Proof (Targes Executive Protection Book 1)

It didn’t feel as good as I expected it would.

Throwing Cass off his game had been meant to give me a sense of being on equal footing with him, especially after the humiliation he’d put me through when he’d questioned me about my need to return to Tank’s night after night. His words had been softly spoken but they’d carried a big punch.

His time in prison had nothing to do with the ridiculous task that would supposedly buy my freedom from wherever the hell we were and land him back behind bars. I didn’t believe the stuff he’d told me about Sully or the bullshit that the wall safe code was a number I would know. The crap he’d said about turning himself in and confessing was nonsense too, but if I could find concrete proof of his crimes, I’d make sure his ass went back to prison and he’d stay there.

Cass had, unfortunately, left me with one question running on a loop in my head. A question I had absolutely no answer to. Why had I put so much trust in him despite the fact that I hadn’t seen the man since the last time he’d returned to LA to celebrate some holiday with me and Sully? I didn’t even know when that had been.

I wanted to take back my question about his prison time the second I saw Cass’s reaction to it. He tensed up and glanced at the open door every few seconds. The door that I now realized had nothing to do with me escaping and everything to do with his fear of confinement. I felt like an ass for the way I’d asked the question, too. I’d deliberately made it sound like I was looking forward to his response; like I enjoyed knowing what two years behind bars had done to him.

Backing down wasn’t an option, so I couldn’t take the question back or rephrase it. If he saw even a chink in my armor, he’d use it to his advantage.

He’d already proven that he knew how to do it.

“You were at ADX, the supermax in Colorado, right? If I’m not mistaken, that’s a federal prison that houses the worst of the worst.”

Cass’s expression hardened into an unreadable one. I wasn’t surprised given the man had been a Marine. He’d been trained to withstand any form of torture rather than give up information if he fell into enemy hands.

“Yes,” Cass responded without emotion. The fact that he couldn’t stop checking the door belied any effort he was making to prove he was unaffected by my words.

Unfortunately, his uncontrollable need to keep checking the door meant he’d told the truth about being claustrophobic. I couldn’t let that one truth outweigh all the lies, though.

I wouldn’t.

“So how was it?” I asked.

“I never went to camp when I was a kid, but I think it’s safe to say it was just like that. Extended overnight camp for murderers, rapists, and all sorts of men who preferred their victims young. Really young.”

His brittle response left me with goose bumps.

Bad goose bumps.

This was the Cass who’d killed three people and left me for dead.

“So you were a bit homesick at the beginning but then made friends that would later become buddies for life?” I asked, letting my voice hang on the last word.

“I think this is where I’m supposed to object and say you’re leading the witness,” he responded.

I nodded. “I should be more specific, I guess. Sorry, I’ll get the hang of this,” I quipped. “So, tell me, Mr. Ashby, what did your days consist of at your new sleepaway camp?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin when Cass suddenly shifted in his seat. He settled his arms on the table and leaned in, pinning me with hard, unforgiving eyes.

“When I arrived or when I left?” he asked.

“Both.” The tap dancing was starting to annoy me but only because I really wanted to know. The idea of the Cass I’d known when I was a kid spending his life in a prison cell that had probably been half the size of my bedroom made me sick to my stomach. The Cass I’d known these past few weeks… well, fuck, I didn’t know how I felt about that.

“When I arrived, I got to have more time outside. To make friends, I guess you could say. I made lots of them. I mean, I did kill a federal agent, a snitch, and some little kid who’d basically been just taking up space. And the cop who survived… well, they wanted to give me the title of camp king for that one. But you know what they say about people lifting you up so they can knock you back down just so they can watch the fall.” Cass shrugged. “It was a short honeymoon. Let’s put it that way.”

The man across from me paused for dramatic flair. Despite his sarcasm, I knew his words rang true. Cop killers always had a huge following in prison.

“When I didn’t want to play with the other kids’ toys or pick which baseball team I wanted to be captain of, my new buddies decided if I wasn’t going to play then I wasn’t going to play.”

“What does that mean?”

