APRIL
Just over a month was left on my maternity leave by the time that I feel recovered from getting shot. I'd never thought that this would be my life, my boyfriend and the father of my child in a motorcycle club and getting shot in the stomach, yet that was exactly where I was. I ended up taking an extra month, not ready to go back as quickly as I thought I would be.
But it wasn't where I wanted to be. I wanted to be with Jackson and I was so grateful to have Kieran in my life, growing bigger and bigger every day, catching up with the growth curve despite the rough start that he had gotten off to with coming in the world so soon. I loved them both dearly. But it was everything else. Neither one of us should have been in Eureka this long. The trial was still pending, pushed back another month after some kind of unforeseen complication. Jackson and I both didn't know what, but the club was happy about it. The longer this went on, the more uncomfortable I became staying here.
On my first day back, by the time it was my lunch time, I don't even have it in me to get up and go down to the cafeteria. The first thing I do is pump and relieve the tension in my breasts. Then I lay down my head on my desk, and I'm out.
A loud knock on the door followed by two people barging into my office awakened me.
"Kepner!" Mark's voice boomed out, jolting me entirely.
Inhaling deeply as I pushed myself to straighten up, I forced up the corner of my mouth to give some resemblance of a smile. "Hey, Mark. Izzie…" A yawn interrupted me.
"You look exhausted," Izzie murmured. "Are you sure you're ready to be back at work? There's no shame in taking more time off of work."
"Yeah," I nodded and leaned back in my chair. "What are you guys doing up here?"
"Well, we figured when you didn't pop down for lunch and you weren't down in daycare, you were probably moping in your office." She explained before Mark chimed in.
"Didn't figure that moping was going to be actually sleeping, though," he said. "And Amelia's in surgery before you ask." That was one question answered.
"I'm fine." I pushed my hair away from my face, tucking it behind my ears. "Just adjusting."
"You know that if you need any help with Kieran, you can always ask." Izzie chimed in. "He's such a sweet boy, and he's getting so big now. I can't believe that he's four months old now."
I shook my head. "It's not that," I breathed out. "I mean, if I didn't mind having him in daycare, Jackson could take care of him during the day. That wouldn't be a problem. He's… well, it's complicated." When wasn't it? "But we're working on things. Trying to find a change. We're actually looking into moving but he's being a little stubborn about me being the breadwinner."
"I'm sure that I can help him find a good job, if he needs it," Mark offered.
"He's stubborn." I chewed the inside of my cheek. "I don't know if he'll take help. He doesn't need it, I don't think. It's just… a lot of other stuff that's got him distracted. Club stuff."
"I remember that," Izzie murmured. "Seems like it never gets any easier."
"It doesn't." I breathed out, guilt turning me cold as I looked up at her. "I'm sorry… about him." I hadn't been able to go to the funeral. I'd still been in the hospital. "I'm so, so sorry."
"You don't need to apologize," she shook her head. "But thank you."
"I think I'm going to go check on Kieran," I murmured. "But thanks for stopping by."
"Let us know if you need anything," Mark said, dropping down his head to look at me seriously. "I mean it. This isn't stuff you have to handle yourself. Pretty sure Amelia would twist my arm if I didn't tell you that," he chuckled, instantly lightening the mood just a bit like he always did.
The two of them slip out of my office with polite smiles and the reminder of that I wasn't alone. The stairwell is quiet and avoids most of the people who would want to talk and chatter about the baby, so I take it down to the first floor of the hospital to see Kieran. He was asleep and he doesn't wake up when I lift him into my arms, sitting there and just holding him for as long as I can before my next appointment.
The remainder of the day dragged on. There was nothing that I loved more than my job, more than helping people and making a meaningful difference in their life, but I'm elsewhere. Updating prescriptions was one thing that doesn't take much thought. I was grateful for that.
By the time the last of my appointments was taken care of, I don't linger in my office as I had during lunch. There's no jacket to grab in the middle of the heatwave that was currently rolling through California, the first of the season now that it was June. Kieran's first summer. In another, more peaceful life, I would have been happy to take him to the beach, some kind of fair on a pier, and embrace all of the little cliche things that came with it. Of course, none of that had happened. Going to more than the park scared me. Jackson was having to pretend to be in the same situation as the other club members, which meant he wasn't doing any traveling out of Eureka. We had to keep up appearances.
