Free Honor Code by Cathy Perkins Page B

earlier bitchiness. “So you reached out to Hayes.”
    “Yes. He asked me to visit him. Apparently, the military won’t let just anyone talk to their detainees. They took forever to approve my visit.”
    I wouldn’t have let her in either, Robbins thought. He leaned forward and spoke deliberately. “Why’d you go see him?”
    “I was curious.”
    “About?”
    “What he could tell me about Akeem.”
    “And you went? To see some criminal you didn’t know?”
    “I needed information.”
    “On what? Price? Availability to grab your father?”
    “My father…? No.” She shook her head in vehement denial. “You’ve got this all wrong.”
    “Yesterday you were angry with your dad—claimed he killed your mom and got away with it. You hire Hayes for some payback?”
    “No, no. I didn’t do anything wrong.” Tears again filled her eyes. “Yesterday morning, after I talked with you, Tyrell showed up at my house. I was so surprised, I just opened the door and let him in.”
    What woman let a guy fresh out of prison into her home? “How’d he know where you lived?”
    “I told you. He wrote to me. At first, I thought he expected to stay with me since he was out of prison.”
    “Must have been a cozy visit down there at the brig.”
    “Stop it.” She banged a fist against her thigh. “He grabbed me. Threatened me. He forced me into the car—my car—and brought me here.”
    Her voice rose again, screeching toward hysterics. “I thought he meant to rape me. He pushed me inside this horrible room. My father was here, tied to a chair. He tied me up”—she extended hands, the wrists raw from the rope that had bound her—“and gagged me.”
    If she was telling the truth—and Robbins still wasn’t convinced—then Hayes just upped the ante.
    She grimaced, twisted her lips and shuddered, as if she could still feel a rag in her mouth. “Then Hayes took a nap like none of it even mattered. Like my father and I were just…part of the furniture.”
    “Where are they now? What’s their plan?”
    “I told you, I don’t know.”
    “Everything you’ve said tonight has been about you . What about your father? If anything happens to him, how are you going to live with yourself?”
    His words rolled right off of her. “I didn’t have anything to do with this. I told you, I’m innocent. A victim.”
    Robbins wanted her to get the rest of her story out there before he challenged it. “When they left, how did they seem?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The men. Were they excited, afraid, nervous?”
    She bit her lip. Her eyes drifted as she thought.
    Remembering or making up a story? Robbins hadn’t figured out her body language yet—when she was lying or telling the truth.
    “My father seemed resigned. He didn’t fight Tyrell when he untied him.”
    Beason was nearly eighty and Hayes was a very fit twenty-eight. What did she expect her father to do?
    “Tyrell seemed jazzed up. Maybe he was on drugs.”
    “Jazzed about what?”
    “Whatever they were doing.” She again raised her hands, this time in a dramatic shrug. “I heard him say he’d let my father go after they got ‘them.’ Do you think he will? Let him go?”
    Probably not, Robbins thought, but didn’t say.
    She slumped in the chair as if the emotion had finally drained her. “You have to find my father. Before that man does something terrible to him. You’re the police. Why aren’t you looking for him?”
    “We need to know where to look. They aren’t here.” He spread his hands indicating the cheap hotel room. “When did they leave?”
    “It seemed like forever, but maybe an hour?”
    “We have to find them before Hayes decides Beason is a liability.”
    “A liability? What does that mean?”
    “It means a copper urn instead of a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.”
    “Tyrell might kill my father?”
    “Isn’t that what you wanted? Your father dead for killing your mother?”
    “No!” Wide-eyed, she shook her head.