Page 41 of Courting the Consequences

“Yes. I mean, she was a stripper and I should have expected that. But I loved her, you know?” Mac grumbled. “She was special.”

Kara was dumbfounded. Absolutely dumbfounded. “How do you know the baby wasn’t yours?” she finally asked.

Mac huffed a sigh. “I asked her about it. She said that Vince had wondered the same and wanted a paternity test done. She showed me the papers.”

Kara nodded thoughtfully and continued. “So that was the end of your friendship with Vince?”

“Pretty much as soon as I walked in on them we had it out. Fistfight in the barracks. Both of us almost court-martialed. That was the end of it. Later, when she found out she was pregnant and didn’t know whose it was, Vince pushed for the paternity test. The results just pretty much drove it home.”

Kara could only nod as she watched him. There was nothing she could say to really add to it, so she remained silent.

Mac continued speaking, though, without needing to be encouraged. “At the time, Vince and I were months away from being discharged. We were going to go into business together. Case Holdings Ltd. was going to be our parent company. He was going into law; I was going to start a construction company. We had thought that by using the parent company, we could expand our brand. I dunno, it was a load of bullshit back then. I had filed for the tax ID and business license and had registered the business with the secretary of state already. Everything was ready for when we got discharged from the Marines. Then the shit happened with Lita…” he trailed off. “I forgot all about the business. Started the Ravager Knights with another buddy and eventually Taylor Construction and Mechanical. I forgot all about Case Holdings.”

“Did Vince have the paperwork for Case Holdings?” Danvers finally spoke up, interjecting into the conversation.

“He must have. I never found it again,” Mac said.

Danvers immediately turned to Kara. “Can you search your father’s things?”

Kara immediately shook her head. “His house is covered in cameras, inside and out. It’s more secure than Fort Knox, and he doesn’t keep anything there. It’s a museum practically. And he barely lives there anymore. He’s been in the Caribbean for the last year with wife number four or five.”

Danvers narrowed his eyes. “And his office at the Carmichael building?”

Again, Kara shook her head. “He cleared it out when he retired last year. Anything of importance would have gone to the archives for cases, and we only keep things on hand for ten years. After that, they go to an off-site document storage.”

“That’s convenient,” Danvers rolled his eyes.

“I could try going through our files in the basement for something. Short of calling back every box that was ever sent off-site, there’s not much more I can try. I run into dead en—”

“Do it,” Danvers said.

“Do what?”

“Call back the boxes,” he elaborated.

“Do you know how many fucking boxes that’ll be? Thirty fucking years’ worth of cases,” Kara glared.

“Twenty, really.” Danvers shrugged. He continued when he took in her confusion. “You said it yourself. You only keep ten years’ worth of files on-site. Carmichael and Associates has been in business for the last thirty years. So call back those twenty years’ worth of files. I’d bet money that you don’t even have to. You’d probably find everything you need in the first years’ worth of boxes.”

Kara’s mouth dropped open slightly as she stared at Danvers. “OK,” she agreed.

Danvers smirked and nodded. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“You’ll do it?” Mac asked, looking at her. “Go against your father?”

Kara hedged the question and answered in a roundabout way. “I’ll order the boxes back and see what I can find regarding Case Holdings,” she answered.

Mac grinned brightly. “That’s good enough for me.”

Kara smiled. “Sounds like a plan. Is there anything you want to add? Anything that happened over the years? Any contact with Vince?”

Mac shook his head. “After Lita confirmed Vince was the father, I never saw him again. I ran into Lita a couple years after that. The little boy looked more like her than Vince, but you could see it in him. His eyes were Vince’s.”

Kara nodded slowly. “I’m sorry that happened.”

Mac shrugged. “I never thought about it again until I was picked up for this bullshit.”

“We’ve got a good lead,” Danvers assured him. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

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