"Here comes the sun… here comes the sun, and I say, it's all right…"
No radio on, instead, I sing quietly to Kieran as we drive home. He's not a fan of car rides because of the inevitable noise that comes with trying to get anywhere in the town. He was either dead silent or screaming his lungs out the entire time in the car. Fortunately, today, he was quiet.
Kieran doesn't wake as I park in the garage and pull him out of the backseat, carrying him inside. Jackson's bike was already parked on the stretch of concrete outside of the garage.
"Hey," I called out as I came in. I pulled Kieran out of the car seat and set him in his pack and play.
No response was returned. Sighing, I bent down and placed a kiss no Kieran's forehead. He stirs but doesn't wake entirely and I leave him there for a minute to find Jackson. Pushing open the bedroom door, he was stretched out across the duvet with his shoes on, snoring loudly.
"Seriously?" I blurted out, voice jumping up an octave. "I'm working all day and this is what you're doing. Wow." I pushed the door back so it hit the wall loudly, waking him. "Unbelievable."
Stirring occurred behind me but I don't turn around. "April, wait up!" Jackson pleaded out to me as I stormed back toward the living room. I didn't know what it was but coming home to him just out and snoring like that, not doing a damn thing to try and change our lives, set off something inside of me. We were supposed to be trying to get out of here. He was supposed to be making sure that it would be safe for us to be doing that. But he wasn't doing anything.
"I work my ass off all day to keep a roof over our head and make sure that we have enough saved up to eat, I get him in daycare so you can do what you need to do, and what are you doing? Absolutely nothing." Words blurt out of my lips without thinking.
"Oh, come on April," he breathed out, running a hand over the back of his head. "It's not like that."
"Oh, it's not?" I questioned, whipping around to face him. "Because it sure looks like it."
"I've been at the clubhouse all morning. I just got back – what, half an hour ago? Wanted to lay down just for a few minutes before you got home from work so I'd be all in when you did get home." He attempted to justify himself.
"Must be nice to get to do that." I folded my arms in front of my ribcage. "Considering that I don't. So what were you doing at the clubhouse all morning that made you so exhausted? Did you finally make sure that we're going to be able to get out of this place without worry? Considering that was something that we talked about doing three months ago and here we are, still in the exact same place as before."
Jackson sighed loudly. "You know that I don't want to stay here."
"Do I?" My eyebrows shot up. "Because you didn't always feel that way. Maybe you just told me that you wanted to leave to appease me but you actually don't want to. This is your hometown. I get it. But this shouldn't be the place where you want to raise your son."
"And I don't!" His voice raised. "Why can't you just trust me about that, April? Why is it so hard for you to just trust me and believe that I'm doing what I say that I'm doing?"
"Because there's nothing here to make me believe you!" I shouted.
"What about me?" He placed his hand on chest. "You love me. And I love you. Why can't you just believe me because of that? What happened to that? Trust is supposed to be a part of love but it seems pretty clear that I'm the only one here with any."
"You think I don't want to?" I sighed, placing both hands on my face and rubbing it. "You think I wouldn't still be here if I didn't want to? Of course I do."
"Then what is it?" He questioned.
"I don't want to be here in anymore!" My hands flew out one exasperation before falling down by my sides. "He was a month old when we talked about getting out of here, and now he's four months old. Come on, Jackson. Nothing has changed. We keep talking about it but nothing has actually happened. How am I supposed to be happy with that? How am I supposed to be content with the fact that they might kill you at any moment? I thought I'd already made it clear that I don't want to lose you."
He fell quiet for a long moment, collapsing down onto the sofa and leaning forward to hold his head between his hands. "I don't know, April." He shook his head. "I don't know. I don't have a death wish but this shit is harder than I thought it was going to be."
