“What others?” Michael asked.
“I really think that we should go inside the cave to finish having this conversation,” she said with slightly more urgency in her tone now than there was initially. “For many reasons.”
Michael looked around over his shoulder as if he was expecting someone to be there. He seemed to agree with her assessment that getting out of the open was a good idea, so we all followed this woman inside her hideout cave. So far, we only knew two things about her—her name was Stacy, and for some reason, Rob thought she was important enough to hide.
She was right about the inside of the cave though. It was shelter from the snapping wind, which already made it feel a few degrees warmer. Inside the cavern, she had a complete setup with a much larger tent than ours and even a small fire going in the corner of the cave. It was warm in the tent and she looked as though she had enough commodities to outlast us for days.
“How long have you been up here?” Adam asked as he looked around at all of her stuff.
His jaw dropped slightly in amazement at the set-up that Stacy had.
“It’s not important,” she said. “I don’t know how much time we have, so we should use it for me filling you in on everything.”
I had a feeling that “everything” was a term that was being used very loosely in this case. Stacy pulled some boxes from the corner of the tent over to us as we all sat around waiting for her to reveal what we hadn’t even known we were looking for. Sure enough, the boxes were a treasure trove of clues. Actually, they were a treasure trove of evidence.
“This is all of the evidence that I stole from the precinct before I left. The other cops were on to me, which is why I had to leave and why Rob helped me get out. They would have killed me once they knew that I had all of this.”
“Who would have killed you?” Michael asked as he reached to look at some of the things in the box.
“The other cops in Charlotte. Once I found out what was going on, I took as much of it as I could because I knew it wouldn’t be long before they came for me and destroyed all the evidence. That’s when I reached out to Rob—when I knew that I was in trouble. Rob and I had been partners for years and I knew what kind of guy he was. I knew that he would help me, and he did. He went back to cover up for my disappearance and hid me out here so that I could get the info to the rest of you.”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “Is that why Rob is at this precinct now? He’s covering up for your disappearance?”
“Yeah,” she said as she nodded her head. “And trying to throw the other cops off the scent. But trust me when I say that he’s facing an impossible task. All of the precincts are in on it, not just Charlotte. There’s an entire web of money-infused, murderous intent that is fueling a massive drug operation all the way up the east coast that all of the cops and precincts are a part of. Just look at what’s in the boxes.”
Stacy pushed both boxes toward us and I reached and grabbed the first thing that touched my hand which was a bank ledger book. Adam and Michael were reaching into the boxes and lifting things out as well. Documents, video and audio recordings, more bank ledger books—there was enough documentation and evidence in these two boxes to prove that the ring of corruption wasn’t limited to the colleges, our fathers, or even just a few bad cops and politicians. As hard as it was to believe that what Stacy was saying was true, and that there really was a web of criminal deception that spread as far as the entire east coast of the country; it was impossible to ignore that fact that she had proof right here with her to back it up.
“This is crazy,” I muttered under my breath as I looked at a ledger fully notated with falsified transactions. It was easy for anyone with half a brain to see that the numbers in the ledgers didn’t add up. It was also very easy to decipher the fact that anyplace the numbers didn’t add up was simply crossed out and rewritten in order to try to make it look balanced instead of giving off the obvious appearance of money laundering.
“I still don’t understand,” Adam said. “What are the three of us supposed to do about this? If this is as big as you are saying it is, then the three of us aren’t going to be able to do anything to stop it by ourselves.”
“He’s right,” Michael interjected. “And what are you going to do? How long are you planning on living here in this cave?”
“I’m leaving first thing in the morning,” Stacy answered. “My job was to get the information to you and now I’m done. I can’t stay here so I’m going to get on the first plane to the farthest destination at the airport tomorrow and get the hell out of here.”
None of this was adding up. Since when do cops turn on their own and then make a run for it?
“What about Rob?” I asked. “What are we supposed to do about him? He’s obviously in trouble stuck there at the police station, and I can tell by the looks that he is getting that the other cops are either on to him or getting very close to figuring out that he isn’t really on their side. You said that he helped you when you needed him. How can you just run now to save yourself and leave him stuck there?”
