Ozzie snapped his mouth shut.
“What is… goin’… on?” Dad bit out, eyes narrowed, body tight.
“Shit,” Ozzie muttered.
Sam looked back at Dad. “Jeff Clementine and Vanessa Cloverfield hired a hit man to take out Kia.”
My body was already tight through the preliminaries but it got tighter at these words.
“Yeah, this isn’t news,” Dad said, again perplexed.
“No, Ford,” Ozzie put in quietly. “They didn’t conspire to do it, they did it.”
Dad took a step back, his face going pale. I made to move away from Sam and go to him but Sam’s arm tensed and I couldn’t get away.
Dad was staring at Ozzie and he whispered, “What?”
“Vanessa pawned a bunch of stuff and talked Milo into gettin’ a second mortgage on their house, sayin’ she wanted a new kitchen or somethin’. They found a broker who hooked them up with a man who could do the job they wanted done. They made contact, they paid and the hit was placed on Kia,” Ozzie explained.
“You are shittin’ me,” Dad was still whispering.
“I wish I was Ford,” Ozzie was now whispering.
Dad shook his head, looked at me, Sam then Ozzie and asked, “Okay, well, so? Clearly Vanessa called it off.”
“Unfortunately, no,” Ozzie replied, Dad blanched and his eyes shot to me while Ozzie kept talking. “The broker took a percentage, gave the contact details to Coot and Vanessa and it was all done electronically. Three e-mails. One to inform. One to confirm wire transfer of the money. One to confirm they wanted him to go through with the hit. They were warned that once they sent that third e-mail, that account would be made invalid, they would not hear from him again and could not call him off.”
Dad’s throat was working, his eyes, locked to me, were working and I tried to pull away from Sam again but his other arm went around me, caging me in.
Ozzie went on.
“We had a man on her, Ford, all the time. We don’t really have the resources to do it but we did it. And we’re doin’ everything in our power to track this guy down.”
“And you went off to Europe,” Dad said to me. “Jesus, God, Kia, what was in your head?” he clipped.
“She didn’t know,” Sam stated and Dad’s eyes sliced to him.
“Say again?” he demanded.
“Kia didn’t know,” Sam kind of repeated.
Dad’s eyes sliced back to me then Ozzie when Ozzie spoke quickly.
“We thought, what Kia’d been through, what you all had been through, what you all were facin’ considerin’ Coot was gone and the time had come to face it, not to mention what he left behind just knowin’ all he was up to with Vanessa, we wouldn’t add to that burden.”
“You wouldn’t add to that burden,” Dad whispered.
“Ford –” Ozzie started.
“Are you out of your ever-lovin’ mind?” Dad thundered at Ozzie and I watched Ozzie clench his teeth and he held Dad’s eyes but he didn’t answer.
Dad tore his gaze from Ozzie’s and shook his head, running his hand through his hair while doing it and muttering, “I don’t… I cannot believe this shit. I cannot believe this shit.”
“Right,” Sam put in, Dad’s eyes cut to him and Sam announced, “This is where we’re at now. The Sheriff’s talkative deputy gave me the head’s up three days ago.” Sam looked at Ozzie. “So you need to know there are four men in your town who’ll be visible watching Kia and her home. I’ll get you names and pictures so your men can identify them. They are carrying concealed and three of four of them have a license to do that in this state. I’ll ask you to look the other way with the one who doesn’t. I can assure you he’s trained and he knows what he’s doin’ or I wouldn’t have him on Kia. I’m also carryin’ concealed and I don’t have a license in Indiana either. I’ll have a weapon on me at all times and another one in Kia’s house and, since I couldn’t get home to North Carolina to get my own hardware, I do not hold permits for either. I’ll ask you to look the other way on that too. There are also two men hunting this guy at my request. They’ll need information which means I’ll need a full brief from you and I’ll need to talk to Vanessa Cloverfield. So as not to f**k your case against her, you’ll not have anything to do with that. But, she doesn’t talk to me; I’ll escalate my tactics to get her to talk to me. You’ll need to look the other way on that too.”
“Son, you cannot ask me to do that,” Ozzie replied then finished, “Any of that.”
“I just did and you’ll do it,” Sam returned and Ozzie’s face started to get red.
“Cooper, I understand –” Ozzie started but I felt Sam’s body get taut at my back and I braced because I knew, for whatever reason, he was done.
“No, Sheriff, you don’t understand. If you did, at the very least Ford would have been aware of this situation before Kia’s ass was on a plane. For three weeks, she was wandering Europe alone and unprotected. For a week and a half, she was with me and I had no clue. You do not know who this motherfucker is therefore you do not know what resources he has available to him. She should never have been on that plane. In the months after you learned about this situation, she should have had more than the Sheriff Department’s protection but also the protection of her family and a security system installed in her house or, seein’ Ford’s reaction, her ass moved to this one and a system installed here. None of this happened. And months have passed and you have not found this guy. My experience, you haven’t found him yet means you got nothin’ on him and your leads have gone stone cold. So he’s not in the wind, he is the wind. And when that shit happens, your boys can be brilliant, but unless they’re trained to lock down that kind of target, they got no hope. They also got other shit to do. I do not. The hunters I called in on this do not. And the men at Kia’s back have one focus, Kia. I know you are not unaware of the last seven years of her life and what she’s been livin’ with behind closed doors at the hands of that piece of shit. Now he’s still controlling her life and he’s f**kin’ dead. I got the power and the means to make certain that shit stops and I’m gonna do it. And last, I’ll give you the head’s up that I do not make threats so take that into consideration when I say, I’m doin’ this and you do not wanna stand in my way.”