No words come to mind and I stand there silently for what felt like an impossibly long moment, folding my arms in front of my ribcage again. I looked around the living room before my eyes rested Kieran. Despite all of the screaming that had gone back and forth between Jackson and me, he had slept right through it like nothing had happened. He was completely oblivious to the two of us fighting. Slowly, I set down on the arm of the couch.
"He slept right through that as if nothing happened," I observed quietly. "He sleeps through everything."
"Yeah, he does." Jackson reached over and took my hand, squeezing it firmly.
"I don't want to fight," I breathed out as I blinked back my tears.
"I don't want to either," he gave a shake of his head. "I promise that I'm going to do better. I'm going to work harder to make sure that we get out of here. I promise, baby."
Of course, hard work doesn't always pay off.
I thought that was a lesson that I had learned in college when I had struggled my way through the second semester of organic chemistry only to barely manage to get a B. It seemed like the universe was set to remind me of that again, when on Kieran's six month birthday, the two of us were still in Eureka and nothing had changed.
August sun streamed in through the open blinds in my bedroom, the sheets off our bed kicked off to try and fight back some of the more brutal summer heat. The fan was running noisily in the corner of the bedroom to try and make up for what the AC didn't handle. Despite the buzzing, the house still felt quiet. The moments before Kieran wailing always were. Sometimes he slept through the night, sometimes he didn't. Last night, fortunately, he had. But it just meant when he did wake up this morning, he would be even more demanding for attention.
Rolling over toward Jackson, I pressed a kiss into his shoulder. He stirred slightly, rolling from his back to his side and an arm slipping around my weight. I'm small against him again. It seemed like all the baby weight had finally disappeared even if my hips are still a little wider.
His fingers trailed up and down my side. "Mornin', Princess," he murmured.
"Good morning, Daddy." I smiled, eyes barely wider than slits as I looked at him. He stared back at me for a moment before rolling over fully, hovering over me.
"You don't have work today," Jackson commented before dropping down a kiss just below my earlobe. His mouth moved along my jaw before he began to place a few open-mouthed kisses on my neck and I tilted up my chin, a breathy sigh escaping as my back arched off the bed just a little.
"No, I don't," I replied.
"Seems like a good day for the two of us to just stay and bed and do nothing." His tongue lightly traced along the triangle around the hollow of my neck and I shuddered.
"Mmm…" I breathed out, hand finding the back of his head. "We have that thing with your mom. She wants to do a little celebration for Kieran, remember?"
"I'm thinking about eating you out and you're thinking about my mom." His words made me burst out with laughter.
Between giggles, I barely managed to speak. "Sorry, babe."
"Think we can manage a quickie in the shower before Kieran wakes up for the day?" Jackson pulled up just a little to look at me, both his brows raised up.
"It's worth trying."
Kieran wakes up about twenty minutes later when my hair was lathered up with shampoo, and Jackson gets out to take care of his morning routine. I would need all of the patience that I could get in order to get through half of a day with his mother. Hopefully, Catherine would be too occupied with the baby to worry much about Jackson or me. I was bringing my laptop with me and hoping that I could get a little work done.
Of course, Catherine didn't separate anything from the club in the way that I would have wanted her to. The little party that she wanted to throw for him wasn't at her house. It was at the clubhouse. The last place on Earth that I wanted my son to be.
It was perhaps the most PG party I had ever seen occurring in the clubhouse given that no one's privates were on display and there was no moaning, as far as I could hear. There was still beer and other forms of alcohol strewn about, but I figured that was something that never actually went away. At least, I had never been here and not seen it out. Kieran wasn't doing anymore more than bottles of breastmilk and occasional formula so it wasn't something that I had to worry about yet. But had he been ten? Twelve? I couldn't imagine the kind of stress that would have put on me. I knew that these guys weren't exactly worried about the twenty-one clause in the law.
"How long do we have to stay here?" I murmured to Jackson, looking up at him.
"At least an hour to keep her happy," he replied, kissing my forehead sweetly.
"I'm going to set up shop over there." I tilted my head toward the corner, putting a fat kiss on Kieran's cheeks before he could be handed over to his grandmother.
"You need anything to drink?" He asked.
"Not yet."