“Because that’s exactly what Rob told me to do,” she answered. “Look, I know this is difficult to understand. But you’re in way over your heads—we all are. The only thing to do is get away from it. Rob made the choice to put himself inside the hornets’ nest in order to protect me and get the information to you. I’m not sure what he wants you to do with it, but I do know what he told me to do once I had given it to you. And that is exactly what I intend to do. Rob’s a tough guy, and he’s a good guy too. If he felt that you guys were worth this sacrifice, then I trust he must be right.”
“Can’t we do something to try to stop them?” I asked, unwilling to just give up and roll over so easily. “Something that can bring the ring of corruption down?”
Stacy shook her head vehemently and closed her eyes.
“No,” she said. “That’s not possible. It’s too big and too powerful. Anyone that has tried to go against them has either disappeared or been killed right out in the open. I’m telling you that these guys have no fear. They don’t fear consequence or repercussion or even the compromising of their own souls. They would just as easily burn everything down around them rather than get caught. Rob is the only reason that I am still alive.”
“Well, he looked only barely alive himself the other day,” I said with a huff.
“What do you mean?”
I glared at Stacy without really meaning to, especially since it seemed as though she was simply following Rob’s directions. But I still couldn’t wrap my head around just jumping ship and leaving, even if he told her to. It made me mad that Rob was down there sacrificing himself for the rest of us. And it made me mad that Stacy was going to bail on him, even if he did tell her to. In the movies, the good cops would have ignored their partner’s request for them to “save themselves” and they would have rescued their partner despite the risk. This would definitely not make a good one of those movies, because the girl was full-on ready to run.
“I mean that the last time we saw him, he looked as though he’d been roughed up,” I answered.
I was surprised when Stacy looked as if that was expected. She didn’t seem at all surprised to hear it.
“The other cops have always been suspicious of Rob, and I think that has just amplified lately. It’s only a matter of time before they figure out something that will lead them to believe he is working against them,” she said.
“And then what?” I asked with concern. “What will they do to him when they find out he’s only there to lead them off track?”
Stacy looked at me as if I was stupid before answering.
“They’ll kill him, obviously.”
That was it, I was done playing this stupid game that we all seemed to keep getting tangled up in somehow. We needed to end it—now.
“What are we going to do?” I asked as I turned to Michael.
He hesitated for a moment as he thought about it, and then he answered with the only answer that I knew would work.
“We need to leave here,” he said.
I had expected him to say it, and I knew deep inside myself that it was the only way out of all this mess, at least the only permanent way out. I think that we’d known it all along but had been trying to pretend that there was still some chance that it would all just go away. But no matter what we seemed to do, or which small victories we felt like we had won, the problem always resurfaced bigger and more dangerous than before.
“I just don’t think that we are ever going to be able to rectify what has been going on in Charlotte. I know that you wanted to try—that we all wanted to try. But I don’t think that we’re ever going to be able to live in peace until we put some space between us and this place.”
“How much space?” I asked.
“As much as we possibly can.”
“Are you talking about leaving the state?” Adam asked. “Or the country?”
“I think we should get as far away to the other side of the world as we can get,” Michael answered him. “We all have passports. We should just go and see where we end up.”
“But what about Rob?” I asked. “We can’t leave him behind. He’s in this mess because of us. He sacrificed himself to help us.”
“Technically, he was already in this mess even before we met him,” Michael said. “But I agree that we can’t just leave him behind. We’ll go back for him and get him out of there. Then we’ll all leave together.”
He was right. Rob had been part of trying to dismantle this corruption even before our paths crossed. But now he was one of us and we needed to get him out. We owed him at least that much.
“I agree,” I said. “There just isn’t any way that we can stay here any longer. The problem is far too big for us to deal with and I think we are all finally in agreement that we need to get as far away from here as possible.”
“It’s not going to be easy pulling him from a nest of cops,” Adam said. “They’ve already got their eyes on him and are watching his every move. If they’re even more suspicious of him now, it will be nearly impossible for him to make a move without them seeing it.”
Adam turned toward Stacy.
“You used to be one of them. Have any suggestions about how to extract someone from right under the cops’ noses?”
