Second Chance

Chapter 90

WE SPED AWAY from the house, getting most of the way to San Francisco before we could even speak. Finally my father pulled his car into the busy parking lot of a 7-Eleven. I faced him, still breathing, my heart pounding.

“Are you okay?” he asked in the softest voice I could imagine.

I nodded, not quite sure, taking an inventory of where it hurt. My jaw... the back of my head... my pride.

Slowly the questions that needed to be answered crept through the daze.

“What were you doing there?” I asked.

“I've been worried about you. Especially after somebody came after your friend Claire.” The next thought hit me hard. “You've been following?”

He dabbed the corner of my mouth with his thumb to wipe away a trickle of blood. “I was a cop for twenty years. I followed you after you left work tonight. Okay?”

My head rung in disbelief, but somehow it didn't matter.

Then, as I stared at my father, something else flashed in my mind. Something that wasn't adding up. I remembered Coombs leering over me. “He knew who I was.”

“Of course he knew. You met him face-to-face. You're in charge of his case.”

“I don't mean from the case,” I said. “He knew about you.”

My father's eyes looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“That I was your daughter. He knew. He called me Marty Boxer's little girl.”

A light was blinking from a beer sign in the 7-Eleven window. It illuminated my father's face.

“I already told you,” he said, “Coombs and I were familiar. Everybody knew me back then.”

“That wasn't what he meant.” I shook my head. “He called me Marty Boxer's little girl. It was about you.”

I had a flash of my face-to-face with Coombs that morning at the hotel. I'd had the same fleeting sensation then.

That he knew me. That there was something between him and me.

I pulled away, my voice straining. “Why were you following me? I need to hear everything.”

“To protect you. I swear. To do the right thing for once.”

“I'm a cop, Dad, not your little Buttercup. You're holding something back. You're involved in this somehow. You want to do the right thing for once, this is the time to start.”

My father leaned his head back, eyes fixed straight ahead.

He sucked in a sharp breath. “Coombs called me when he got out of fuel. He managed to trace me down south.” “Coombs called you?” I said, wide-eyed, completely in shock. “Why would he call you?”

“He asked how I'd enjoyed the last twenty years of my life, while he was away. If I'd made something of myself. He said it was time to pay me back.”

“Pay you back? Pay you back for what?” As soon as I asked the question, the answer shot through me. I stared hard into my father's lying eyes.

"You were there that night, weren't you? You were in this twenty years ago.