Watching as he moved toward his mother to hand off our son and hopefully keep her appeased for a little while longer, I settled into one of the back tables and pulled out my laptop. I had a few things for work that I needed to update, and I had been job hunting. It was unrealistic to expect to be the head of psychiatry at a big hospital anywhere – I had gotten that job here only because of the size of Eureka and a little bit of luck. I just wanted a position somewhere good. Getting rid of the administrative aspects of my job would be fine if it was away from here.
Without a location filter, there were dozens and dozens of job openings to look through. Seattle. Dallas. Denver. Tampa. Boston. It went on and on. I wanted somewhere that would have a real winter, though. I wanted that for hopefully his first winter. That eliminated at least options in the southern half of the country.
Hunched forward and keeping my head down, searching through job openings and real estate availability in the area does make me feel a little better. We would not be here forever.
"What are you working on?"
Just the person I didn't want to hear from. A smile was forced across my features as I straightened up and shut my laptop, resting both of my forearms on top of it. I could handle Catherine for a few minutes. Then maybe I could break into one of those beers.
"Just some work stuff." Hardly that. "Patient notes, mostly. Private stuff."
"You should be enjoying the party, dear," Catherine murmured. "I can tell you from experience these days go by too quickly. You best cling onto every moment you can instead of looking at that laptop of yours."
It was like she knew exactly what to say to get under my skin.
"Excuse me, I need to go to the bathroom." Anything to get away from her.
Nearly rushing to the bathroom to get away from her and leaving everything behind, all I do is stand in front of the mirror for a minute before washing my hands and smoothing out my hair. We'd been here a while. Hopefully, Jackson would say that it was fine to leave soon. For the meantime, I would take one of the beers laying around. I hadn't had a real drink since the night that I had met Jackson. Now didn't seem like a bad time for that to change.
Grabbing a beer, I surrounded myself with Owen and Deluca. The two of them chat with each other enough that I don't have to actually say or do anything other than sip and drink from my beer. Part of me wanted to listen. But Jackson and I had agreed, handling the club was his business.
Fortunately, we don't have to stay much longer. Kieran screams in the car ride home and I can't help but feel as if that was somehow Catherine's influence, just one more way of getting underneath my skin as if the entire ordeal and having to have Kieran in the clubhouse and surrounded by the rest of the MC wasn't enough. Sure, all of the guys were nice to him. Some of their comments were inappropriate but he was at an age where it didn't matter yet. I didn't have anything against any of them personally. It was just their whole business.
Another week passed, and Jackson swore to me that he was getting closer. If nothing else, when the trial came and the rest of the club was sentenced to time, we would be free.
Sitting at work by became difficult because I was no longer sure how much longer I would be here and working with these patients. Moving, as a psychiatrist, came with guilt. It meant referral after referral, trying to make sure that people continued to get the help that they need and weren't bogged down by the complications of the current healthcare system. But my family still came first.
"Hey, Dr. Kepner." One of the daycare workers, Erica, greeted me. "What are you doing down here?"
"Hi," I gave her a brief smile. "Just picking up Kieran, the usual. I know I'm a little early, my last appointment of the day canceled on me and Brooks is on the E.R." It was the first time I'd gotten to truly go home early in what felt like a long time. It was a nice change.
"Oh, that's great," Erica chirped. "But Kieran's not here."
My heart skipped a beat. "What?"
"Kieran's not here," she repeated himself. "I assumed you knew. His grandmother picked him up about an hour ago. She had the consent form signed with your signature on it."
Shit. How had she gotten that?
"O–oh, yeah. Yeah, of course… it must have just slipped my mind." There was no reason to alarm her or anyone else at the hospital. The only person who needed to be alarmed about it was Jackson. "Thanks, Erica. I'll see you tomorrow." Turning quickly on my heel, I nearly broke out in a sprint to get to my car.
Clicking on Jackson's name on my phone quickly, my car engine doesn't appreciate the speed in which I backed out of my parking lot and quickly turned onto the main road. The line rang a moment before he answered it.
"Hey, Princess," he started. "What's going on?"
"Are you with your mom right now?" I questioned quickly. "Is Kieran with you?"
