Chapter Thirty-Three

Jesse

Every time I woke up, I felt a little bit better. This most recent time, I actually felt great. There was only one problem. Charlotte had been missing for a couple of hours, and no one knew where she was.

I assumed she had just gone somewhere to sleep. That made the most logical sense. She’d been back in town for at least a day and had spent the entire time in the hospital with me. She couldn’t have possibly gotten much rest, and this was after flying back from Paris overnight. I didn’t think much of it until Luke came into the room, pulling Amber aside and having a hushed conversation, in which I heard her name several times.

“What’s going on?” I asked when Amber made her way back to me.

“Whoa, you’re talking,” Luke said. “You look like you feel better.”

“I do,” I said. “Quite a bit. Still feel like I got hit by a truck, but maybe a smaller truck now. What’s going on with Charlotte?”

The two of them glanced at each other, and Collin, who was also in the room, perked up as well.

“Well, he’s going to have to find out,” Amber said.

“You just said not to tell him because it might stress him out too much.”

“Yeah, but if you don’t know when they will have her out…”

“Excuse me,” Collin said. “Can you just tell me what’s happening? I don’t have a heart condition at the moment.”

“Might as well tell them both,” Amber said, sighing. “Do you want to, or me?”

“You do it,” Luke said, exasperated.

She nodded and turned back to me, putting on a huge fake smile.

“Oh lord,” I said. “What happened?”

“Well, so, you see, Charlotte went to see her mom, and, well, there was someone there. And, look, a lot of things kind of happened quickly, but you need to know things are going to work out, okay? You just need to remain calm. But..”

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Luke interrupted, “Charlotte is in jail. She punched Trish in the nose, might have broken it, and Tamara is up at the station to bail her out.”

“Yeah, that,” Amber finished, lamely.

“She’s in jail ? For punching Trish?” I asked.

“Yes,” Luke and Amber said at the same time.

I glanced at Collin, who also looked at me. It felt like both of us had the same shocked and perplexed expression.

“ Charlotte ?” I asked again.

“All right, so, when she got to her mom’s place, Eugene and Trish were there, apparently,” Luke said. “I don’t know the exact words because Tamara was a little bit… upset. But the long and short of it is, Eugene wanted to float some crazy idea, and it pissed Charlotte way the hell off. Trish got in her face about her not respecting Eugene, and Charlotte dropped her like a sack of potatoes. Eugene arrested her on the spot, and now everybody’s hopping mad.”

“Wow,” Collin said. “Way to go, Charlotte. That’ll teach that brat.”

“She’s actually in jail , though?” I asked, still reeling and trying to mentally produce an image that just wouldn’t come. Charlotte Garafalo. In jail. It just didn’t make sense.

“Yes,” Amber said. “Tamara is down there now to bail her out.”

“I sent the money for it out of the fund I keep for your misadventures,” Luke said.

“Wait, you have a specific fund for when Jesse ends up in jail?” Collin asked. “How do I not know about this?”

Luke shrugged. “You know how I have that old car garaged that I’ve been restoring?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Well, it’s been restored for a long damn time now. I don’t know how you didn’t put that one together.”

“You mean to tell me every month, from the budget, you’ve been taking money to restore old cars and putting it into a slush fund to bail Jesse out of the slammer?”

“Well, all of us,” he said. “But mostly Jesse.”

Collin was laughing now, getting past his initial betrayal of financial transparency. Luke even cracked a smile.

“I guess the important thing to talk about now is how you want to handle Oland,” Amber said. “Luke should explain that part a little more.”

“Right,” Luke said, pulling up a chair and bringing it closer. “Okay, so the situation is that they claim there isn’t much, if any physical evidence tying Oland to this other than him being caught with Lacey. They might have your DNA on the bottom of his gun, but we don’t know that yet. So Oland has cooked up this idea, and essentially is willing to flip on Lacey if you admit you don’t know for sure that Oland had anything to do with the actual assault and attempted murder.”

“Wait, so I’m supposed to believe that Lacey did all this?”

“Yes.”

“She hit me with the gun, she dragged me into the car, then drove me to the woods, dragged me out of the car, and left me for dead?”

“Yes.”

“And Oland would get away scot-free?”

“Well, no,” Luke said. “He definitely was an accomplice. But they would only charge him with what they could prove, which was that he helped her try to escape, which he claims he was trying to talk her into turning herself in, and possibly that she stole the weapon from him and he tried to cover it up.”

“Wow,” Collin said. “What a snake in the grass.”

“It’s worse,” I said. “They weren’t just in on this together. They are… or were… a couple. I believe Oland is the father of her baby, assuming there is an actual baby at all.”

“Wait, you think she was never pregnant?” Amber asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s a serial liar. I think it’s entirely possible, yes. But I think the most likely situation is that I broke up with her, Oland dated her and knocked her up, and then they concocted this plan to pin it on me and get money from me by way of child support. When I denied it, they went all in on it, thinking that they could take me to court, win without a paternity test, and somehow get access to the ranch through litigation.”

“I’ve said it before,” Collin said, “Oland Anderson might just be the dumbest man on Earth.”

“Dumb, but not that dumb,” Luke said. “He’s figured out a plausible way to get out of most of the trouble. It would be a slam-dunk case on Lacey if you went through with this. The implication is that the Andersons would be willing to work with us a lot more, maybe cool their jets on us, if we did them this favor.”

“Wow,” I said again. “Just wow.”

“So that brings us to you,” Amber said. “We can save ourselves a lot of legal headache and time if we go with their plan. But…”

“No,” I said. “The answer is no.”

Luke grinned. “Thatta boy.”

“Oland tried to kill me,” I continued. “Lacey wanted me dead, absolutely, and was the most upset that they weren’t able to put a bullet in my head, but Oland not only is the one who actually hit me, but he thought he killed me and was fine with dumping my body and blaming someone else. I even heard his first plan, which was to blame you, Luke.”

“Me?”

I nodded. “He thought they could float the idea that you were mad at me. Maybe that I’d made a pass at Amber or something.”

“That rat bastard,” Luke said. “As if I’d kill my own brother and dump his body in the woods.”

“It’s what they would do,” Collin said. “Projection. If it’s a plausible story to them because it fits their actions, then it’s plausible to them that everyone else would behave the same way.”

“Oland tried to kill me. He deserves to pay for that. If it weren’t for the fact that he only had his service pistol, I fully believe he would have put a bullet in my brain. Fuck him.”

“Fuck him,” Luke repeated. “Agreed.”

The door opened behind him, and Logan and Owen walked in. Logan looked mighty pissed off, and Owen was even more unusually quiet.

“Hey, Tamara just called,” Logan said. “She told me what happened.”

“Jesse said we’re still going after Oland. Fuck him.”

“Right on,” Logan said. “Owen and I are behind you whatever you decide, but… yeah. Oland can eat it. If you want us to go storm the police station right now and tear it down piece by piece, we’re down for it.”

“No,” I said, knowing that wasn’t just fluff. Logan and Owen were the biggest two of all of us and the strongest physically. If they wanted to take every brick apart by hand, they could do it. “I don’t want anyone else in trouble. We will get Oland. But first and most importantly, I need to make sure Charlotte is okay. I know how the Andersons get when they have one of us cornered in jail. If she has a hair out of place, then we can tear the place down.”

Logan nodded. “I’m on it. They won’t mess with me. They don’t want the entire fire department on their ass.”

“Go get her,” Luke said. “And make sure they know that their offer was found to be… lacking.”