Displacement by Braylee Parkinson

Author:Braylee Parkinson [Parkinson, Braylee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Braylee Parkinson, LLC

19

A week later Alderson sent me a text asking if I could meet him at a park in Ann Arbor. This time, we met after hours, and he looked much more comfortable.

“I’ve got the schedule and did some snooping around. It turns out that only three people would have known that Derek was heading out that night. Foster, Williamson, and Healey.”

Three cops I had never been fond of, but none of them seemed ruthless enough to have run Derek off the road.

“Okay. Tell me more.”

“They were angry that he was leaving. Foster and Derek had a little argument before he left, but it was about work. The undercover gig was something they had worked on for a while, and it seemed like Derek was throwing in the towel without finishing the job. Everyone was pissed about that.”

I had known the people Derek was working with on the case, and Foster wasn’t one of them. What the hell was going on?

“Foster? They weren’t working together.”

Alderman was quiet for a moment, then he said, “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

“No. There was another way out. Tell the truth.”

“He would have gone to jail. You wouldn’t have wanted that.”

“No, but I didn’t want him to become a criminal either. The truth would have cleared that up. Would there have been consequences? Of course, but we have to pay the price for what we do in this world.”

Alderson pulled a crumbled piece of paper out of his pocket. It had a paragraph scrawled in Derek’s handwriting.

Dearest Sylvia,

If you get this, I’m gone. I wish I’d passed on the deep cover. It made me lose myself. If I could change it, I would. It made me lose myself. I thought we needed more money to make you happy, but it was not you that was unhappy. I was greedy, and I got myself into this mess I couldn’t get out of. You have no idea what is going on, and that’s the way we’re going to leave it. Just remember that I love you more than life. Move on. You’re too great of a woman to put yourself on a shelf.

Love always,

Derek

“Where did you get this?”

“His desk. He left it in the top drawer. He was coming to see you for a reason. Something happened.”

Was it a suicide note? Had I been wrong all this time?

“It’s a—”

“We don’t know that, but it could be.”

“So he did … he …”

“Sylvia, I don’t know if this is a suicide note, but it kind of sounds like one. Might be time to throw in the towel, ya know?”

I swallowed hard. If I’d been wrong about Derek, I didn’t know anything. He’d been my soulmate, and I hadn’t known who he truly was. My body felt weak.

“I don’t know what happened. We were happy. We had plans …”

“Sometimes plans are set up because people don’t want us to know they’re struggling.”

It didn’t ring true to me, but what if my judgment was skewed? Had I lost all sense of reality? Was I too close to see the truth? I needed to get home.

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