"No and no," he answered. "Why? What's going on?"
"I went to pick up Kieran from daycare today and he was gone. The lady said that Catherine had picked him up. She must have forged my signature on the consent form with the hospital because I did not sign off on her having the right to pick him up from daycare. I don't know how. I don't know where she is." Words spilled out of my lips quickly and my heart tightened, accelerating through a yellow light as I headed to her house.
"Shit," Jackson swore. "Okay. I'll call her and Dick, try to see what's going on. I'm gonna check the clubhouse to see if she's there. Where are you right now?"
"Driving to her house."
"Okay. Call me the minute that you know anything." The line went dead.
My phone only stayed quiet for a moment before it began ringing again, this time, calling Catherine. It rings a few times before it goes to voicemail. I hang up and try again, only for the exact same result.
"God dammit!" I threw the phone into the passenger seat. It takes a few more minutes before I finally get to Catherine and Dick's house. There's no bike in the driveway but the garage door was down. If she wasn't here and she wasn't at the clubhouse, I didn't know what the hell I was going to do next. Call the police? That would have been the logical next step but with the MC, I wasn't sure how any of it would work. They had strings in the police department. That meant Catherine had strings with the police department. We couldn't trust anyone else.
Running up to the door, my fist pounded against the front door. Impatiently, I ring the doorbell before I shout a few times to let her know that it was me there. It doesn't matter. There's no answer.
Jogging back to my car, I lean over to grab my phone and dial Catherine's number one more time. It's no luckier than it had been the first two times. I try Jackson's number again and it rings a couple of times before he answered his phone.
"Hey, got him?" He asked.
"No," I sobbed out. "I'm at her house and they're not here."
"They're not at the clubhouse either. Dick is, but he hasn't seen or heard from her in the past few hours," he spoke quickly. "None of the other guys have seen either one of them here."
"Fuck!" This couldn't be happening. "Okay, I'm going to head home and see if she took him there for some reason."
"Let me know." Hanging up the phone and sticking it in the cupholder, I pulled a U-turn in the middle of the street to turn around.
Our house wasn't that close to hers but driving fast enough could compensate for the miles between. Of course, there was no possible speed on other than directly teleporting to my house that would ease the pounding in my heart. I could feel my chest nearly shaking with each quick beat. If she wasn't here, then she could have been anywhere with our son.
Some relief finally comes.
Her Cadillac was parked on the street outside of my house as if today was a completely normal day for her, as if she didn't have a damn conscious. I park crookedly in the driveway and nearly barge into my own house like it was someone else's. They weren't in immediate view but I can hear Kieran laughing in the living room and it's just enough to make my heart slow down for a second. He sounded happy. Not hurt, just happy.
"Kieran!" I cried out.
My son was sitting on his grandmother's lap as if everything was completely normal, his head turned toward me to respond to his name when I walked into the living room. Catherine sat there smugly.
Doubling over at the waist as the panic hit me hard once more before beginning to subside, both hands were pressed onto the top of my thighs as I tried to remember how to breathe. In and out, in and out. It doesn't bring down my heart rate like I would hope it does, but it's enough to keep me from outright screaming and tearing her apart while she was holding onto my son. Losing my temper in front of him was a line that I didn't want to cross, no matter what buttons of mine she managed to push.
"You picked him up from daycare?" My voice does crack when I finally straighten up. "Without telling me? And you forged my signature to be able to do it? What were you thinking, Catherine?"
"He's my grandson, I have a right to be able to pick him up from daycare." She countered.
"No, obviously you don't, given that you had to forge my signature to be able to do so!" I shook my head. "I–I need to tell Jackson that you're both here so he doesn't tear apart the rest of the town because of this stunt that you decided to pull." Fumbling with my phone, I send him a quick text to tell him they were both at our house, safe and sound.
Catherine stood up, still holding on to Kieran."I think it's about time the two of us have an honest discussion, April. Not just about my grandson but about my son, too."
"What are you talking about?" I wanted nothing more than to step forward and rip him out of her arms.
