Free Hidden Threat by Anthony Tata Page A

changed her inflection, having won her point. “Poor, innocent Amanda. No father to take care of her. Just like me and you,” she cooed in almost mocking tones.
    Melanie could relate. Gabrielle Hastings, her mother, had been married to four different men. Her big takeaway from those years was that each time her mother divorced, they somehow wound up in a bigger house and with a new car. In the confusing world of a teenage girl, one thing was very clear: feelings were fleeting, unimportant, while material things and status were enduring. Her mother’s comment made her think about her own father.
    Jack Clarke had been raised in South Carolina the son of a farmer, land merchant, and general businessman. Jack had graduated from the University of South Carolina with a business management degree and had fallen in love with young Gabrielle Williams, also from a small Southern town. As a Gamecock freshman, so the story went, her mother had made herself popular with the boys early in her college career. Having neither the interest nor the patience for college, she trolled the fraternity houses and found a willing graduating senior in Jack Clarke. Before long, she was pregnant, and she married quickly soon after.
    Melanie had been about ten years old when suddenly her father had disappeared. It was a few months later that she learned her parents had separated. She later heard from her mother that Jack Clarke, which is how she referred to him now, had had a male paramour. While Melanie had never seen her father with another man, the rumor had taken flight and was generally accepted as fact in Columbia, South Carolina, where they were living at the time.
    She had no relationship with him today, nor did she care to. Adapting well to the lifestyle for which she had been trained, Melanie Garrett had discarded long ago any notion of what a father might be.
    Likewise, she had watched her mother rotate through husbands the way some people flip real estate for profit. Melanie mused that it was not a bad gig if you could remove the emotion from the situation; everyone had to be a means to your end.
    So, in the final analysis, Melanie viewed men, whether they were fathers or husbands, through a sterile prism devoid of any emotion. In a way, she had inherited the family business and had proven herself a worthy heir.
    Coming back to the moment, Melanie sighed. “Maybe I can call Mark Russell, the lawyer that I arranged to help out Kimmie Carpenter,” she said absently.
    Her mother stared at her a moment, indicating she was unclear on what Melanie was discussing.
    “ You know, the case where her ex-husband lost two legs in Iraq, and the Army reclassified his retirement pay as disability pay, which meant she didn’t get her fifty percent.”
    “ Yeah, I remember, but I thought it was because they were only married a few years.”
    Melanie chuckled, back in stride. “Well, that’s the law, but it doesn’t matter. There’s plenty of ways around that. And the nerve of those bastards to try and steal that money from her.”
    “ Who won the case?”
    “ That’s what I’m saying. Russell took them to the cleaners. He argued that the Army had world-class medical care—her ex would be able to enjoy that for life—and prosthetic limbs were so high tech today that most people could hardly tell the difference anymore. Kimmie told me that they were trying the old whiplash trick where, instead of wearing the fake neck brace, every day in court her ex would show up in a wheelchair or using crutches. The nerve.”
    “ Who was the judge? That’s what makes the real difference. If we could get Russell and that judge lined up—”
    “ It’s a different county, but not impossible. Anyway, Kimmie got to keep her half, and she won attorney’s fees. So she didn’t have to pay a dime.”

“ No risk.”
    “ That’s right.”
    ***
    Amanda quietly exited through the back stairway that led to the garage. She padded through the darkness down the