Page 74 of Defenseless
Sabina glanced at Kara as they sat in the lobby of Senator Kevin Jacobs’s office. She was sure the look on Kara’s face was mirrored on her own—a mix of determination, anticipation, and unease. Most people didn’t meet their loved one’s killer, let alone have a conversation with them. What they were doing was the right thing. But as the seconds ticked by on the clock, and memories of that night pressed to the forefront of her mind, it occurred to her that perhaps they hadn’t thought it through as much as they should have.
“It will be okay,” Kara said, reaching over and taking her hand. Sabina wasn’t sure which of them the words were meant to reassure.
As if sensing her growing discomfort, Chad settled his hand at the base of her neck and started to massage the muscles there. On his other side, Tess looked at her watch.
A young man stepped out of an office, drawing their attention. He couldn’t have been more than a year or two out of college, but he had the arrogant look of someone who thought that working with a powerful man made him special. He was the type of person who casually slipped into every conversation the fact that he worked for Senator Jacobs.
“The senator will see you now,” he intoned.
She flickered her gaze to Chad, who pulled her toward him and dropped a kiss on her temple before releasing her. Gripping her sister’s hand, they rose together. Shoulder to shoulder, she and Kara would face the man who killed their mother.
They followed the young man, who hadn’t bothered to introduce himself, through two rooms before he paused at a door and knocked. “Come in,” a voice called. A voice Sabina hadn’t heard in years. One she recognized well from her nightmares.
In a flash, anger replaced her unease. Confronting the man wasn’t going to be easy, she didn’t kid herself about that. But anger—at what he’d done, at what he’d gotten away with—flooded her body. And as the door swung open, she dropped her sister’s hand. They were still side by side, but she wanted Kevin Jacobs’s first glimpse of them to be two women standing on their own. Not two sisters clinging to each other.
Kevin Jacobs’s head was down, and he was writing something in a notebook when they stepped in. Without a word, the young man moved out of the room and shut the door.
Sabina recognized a power play when she saw one. Kara did, too, if the slight tip of her lips meant what Sabina thought it did. He would make them wait until he was good and ready.
They had two options, either wait or draw his attention. Sabina considered the second; it was likely what he was expecting—it would give him a chance to further ignore them. But then she decided that turning the tables would be much more fun. Gesturing with her head to a pair of chairs in front of Jacobs’s desk, she and Kara each took a seat. Then they sat back, pulled out their phones, and, for her part, started scrolling through the news. He might be trying to assert his dominance by making them wait, but that game only worked if they submitted. Which they had no intention of doing.
A full four minutes passed before he finally looked up. Four minutes in which Sabina checked her horoscope, scanned the headlines, and scoped out flights from San Francisco to Cabo.
“Bela, Nala, it’s good to see you. I’m sorry about your mother,” he said.
Sabina shared a look with her sister. Kara slipped her phone back into her purse, but Sabina kept hold of hers.
“Thank you,” Sabina said. “We’re sorry you killed her, too.”
He blinked at her open salvo but didn’t otherwise react. At least not for a few seconds. When he did, his response was what they expected.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sure by now you’ve read the police reports your lawyer picked up a few days ago. I wasn’t there. A vagrant killed her.”
“You mean the reports on the investigation led by your brother?” Kara asked. Then she frowned. “Tess is going to have those overturned or overruled or whatever it is they call it in the justice system. You know, it being a conflict of interest and everything.”
Again, Jacobs blinked, and Sabina wondered how he’d survived in politics so long with such an obvious tell. She’d been in his presence for six minutes and she could anticipate a lie by his facial expression.
“She’s welcome to try, but you’ll find the evidence supports my story,” Jacobs said. Which was a stupid thing to say. Of course the evidence supported his story. His brother had made sure of that. But Sabina let it pass.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sabina saw Kara glance over. They were off script now. Way off script. But the idea of crying and pleading to Jacobs, as planned, was one she could no longer stomach. She didn’t know how the conversation would unfold, but she was going to go with her gut. She and Kara had lived a lifetime in the shadows. They’d learned a thing or two about human nature. And Jacobs was not as strong as he thought.
“We had a little chat with our father a few days ago,” Sabina said. That comment resulted in a double blink.
“What does that have to do with anything?” he asked, glancing at his watch.
“You’re not curious about the twelve million dollars he stole from you all those years ago?” Kara asked. “I mean, I know it was a while ago and you’ve more than made up for the loss. Still, if I were you, the loose end would bug me.”
Jacobs swallowed then shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, but you do know, Kevvy,” Sabina said, employing the nickname Benicio had used once. Kara stifled a laugh with a cough. “It’s why you killed our mother. You wanted her to tell you where he was, and she wouldn’t. Do the words ‘I’m sorry I had to do that, but if you’d given me what I asked for, I wouldn’t have had to,’ ring a bell?”
The blinking was back. But then he seemed to regroup. Taking a deep breath, he leaned back in his chair. “This is harassment, ladies,” he said. “If you want to talk about what happened all those years ago, if you want toaccuseme of something, then talk to my lawyer. Or the police.”
Kara bobbed her head. “I assure you, it’s on the agenda.”
Jacobs’s gaze lingered on Kara. “You’d like me to believe that, wouldn’t you? But you have nothing. Thereisnothing,” he insisted. Then he sighed and tossed the pen he’d been holding onto the desktop. “Look, I’m sure you came in here thinking you could get some sort of confession out of me. That maybe you’d get some answers about what happened that night. And I understand you wanting those. Like pieces of a puzzle coming together, you want to fit everything into place and have a nice complete picture. Something to make sense of what happened. It’s what every family member of a victim of violence wants. But I’m not the person to get that from. All I can tell you is the same thing you read in the reports. I’m sorry you don’t believe the vagrant killed her, but I have nothing else to say.”
Sabina had to give him credit. Hedidsound sincere. She was weighing her next move when his words started to niggle at something in her brain—in her memory. Sifting through them, she searched for what had subconsciously caught her attention.