"I know what the two of you are doing." She looked at Kieran as she spoke. "I know that Jackson is the one who turned and ratted on the club. And I'm sure that he did it because of you and those little journals from his father that Dick found in your nursery when we came over to give you the chair. You're lucky I threw off his suspicions for that. But you see, honey, that's not the only thing that I know. I know the two of you are trying to run away from Eureka and the club. And I think it's about time the two of you pull your heads out of your asses and realize that's not going to happen."
Even if I had already known she knew, hearing her say it chilled my blood.
"What do you want, Catherine?" I didn't know how she knew that the two of us were meeting. But if she had done all of this to get my attention, it was clear that she had some kind of end goal in mind.
"You, Jackson, and Kieran are all going to be staying in Eureka. You're not taking my son or grandson away from me. Isn't that right, sweetie?" Her voice rose as she spoke to Kieran before she turned to look at me. "If you try and leave Eureka, then I'm going to make sure that the entire club knows that both you and Jackson are responsible for that ATF ad the possible time behind bars that they might be facing. And they're not going to like that. I know you haven't been around long, but I'm sure you know that."
"You would be responsible for killing your own son?" My jaw was slack for a moment as I glared at her. How could she claim to care about him and threaten to kill him in the same breath?
"Oh, sweetheart," she chuckled and shook her head. "There's nothing I wouldn't do to get what I want. You're the problem more than he is. And it certainly wouldn't be the first time someone close to me had to be taken care of to get what I want."
Jackson's father. That was as good as a straightforward confession.
"Give me my son." My voice came out firmer than I expected it to be, a mama bear rearing up. "Give him to me now."
Stepping forward, Catherine passed Kieran over to me. But she didn't step away immediately as I wrapped my arms around my son and hold him close to me. "I mean what I say, April. You should know that. You are not going to step in between me and my family."
I could taste bile in my mouth as I shut my eyes for a moment, breathing in through my nose and pressing my lips on top of Kieran's head. He was fine. His grandmother was a complete psychopath, but my baby boy was fine despite that. I turned to watch Catherine as she walked past me toward the front door of the house.
"Catherine?" I spoke and she paused to turn toward me.
"What?"
"If you ever do something like this to Kieran, I will kill you. I will. I don't care who you are. Come between me and him again, and it'll be the last thing that you do." And I meant every word of it.
The front door slammed shut behind her and I nearly collapsed as I fell back onto the couch and held him tight against my front. Tears all from my face freely and I sobbed as I held onto him, rocking him back and forth. He gave a little protest as I held onto him a little too tightly and I let out a deep breath, loosening my grip on him. But I keep him on my lap, rubbing my hand up and down along his back. I couldn't even begin to wrap my head around what Catherine had done. But I would choke the life out of her if she did it again.
The signature smell of a stinky diaper is the only thing that gets me off the couch again, taking him back to his nursery and getting him changed into a new one. By the time that he was cleaned up and down for a nap, I can hear the front door open again. But I don't move from the nursery, sitting in the rocking chair and watching him.
Holding onto one of the stuffed elephants decorating the nursery, I can't even bring myself to look away when I catch Jackson in my peripherals as he entered the nursery. Taking my eyes off of Kieran felt like a crime.
"Is he okay?" Jackson asked.
"Yeah," I nodded. "I don't even think he realizes that something weird happened today. He's completely fine. Once he was in a clean diaper, he went down quickly."
"Good," he ran his hand over his face, stepping up to the crib and bending down. One hand reached down and gently rubbed Kieran's stomach. "Good. I'm glad that he's alright." I had to imagine this had scared the crap out of him the same way that it had me. "What about you? How are you?"
"I'm scared, Jackson," I admitted uneasily, looking up. "She… she threatened me. Us. Somehow she knows that we want to move. She said that if we did, she was going to expose you as a rat to the club and get you killed. Me too, probably."
"Shit!" He swore, his voice raising and pulling back from the crib sharply. "Un-fucking-believable."
"That's not the only thing, either." I sighed.
His brow furrowed as he looked at me. "What is it?"
"She killed your dad, Jackson. She basically told me."
"What?"