“Didn’t your precious news clips tell you about any of that, JJ?” Cass asked. The muscles in his face hadn’t relaxed for even a second. “Well, after I decided I liked keeping to myself, the other boys figured I needed to be taken down a few notches. The camp counselors didn’t like how many boys I kept sending to the nurse’s office after they tried to poke me with small but very sharp objects, so they decided I should have some quiet time by myself. Don’t get me wrong, it was nice to have some privacy, but getting a full sixty minutes every day to breathe fresh air or feel the sun on my face got really old really fast. My accommodations were quiet, food and water were served through a slot in my door at regular intervals, and there were no pesky clocks, so I never had to worry what time it was. No phone calls to deal with, no annoying visitors to disrupt my peace and quiet, and nothing more than a few books, a pad of paper, and some dull pieces of charcoal sticks to entertain me kept my schedule pretty wide open.”

“You were in solitary,” I murmured. In my early days as a cop, I’d been hungry for knowledge of every aspect of my job, so I’d read whatever articles and studies I could get my hands on. A study on what solitary confinement did to the average person in just a matter of days had been so disturbing that, to this day, I couldn’t get the mental images out of my brain. All sense of time and place were taken away. Little to no human contact, no natural light other than the single hour in the heavily guarded yard that reminded the confined person of what they were missing out on the rest of the twenty-three hours of the day. Many of the already unbalanced prisoners went completely insane when kept in solitary for too long.

The punishment had been designed to torture prisoners in the cruelest way possible so that when they returned to the general population, they’d behave themselves just to avoid the hell of solitary again.

“You know the best part about solitary,” Cass said with an ugly grin. “The rooms are designed so that there’s no pointy object in sight. No sharp edges on the bed frame, no place to put a noose, not enough material to make a noose⁠—”

“Enough,” I snapped. I felt sick to my stomach at the thought of Cass in a place like that. That he’d even contemplated taking his own life made me want to throw up.

I wasn’t supposed to feel sick, though. I was supposed to feel relief that justice had been done.

“The really best part is the knowledge that at any moment you could run out of air or that they’d forget about you, and you’d starve to death. And, of course, knowing no one would hear your screams was always a comfort. If they didn’t hear your demands and pleas to be let out of that dark, empty, lifeless hole then they weren’t close enough to disturb your peace and⁠—”

“I said enough!”

“Don’t waste your breath with the next obvious question, Counselor, because I can’t answer it. I have no fucking clue how long I was in there for. No clock, remember? I can tell you the room was home until a guard showed up one day and told me I was being transferred back to LA to spend some time behind bars there. Solitary was called protective custody out here. Still, there was no place like home,” Cass drawled.

Even if he’d wanted me to believe he’d managed to come out the other side of solitary with his mind completely intact, his body couldn’t play along. He was sweating and his skin had paled considerably. His fingers were twitching but he didn’t seem to be aware of it. Not to mention the door. Whether he knew it or not, he kept looking at it.

I remembered the moment in his motel room when he’d gone to the door and opened it for no apparent reason before closing it again.

God, the room had been so dark and closed off. Cass had done that for me, for my comfort. He’d left himself with no fresh air to breathe and only a sliver of light to confirm whether it was light or dark outside, despite the presence of a clock in the room. He’d only opened that door to make sure it hadn’t somehow gotten locked from the outside.

The lack of doors in the upstairs bedroom made sense now. Tears stung the backs of my eyes as I began to truly understand the extent of the damage that had been done to him by the same system I’d worked for. How many men and women had I put behind bars who’d ended up like Cass? Locked away, alone and forgotten. Serving their time behind bars was one thing, but being put in a room with nothing and no one… no ability to know if it was day or night, no idea of how many days had passed and how many were yet to come. I believed in guilty people serving their sentence, but not like that. Not in a way that slowly drove them insane.

The kitchen became deathly silent as we sat there. A cool breeze blew through the open door, but I didn’t dare protest about it being open. My discomfort was a pebble in a pond compared to the relief that door offered Cass.

“Next question, Counselor,” Cass demanded. I could tell he was trying to escape the memories of solitary confinement. I wanted to escape the same thing.

I took a couple of subtle deep breaths so I could focus.

“Have you been home since you were released?” I asked. “I don’t remember reading about any of your family members being at your appeals hearing.”

Cass chuckled. It was still ugly and unnatural, and I still hated it.

