right now, actually. If I don’t check in and tell them I’m okay in the next few minutes, they’ll send the tactical team right over here to this house and they would never stop until they found you. And do you think they’d arrest you when they found you? Not after you’d killed a federal agent. They’d plant a drop gun on you in a heartbeat and claim you drew first. Think about it, Sonny. Plus…”

I took two cautious steps toward him, half-waiting for him to point the gun at me again.

To my great relief, he didn’t. Instead, he looked up at me from the couch and said, “You’re right.” The two most blessed words I’d ever heard in my entire short life.

“I am?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“I can’t kill you. I don’t think I could anyway.” Then, suddenly, that lone tear I had seen moments ago in the corner of his eye slowly spilled out over his cheek. “You broke my heart…Olivia.”

“Sonny, I am sorrier than you could ever imagine. But you have to believe me when I tell you that I did love you…I
do
love you. If you don’t believe anything else I tell you, believe that.” Then, with much trepidation, I reached out my trembling hand and wiped the single tear from his face. Amazingly, he didn’t push me away. He grabbed my hand, which was resting on his cheek, and squeezed it.

“I know. I may be a fool. And I may regret this one day, but Goddamn it, I believe you.”

“Sonny. Put down the gun. Please. You’re not going to kill me, so just put it down,” I whispered.

He looked down at the gun, turned it over once, then again, as if he’d never even realized he was holding it in the first place. Then, he reached over and laid it down on the end table under the tacky, fake-Tiffany lamp.

“What are you going to do now?” I asked him.

“No, Olivia. The question is…what are
you
going to do now? My life is in your hands.”

Funny…only moments before, it was quite the opposite, but I realized what he meant and that I had no idea how to answer his question.

He looked me with wet eyes. “I can’t kill you. I
won’t
kill you. So, what are you going to do now? Are you going to arrest me?”

Arrest him? It’s not like I had a pair of handcuffs in my jeans pocket. And even if I did, could I arrest him? Just as he was unable to do what he should—kill me—I was unable to do what I should and arrest him. I had no idea where that left us or what to do next.

“No, Sonny. You’ve spared my life. I’m not going to arrest you. Like I keep saying, I love you. Ever since the moment that I realized I was in love with you, I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out how to save you from all of this.”

“That’s why you didn’t want me to go tonight, isn’t it?” I could see this revelation spreading across his face. “You weren’t worried just about my safety. You didn’t want me to be caught up in the raid you knew was coming.”

“Well, both, actually. I was worried about you getting caught in the crossfire if things went sideways, but mostly, yes, I was trying to keep you out of prison.”

“You risked your career…for me?”

“Well…yes. I mean, I told you, Sonny. I love you, and that’s
real
.” I sank down next to him on the couch, his hand still holding mine. “At some point, things got complicated. I realized I had fallen in love with you and I was torn between my assignment, my career, and my love for you. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t tell you who I was and risk the entire assignment, but I didn’t want to lie to you, either. I knew I had to give Renley the information about the meeting and that there would be a raid, and I didn’t want you to be arrested, or worse. So, I did the best thing I could think of and convinced you to stay home with me. Only I don’t know what to do now. All I know is I still love you. I hope you still love me? Or is that too much to hope for?”

I could tell he was listening intently and pondering my words. It took him a minute to answer me, which was totally understandable. But finally he said, “Yes. I do love you, Trish. Or, Olivia.”

“Oh, Sonny.” I threw my arms around his neck. At first, I could tell he was unsure how to respond, but after I squeezed him tightly for a good ten seconds, his posture softened and he put his arms around me too. “What are we going to do?” I began crying again. Only this time they were tears of relief mixed with tears of confusion. How was I going to get us out of this? Was it possible for us to have a life together now? It didn’t seem likely, but I knew in my heart of hearts that I couldn’t just turn off my feelings for him and arrest him. In fact, the more I thought about it, there weren’t even really sufficient charges to bring him in on. Only the suspicions of the DEA. I never really witnessed him doing anything illegal and he wasn’t at the meeting tonight, so he wouldn’t be charged with possession, trafficking, RICO, or whatever other charges they would throw at the arrested members to see what stuck. When I realized this, an idea flashed in my mind like a sparkler that had just been lit on the Fourth of July.

“Sonny…we can run away together.” Yep. It sounded just as crazy when I spoke the words out loud. But what choice was there?

“Trish, I mean, Olivia…sorry…that one’s gonna take me a while…we can’t just run away. You have a career. I have the club to run now that Dad’s either dead or missing. It’s a crazy idea.”

“First…what career? Do you think they’re going to keep me on at the DEA now that I’ve chosen you over the assignment? They’ll know I warned you about the raid, even if I didn’t tell you the whole truth about it. They’ll be pissed they couldn’t arrest you too. No, my career is over. Second…Sonny there
is
no more club. Yes, your dad and everyone who was arrested tonight will pull life sentences once the feds are done with them. Other than a couple of nobodies who stayed behind, you are all that’s left of the Lords of Chaos. We’ve both lost everything we’ve worked so hard to build. It’s all my fault, I know that, but neither one of us can return to the lives we were leading before we met each other. It’s just not possible. We don’t have a choice. But maybe we don’t have to run away. Maybe we can just start a new life together, here in Nicholasville. My real family is in Lexington. I’d be close to them again and you’d still be in your hometown.”

“No, you were right. We have to run away. Think about it. If Dad made it out alive, and if he figures out who you really are and what happened, he’ll want you to pay. That’s not to mention the Monsters of Mayhem. Jimmy said their leader didn’t show for the meeting. His son was also killed in the raid. He’ll pull out all the stops to find you and me both.”

I thought about this for a second and the truth was terrifying. He was right. I hadn’t thought about it, but no one in either of the clubs was going to let us just walk away after what went down at the warehouse. Especially once they learned how and why Sonny managed to avoid the raid. But what was I going to do about Renley and the Agency? I couldn’t just run away without at least talking to them and turning over my badge and gun. If I didn’t, we’d also be hunted by the DEA, if not every single federal agency out there. No, I’d have to face the music as far as the Agency was concerned, but after that, Sonny and I were going to have to make a run for it. But where could we go that the Monsters wouldn’t find us?

“Well, we’ll figure out where to go later. Right now, you’ve got to deal with your job and I’ve got to tie up a few loose ends here in town then you and I are on the next thing smoking out of this godforsaken town.”

I looked into Sonny’s eyes, and if there had ever been a doubt in my mind as to what I wanted to do, it dissipated in that moment. Somehow, some way, I’d managed not only to spare Sonny from prison or worse, but I’d managed to convince him not to kill me. To add icing to this beautiful multi-layered cake, I’d managed to make Sonny realize that he still loved me. Me. Olivia Rockford. Former DEA agent. And we were going to have to build a life together.