Unable to repeat myself, all I could muster up was a slight nod of my head. I didn't know all of the details behind how he had died other than it had been some kind of accident. Jackson had never told me about all of the other details with what had happened. But apparently, that didn't matter. What mattered was the fact that she had been the one to initiate whatever happened.
"April, what exactly did she say to you?" Jackson questioned, squatting down in front of me in the rocking chair. "Word for word. Tell me what she said to you."
"She was threatening me. And she said that it wouldn't be the first time someone close to her had to be taken care of to get what she wanted. How else do you interpret that? I mean, does she have a laundry list of people around her who have died in less than crystal clear ways?"
"Shit." His head dropped down, a hand covering his face.
"I'm so sorry, Jackson. I'm sure that this is the last thing that you want to hear on top of all of the other crap today." I leaned forward, placing my hand on his shoulder and giving it a squeeze. The material of his giant sweatshirt balled up in my hand. "But you deserve to know the truth."
"I could kill her," Jackson said, shaking his head.
There was silence between us for a few long seconds and I could feel tears burning in my eyes again. I looked up at the lights in the ceiling, blinking a few times to try and keep them from spilling over. I had to keep my head on tight for both of us. Even if there was no way for me to figure out the next steps right now, there had to be something. Some way that we could get out of here without Catherine interfering with our business and without the club finding out Jackson had ratted on him. The case was taking so long to actually get into the trial phase – the club's lawyer was intentionally getting it pushed back again and again.
"What are we going to do?" My voice broke as the question came out, a hand coming up to cover my mouth. "How are we going to get through this? And deal with her at the same time?"
"We've got to get her out of the picture." He answered without looking up at me.
"You don't mean kill her, do you?"
"No," he shook his head. "She's… she's still my mother and I don't think that I could do that. But there's got to be another way to get her out of the picture. Maybe we can get the case around my father's death opened up again. I don't know how but maybe Agent Pierce will know some way to get handled." He suggested.
"Calling her would be a good idea," I agreed with a nod of my head. "Maybe we can see if there's going to be any kind of progress with getting the trial, too. See if it'll occur soon."
A heavy sigh escaped and Jackson stood up. "I'm going to give her a call. Right now. There's no way that I'm going to take any chances. Not with her threatening you." He shook his head. "It's not too late in the day. She's probably still working anyway."
"A good idea," I agreed as I stood up.
Following him back out into the living room, he dialed Agent Pierce's number. I don't feel the need to hear both sides of the story. Even if Agent Pierce mostly spoke with him and I hadn't seen a lot of her in the last few months, I mostly trusted that she would do the right thing. I didn't think that she was loyal to Jackson in any way, but she seemed to be loyal to the law and upholding it in whatever was the most appropriate way. Seeking justice for someone's death and making sure the right person was behind bars should have been right up her alley.
But I watch Jackson as he speaks to her and listens to whatever it was that she was saying. And when his face fell, I see it immediately. Leaning forward, I snap to get his attention and mouth to him.
Put it on speaker.
Jackson nodded in agreement and put the phone on speaker, setting it down on the coffee table as Maggie's voice filled out living room. She was talking about the trial.
"Hold on," Jackson interrupted. "April's listening now. Can you repeat what you just told me?"
"I talked to the district attorney today. Tomorrow, the case against the MC and all of the members is going to be dropped. It's not going to trial. It's being thrown out due to something the other side's lawyer managed to dig up."
"What?" I asked, eyes widening as I looked at Jackson.
"Meredith presented that the warrant for the search and seizure at the clubhouse was unreasonable due to who proposed it. Because of me," Maggie paused and sighed. "She went looking into my family tree. I'm not sure how she managed to find all of it, but… I was adopted when I was a few days old. I've always known that. But she found my original birth certificate where I was born. Richard Webber is my biological father. They won't go forward with the case because of my connection to him."
Neither one of us knew what to say, unable to find any kind of response. It was her fault. The case was being dropped and it was her fault – even if it was circumstances that none of us would have been able to control.
"We've got to go." Jackson broke the silence after a few seconds and hung up the phone.
"Now what?" I collapsed back against the chair that I was sitting in.
"I have no idea."