The Fallen
Autore
Cristal Sieberhagen
Letto da
292K
Capitoli
64
The Desert
LIZ
Pain shafted through Liz’s brain, and she groaned as she slowly rolled on her side. What the heck? she wondered as grainy, hot sand shifted beneath her and stuck to her bare skin.
She sat upright and pried open her lids for a second or two but couldn’t focus. Her eyes were still too sensitive to the light. She struggled to lift her head. Nausea roiled in her stomach, and the bitter taste of bile was strong in her dry mouth.
I have not been this hungover since the night I graduated from the police academy and fell prey to my half-sister’s evil influence. Riva was four years older and her best friend.
Her entire body ached. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and the early morning sun beat relentlessly down on her.
I must have been really drunk, she realized. I have no idea where I am, and I’m only wearing panties and a bra. Am I at the beach? How did I get there, and isn’t it supposed to be Fall in Boston? Something isn’t right. If only I could think past the throbbing in my head.
She sat fully upright. The world took a slow spin, and she almost keeled over but overpowered her weakness. I must open my eyes to see where I am—I might be in danger.
It took several tries before her blurry vision settled into cohesion, and adrenaline kicked through her system, rapidly dispelling her symptoms.
Horror slammed through her as healed tattoos on her left upper arm and below her navel brought reality crashing in.
I don’t have to see the rest of my body to know I also have a tattoo on my back, just above my buttocks. I’ve seen these markings on grainy surveillance photos of the Rayburn Cartel Members, and these are not just any markings—they belong to the wives of the Rayburn men.
Only two of Christopher Rayburn’s sons are unmarried—sixteen-year-old Lucas and thirty-year-old Caleb.
It wouldn’t take brain surgery to figure out which one did this to me.
Liz turned her arm to take in the tattoo fully, and her stomach twisted when she recognized the runic C overlaid with a stylized R. This is Caleb’s insignia.
Her mind provided her with cold, hard facts gleaned from hours of staring at their files to keep her from panicking.
After the father, Christopher, retired in 2018, Caleb became the patriarch of the Rayburn family—the international man of business whose law degrees, savvy, and connections kept him ten steps ahead of law enforcement agencies.
People warned me when I took on this case, but my involvement with the Rayburn family was inevitable.
Christopher Rayburn is the man Mother, my sister, and I have been hiding from for twenty-two years.
He is the reason my father died in prison, a broken man who turned out to be a stranger who not even his wife truly knew.
The first day I started investigating the Rayburns, I received a bouquet of roses, and the card simply read: Leave the Rayburns alone, or you’ll regret it, daughter of Elijah.
No one at the precinct realized I was Elijah McGrath’s daughter. To them, I was just Liz Howard from Edenvale.
The card shook her to her core, and she shredded it before dumping the flowers in an outside trash can. She had hated lying to her curious colleagues, shrugging it off as a “thank you” from a former colleague.
Then again, I should have been used to lying to them. I am not Elizabeth Howard, and my parents do not live in Edenvale. Mother is not a teacher, and Father was never a military man. Mother lives in Glenwood with my sister. She used to be a Harvard law professor but is currently an accountant working from home.
The wind whipped a strand of hair across her face. It was not the shade of blonde she had dyed it for the last four years.
Instead, it nearly perfectly matched the dark brown of her natural color, and the usual irritation of the colored contacts, which made her eyes seem grayish-blue, was absent.
Without them, her eyes were the same intense azure as those of her mother and sister.
She spotted a black rucksack lying close to her and scrambled over the sand, hoping it contained clothes. She glanced up and froze with her hand on the leather bag.
This isn’t a beach, but the desert.
The far-off drone of a car caught her attention, and shielding her eyes against the sun, Liz made out a road in the distance.
She dumped the bag’s contents on the sand and gratefully recognized sunscreen. After wiping the sand off with a small towel, Liz quickly rubbed the expensive moisturizing sunscreen over her sensitive skin.
She yanked a tight black T-shirt over her head, hastily pulling on the designer leather pants and leather boots. This is typical Rayburn attire. They even provided sunglasses, aspirin, and water. How bloody thoughtful of them. Why am I not dead? What is the meaning of all this?
She took a few careful sips before inspecting the bag’s contents. The care and thought someone took to provide these things made her frown.
She discovered a wallet with 500 dollars, a driver’s license for Elizabeth McGrath Rayburn with her correct date of birth and ID number tucked inside, and a photo of her mother and sister sitting on their porch in Glenwood.
The wallet and photo are a threat—they’d discovered who I am and where my family lives.
There is only one way they could have learned that. They own someone in witness protection or higher up. Does this mean they had always known where the McGrath family was and could have reached out to end us all if they were so inclined?
Her frown deepened. Why hadn’t they? What stopped them?
“Damn it,” she groaned, another stabbing pain shooting through her brain.
She zipped open a pouch and stared at the rolls of cash. Her stomach churned. That is about 100,000 dollars. She put it down as if the money burned her.
A small envelope with her name in the elegant hand of Muriel Rayburn, Caleb’s mother, drew her attention.
I’ve seen this refined old-fashioned penmanship on the handwritten invitations the fifty-two-year-old social dynamo sends to her family and friends before each social event.
Born Clarke, Muriel Rayburn is a wealthy heiress and one of Boston’s elite. Her birthright gave Christopher Rayburn the legitimacy of running his cartel under the guise of a “legal” business empire.
Liz carefully pulled free the embossed off-white card.
Welcome to the family. Caleb made a wise choice. It is time Elijah’s daughter found her proper place in our world. This ring belonged to my grandmother, and I suggest you wear it as a show of good faith. Muriel.
Liz fingered the old-fashioned, filigreed ring with its sizable, tear-shaped blue-white diamond surrounded by tiny sapphires.
Muriel had attached the ring to the card inside a small envelope, and Liz wanted to cast it into the desert.That would be a very foolish move. She slipped it onto her ring finger with distaste, opening the black binder with a sense of foreboding. Her world crashed to a standstill as she realized that threatening her family had been unnecessary. Caleb Rayburn has killed off Elizabeth Howard.
The memories arrived in flashes as she stared at those images.
The first grainy telephoto picture showed her taking the lead on her final Rayburn warehouse raid.
I entered the building but realized too late that the two officers with me had not followed me inside. I had turned my head just in time to see the door swing shut.
Her earpiece had buzzed with static, then stopped as the world exploded into white light. Her ears had rung like bells in a church tower as she lay on the ground staring up at the roof.
A shadow had fallen over me, and before I could gather my wits to move, the sting of a needle into my upper arm had turned the world dark.