“Let’s just say the Ashby red carpet hasn’t been laid out for me yet.”

“They won’t let you come home?” I asked. I wanted real answers, and yet the man kept using sarcasm and twisted humor whenever he responded. “And no more beating around the bush, Cass. I want the truth. You didn’t have any problem exposing things about me that I didn’t want anyone else to know about.”

Cass pulled in a deep breath and released it. “Fine,” he said crisply. “I have no idea if they want to see me or not. My father is either too busy cheating on his latest trophy wife or snorting some kind of designer drug up his nose and drowning himself in alcohol to notice me or care. I can honestly say the feeling is mutual. I don’t even know what Chandler Ashby III looks like anymore.”

“Did you ever visit them when you were on leave from the military?”

“This is relevant how, Couns⁠—”

“Just answer the question, Cass,” I said. It wasn’t relevant to the case, but he’d made sure to expose my personal secrets in great detail. I had the right to do the same.

“I only saw my grandmother those few times I came home,” Cass responded. His tone was lighter now. It felt like we were having an actual conversation instead of an interrogation.

“You were always close to her, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” I asked.

Cass had never been much of a talker when it came to his family, even as a teenager. He had, however, mentioned his grandmother more than once. Sully had always believed that Cass had turned down our father’s offer for him to live with us full time because of his grandmother. While I didn’t know everything about the prominent Ashby family, I did know they were like a pack of jackals—always fighting each other over whatever scraps were left behind.

Cass had always tried to shield his gentle and kindhearted grandmother from the rest of the family. While he didn’t have any full-blooded siblings, he had a much younger half brother and had also had a half sister who’d only been a few years younger than Cass when she’d taken her own life. Beyond that, there were a slew of stepmothers, step siblings, and a shit ton of uncles, cousins, and whatever other vermin left their dens long enough to get their cut of the Ashby money before they slunk back to their holes.

“My mother died young. Leukemia. Radiation and chemotherapy were her only chance of survival. The first round didn’t take. She was given several weeks of rest before round two was set to start. One of the first things the doctors do before they start treatment is to run a pregnancy test. Doesn’t matter what the patient tells them,” Cass said quietly.

“She didn’t know she was pregnant,” I murmured.

“Six weeks along. My father had decided sex with his once pretty, young wife was more important than letting her body recover from the first round of chemo and radiation. Didn’t matter that she was bald. Didn’t matter that she could barely stand or that she couldn’t do something as simple as feeding herself. The fucker took pleasure in hurting her when she was at her lowest. He humiliated her, degraded her, and stuck his dick into as many other women as he could because his sickly wife couldn’t satisfy his needs.” Cass paused for a few beats.

I already knew his mother had passed away before he’d been old enough to remember her, but like everything Ashby, the ugly truth had been carefully kept locked away with all the other family secrets. The Ashbys were akin to royalty in California and across the country. The first Ashby had hit it big in the California gold rush and from there, the Ashby patriarchs had continued to grow their wealth and connections, both business and political.

Until Cass’s father had come along. He hadn’t lived by the same set of rules that his male ancestors had. There’d been rumors that he’d set his eye on a path that would ultimately lead to the White House, but for whatever reason the man hadn’t even tried to run for any kind of political position.

“Your mother chose to have you instead of continuing the treatment,” I offered.

Cass nodded and then fell silent for a while. It was all I could do not to reach across the table and offer my hand so that he’d have something, someone to cling to while he relived the past.

Another ugly chuckle fell from his lips as he shook his head slowly back and forth. His eyes were down but I doubted he was really seeing anything. “The doctors told her that they were certain they could get her into remission if they continued the treatments. Even if she hadn’t been able to live a long life, she could have had years left. Instead, she chose to have the baby who’d been fathered by a piece-of-shit man who hadn’t deserved her. She could have divorced him and moved on with her life. Started a new family with someone she loved and who loved her back.”

“She did have a family, Cass. Someone she loved and who loved her back,” I said pointedly as I kept my eyes on him.

Cass’s mental withdrawal was like watching the ocean tide being pulled back out to sea.

“Yeah,” he said unevenly. “Um, listen, can we pick this up tomorrow? It’s been a long day.”

