Page 38 of Honest Neglect

A few of them were already talking, and surely, there would be more once the first few holdouts had fallen. With the police corruption a part of this case now, the feds would inevitably get involved, and when they did, none of the cops on the Oakville force wanted to be the ones sticking by a man who had done such monstrous things. They were just trying to cover their own asses, but that was fine by me. Anything we could do to inch things further forward, the better.

Tony was well and truly done for now. With the evidence piling up against him and Marcy plucking up courage outside of town to come forward, there was no way he would be out on the streets again anytime soon. He had all but admitted to murdering that girl—whether he’d done it himself or not was irrelevant. He had been the reason behind it, the person who had called for the hit—and his drunken stupidity and recklessness might just have been enough to take him and his father down for good.

“So what about Mark?” I asked Leroy. Diane, Barry, and Lily were all out in the back yard right now. Lily had asked not to be involved in this part of the conversation—I guessed it was all still too raw for her, especially after the emotional breakdown she’d had right there in front of me. I wished there was more I could do to promise her I wasn’t going anywhere, but it was something she would come to believe over time, when she saw that my feet were firmly planted right next to her, wherever that might be, and whatever that might look like.

Leroy shook his head.

“I’ve got my men stationed around the outskirts of Oakville, and they’re going to report any news they hear about him,” he explained. “But it doesn’t look like he’s made a break for it. He’s probably somewhere around Oakville right now, I just don’t know where.”

I grimaced. Not exactly what I wanted to hear. I’d hoped that we would be able to keep track of him and maybe get him locked up along with his son, but clearly, he wasn’t going to make it so easy. I wanted him somewhere we could easily control him. With a little pressure, we might be able to get Tony or Mark to start selling each other out to try and protect themselves, and I wanted to be there when they began to turn on each other. For all they had relied on each other over the years, men like that could never truly be loyal to anyone other than themselves, and they were soon going to learn that they weren’t immune to attacks from each other, either.

“We should go out and find him,” I suggested. Leroy’s face steeled, and he nodded.

“You’re right,” he agreed. “We don’t want him getting out of the town, even out of state—he’s smarter than his son, and he’s not going to sit around and wait for us to catch up with him. We need to act fast if we’re going to catch him in time.”

Leroy finished the coffee Diane had made him, and I went outside to tell Lily what was happening. As soon as she saw me, she managed a smile. She still looked drawn and scared after what had happened, but that smile was everything I needed right now, the promise that all of this was going to be okay, even if it sometimes felt like it couldn’t be.

“Hey,” I murmured to her as Barry and Diane played with Silver. “Leroy and I are going to scope out the rest of town, see if Mark’s trying to run for it. I’ll be back in a few hours, though, okay?”

A flash of fear crossed her face.

“It’s going to be all right,” I soothed her. “We won’t be gone for long. And Leroy has his men all over Oakville, they’ll probably get to Mark before we do. You and your mom will be fine.”

“It’s not us I’m worried about,” she muttered, shaking her head. “I don’t want you out there...”

“Tony’s locked up, remember?” I reminded her. “And the cops he had on his side are all flipping as we speak. Nothing’s going to happen to me. Mark doesn’t have the same grip on this town he once did, even if he doesn’t know it yet.”

I planted a kiss on her cheek and gave her hand a squeeze before I headed back to the house to meet Leroy. He was already waiting by the door when I entered, a look of determination written all over his craggy features.

“You ready?”

“I’m ready,” I replied. Working with him again took me back to my days as a soldier—having a mission to work on, that drive to keep me going. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it until now, but with him here, it was all flooding back to me.

We climbed into his car and started a loop around the small town. Even though most people wouldn’t even have known that Tony had been locked up, it felt like there had been a shift in the atmosphere here. The McCarthys were swiftly losing control of this place, and it wouldn’t be long until their reign of terror was well and truly over.

Or it would be, just as soon as we could bring Mark to justice. There wasn’t a single sign of him anywhere in town, not a car, not a sighting, nothing. We asked around a few local places—well, Leroy did, since I knew people still had plenty of questions about me and just how far I had actually been involved in the shit Tony and Mark had tried to frame me for—and nobody had seen anything. Mark must have heard about the arrest, and he was smart enough to keep his head down and not to attract any more attention than he needed to.

As it started to get dark outside, Leroy spotted a bar at the edge of town.

“I could use a drink,” he remarked. That surprised me—he didn’t seem like the type who would break off from a mission for a beer. Maybe there was something he needed to talk to me about...

“Sure,” I replied, and he pulled the car to a halt so we could head inside. I hadn’t been to this bar all that often, mostly staying home if I wanted a few beers, but I had made a promise to myself after everything that had happened to make more of an effort to get out into Oakville. I wanted the people here to actually know me, so if someone tried to smear me again, nobody would have to think twice before they dismissed it.

And besides, with Lily part of my life now, I wanted to put down roots in this place. I knew it was her hometown and that she wanted to be here more than anything. She wanted to be with her mom, to help her as she got back to full health, and she deserved to feel safe here with me. Not like people were looking over their shoulder at us every time we were out together, like they had been back in the store when we’d gone out to pick up groceries before.

Leroy insisted on paying for our beer as we sat at the bar, and a few people glanced in our direction, clearly trying to work out who he was. He ignored them, lifting his glass to his lips and staring at the door.

“You think he might come here?” I asked.

“I think I’d need a drink after what he’s been through in the last twenty-four hours,” he remarked. “But no, I don’t think he’d be stupid enough to turn up here, somewhere so public. He must know that we’ve got people looking for him. He’s probably packing his stuff right now.”

“And you’ve got your men stationed on all the roads leading out of here, right?” I added. “So he’s not going to know what hit him.”

“That’s the idea,” Leroy replied, and he paused before he continued.

“You know, we’re always looking for more people to help with our...task force,” he added. I cocked an eyebrow.

“I thought you said these were just guys you’d worked with before?”