Cass didn’t give me a chance to respond. He was up and moving toward the open door. I assumed he was going to close it but instead, he walked through it and put his hand on the knob so he could close it behind him. He paused long enough to say, “I’m just going to check the perimeter. If you want to lock the door, go for it, but I’ve got a key for the front door. I suppose you can try barring the doors⁠—”

“Go, Cass,” I said quietly. I didn’t like how much it hurt to see him like this. Waffling back and forth between using sarcasm to pretend he was unaffected from our talk and exposing slivers of pain that he probably hadn’t wanted me to see.

Cass left the kitchen, closing the door behind him. It was nearly dark out, so the fact that he seemed comfortable walking around in the dark meant he likely knew the area well. The cabin, as rustic as it was, probably belonged to his family. Unfortunately, none of that information would do me any good since I had no way of reaching someone from the outside world.

Hell, who would I even reach?

If what Cass was saying about Sully being involved in all this turned out to be true, then my big brother wouldn’t take action because he never acted without thinking. He’d been like that my entire life. Cool, calm, unfazed… always armed with a plan and the determination to follow that plan to the letter.

I sighed as I looked at all the file folders in front of me. It would take countless hours to sift through them all. Part of me was eager to get started so I could finally know what had happened the night of my shooting.

In detail.

I climbed to my feet and headed for the refrigerator. It hit me as I was reaching to open the fridge that I was excited to go through all those files so I could find out what had happened, not because I was determined to prove Cass had hurt me and killed all those people. No, I wanted the truth, whatever it might be.

God, when had I started to see Cass as a suspect and not the convicted killer he was? Why the hell was I thinking about what kind of food was in the cabin and not trying to find a way to escape or, at least, defend myself? Why did I feel… comfortable?

I glanced over my shoulder at the files.

I felt comfortable because I was. If Cass had wanted me dead, he could have taken my life several times over since he’d been released. He’d saved my life instead. Letting Jenna’s stalker shoot me would have been the perfect way to get me out of the picture and still keep his nose clean because it would have been impossible to pin my death on him.

My thoughts shifted to the previous night’s events. I had gotten my feelings hurt by Cass’s rejection after he’d kissed me in his motel room. I’d been desperate to escape the shame and humiliation, but instead of dealing with it, I’d gone running to Tank’s. The first thing I’d done after reaching Tank’s had been to start downing cheap scotch as fast as I could so I’d be able to withstand what I knew was going to happen to me… what I was going to allow to happen.

Cass had stepped in there too. He’d had absolutely no reason to intervene in that alley. Yes, I’d taken his car, but Tank had taken the keys, so Cass would have easily been able to get them back if that was all he’d wanted.

He hadn’t been there for his car.

He’d been there for me.

Why?

His question about trust had stumped me. Why was I blaming him for stealing my ability to trust anyone? Sully had been his best friend. If anything, my brother should have been the one who didn’t trust Cass, and yet here I was.

Sully had always been overprotective of me, even after I’d graduated from the police academy. Even if Cass was lying about him being a party to my “kidnapping,” Sully would have been breaking down doors all over Southern California to find me after I’d gone missing from Jenna’s forty-eight hours earlier. My brother had resources everywhere. He had highly trained men working for him. He knew people who could break into computers as easily as someone picking the lock on a door.

Sully would have found me before Cass had even had the chance to take me from Tank’s and disappear with me.

“Fuck,” I breathed as my head started to pound. The pain behind my right eye began to build upon itself until I had no choice but to let my back slide down the front of the fridge until I was sitting on the floor. I squeezed my eyes shut in the hopes of cutting the pain off at the onset, but it was too late.

What if Cass had been right? What if my inability to remember the night of the shooting did have to do with the mental trauma? The pain did always seem to occur most often when I was dealing with some kind of stressor.

I couldn’t give my own question much thought because I began to feel sick to my stomach as the pain increased. I held perfectly still in the hopes I could at least slow the pain and nausea long enough to get upstairs so I could lie down, but it was no use.

I wasn’t going anywhere for a while, and with the way things had been going with Cass, I doubted he’d come to my rescue ever again.

“Good going, JJ,” I whispered to myself just before the darkness swallowed me whole.