With Good Behavior [Conduct Series #1] Read online

  She looked at him, showing a hint of surprise as well as self-consciousness. “I guess that’s just leftover from my former career. Psychologists tend to listen a lot.”

  They walked a little further and Sophie admitted, “I’m thinking about what happened back there. That was a close call, and I’m a little freaked out that I’m going to lose this job. I don’t want to go back, Grant.”

  He sighed heavily, nodding in agreement. Returning to prison was his number one fear.

  “Frankly I’m just trying to figure out how I got here. How in the world did I end up on parole after serving a year in prison? How did I end up playing waitress on a ship, with no home and no family? It’s plain crazy.” She sighed, but then glanced at Grant. “But I, um … I’m glad I’m not in this alone. I’m grateful you’re here with me.”

  He looked genuinely touched, and his piercing eyes seared into her. “I’m trying to work out how I screwed up things so badly in my life too,” he said. “But if not for prison and those awful meetings with Officer Stone, we never would have met. Maybe it was somehow all meant to be.”

  Sophie felt like she was floating, as high as a kite. How could one man make her feel so damn good?

  They continued on, both with a bounce in their step, actually looking forward to running four cruises, together.

  Grant could see the Spire construction site ahead of them, and he turned to Sophie. “How did I describe the Spire last night? That part I simply can’t remember.”

  Sophie blushed. “Are you sure you really want to know?”

  “Give me the hard truth, please.”

  “The hard truth, huh?” She bit her lip, but a few giggles still spilled out. “It’s appropriate that you say that. As I recall, you said the Spire was the most phallic thing ever.” Grant’s eyes widened and Sophie forged ahead. “You told everyone it was a throbbing, um, penis thrusting upward into the sky.”

  His jaw dropped.

  “You really don’t remember?”

  He shook his head and climbed over the railing onto the ship. Time to begin another long workday. “You’re right,” he said. “Drunk Grant is a handful.”

  16. Say Uncle

  Sophie smiled as she bid farewell to the passengers from the seven o’clock cruise. Today’s cruises had been far less eventful than the previous night’s, and Sophie almost missed the entertainment of a drunken captain at the helm. But they both needed this job, so they’d performed their duties efficiently and with no shenanigans. However, Sophie continued to be impressed by Grant’s narration of the architectural wonders. He seemed to add new information every cruise.

  Two women, among the last departing passengers, approached Sophie. One had platinum-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, with a button nose and big blue eyes. She was shorter and perhaps slightly older than Sophie was, and she nervously clasped Sophie’s forearm. “The guy who was the tour guide—he said his name was Grant. Is he, um, Grant Madsen by any chance?”

  Sophie stared at the woman curiously. “Yes, he is.”

  “I thought so!” she declared victoriously to her friend. “Could I, um, maybe talk to him?”

  Suddenly feeling jealous and somewhat protective of the “guy who was the tour guide,” Sophie squinted and suspiciously inquired, “Do you know him?”

  “Yes.” She nodded decisively with increasing confidence. “I’d like to see him. I need to talk to him. He’s up there?” She gestured toward the bridge, beginning to walk in that direction.

  “Hold on. I’ll take you to him,” Sophie said, desperately wanting to know how this cute blonde knew Grant.

  “Wait a minute!” the blond woman’s brown-haired friend cried, tapping Sophie’s shoulder. “I have a question for you.”

  Sophie turned around and was dismayed to see the blonde ascending the stairs. “How can I help you?” Sophie asked politely through gritted teeth.

  “I was told there would be singing on this cruise,” the woman said.

  “Singing?”

  “Yes. My friend Maureen took one of these cruises last night, and she said she had a total blast. The tour guide was leading everybody in a Frank Sinatra song or something?”

  A smile crept onto Sophie’s face. Perhaps the drunken singing had been a good idea after all.

  Up on the bridge, Grant was placing the microphone headset into a drawer when he noticed a shadow in the doorway. He glanced up. “Ashley?”

  Hearing his deep, smooth voice, she grinned and took a step toward him before hesitating. Both stared awkwardly for a moment. Then Grant came to his senses and gave her a quick, chaste hug.

  Ashley pulled back, admiring his tall frame and tanned face. “You’re—you’re all grown up. You’re a man now,” she said. “I mean, what has it been? Five years?”

  “At least,” he nodded. “How’s Ben?”

  “He’s turning sixteen next month.”

  Grant’s eyes widened, and he shook his head with wonder. “No, that’s not possible. Sixteen? My nephew is sixteen? God, I feel old.”

  Ashley chuckled. “Yep, sixteen. He’s going to be driving soon, so you best avoid the roads in the near future.”

  He smiled, but his eyes showed only sadness. Ashley’s grin faded, and she wondered if visiting him had been such a good idea. “How long you been out?”

  Grant looked down. “Almost a month now. Logan told you what happened?”

  She bit her lip nervously. “Well, Angelo said you got sentenced to three years, but I don’t know the details.”

  His eyes darkened, like an ominous gray cloud obscuring the bluest sky. “What are you doing with Angelo? Stay away from him, Ashley.”

  “That’s actually why I needed to talk to you. I want to invite you to Ben’s sixteenth birthday party.” She pressed her lips together. “At the compound.”

  His voice trembled with anger. “Angelo is hosting Ben’s birthday party? No. You and Ben should never go there! Keep away from them!”

  “How am I supposed to do that, Grant? I can’t ban him from his father’s entire family!”

  “When the family is as sick as ours, then you damn well better keep your son away from them. Letting Ben see his father is one thing, but you need to steer clear of Angelo and Carlo.”

  “I can’t let Ben see his father,” she hissed. “Logan has been missing for over a year.”

  “Missing?” Grant took a step back. “Why?”

  “The cops wouldn’t tell me, but they’re looking for him. What a surprise. He’s in trouble with the law.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm. “Such a wonderful father he’s turned out to be.”

  Grant rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling the morning’s headache beginning to return. “So Ben has been without a father for the past year?”

  “Ben has been without a father his entire life,” she corrected. “Without a good one, anyway.”

  “Still, you can’t let Angelo host a birthday party for him. You can’t let Angelo get his claws into him.”

  “I’m afraid it may be too late. Ben worships Angelo and Carlo. He thinks they’re cool. They’re tough. That’s why you have to be there, Grant. You have to help Ben or he’s going to turn into a mobster just like them. He’ll end up in prison like his grandfather, and like his father too, once the police catch up to him.”

  “And like I’m such a positive influence? I just got out of prison myself. I’m a felon, Ashley. Ben would be better off without me.”

  “That’s not true!” She was sad to find Grant viewing himself so negatively. “I was so shocked when Angelo told me you were going to prison that I begged Logan to fill me in on what happened. Lo did admit that he threatened to hurt your Uncle Joe unless you helped him commit a crime.”

  Grant’s wounded eyes met her intense gaze, and he swallowed, feeling bile rise in his throat. “I can’t believe he owned up to that.”

  “I think he almost needed to tell me, like he had to confess or something. He seemed to feel really guilty about the whole thing.”r />
  “Yeah,” Grant scoffed. “He feels really bad. He’s all torn up inside. In the meantime, I go to prison and he goes scot-free.”

  “Logan did get sentenced to court-ordered counseling.”

  Grant was too incensed to respond. His hands had curled into fists, and his breathing came in short, shallow rasps. All the tequila in the world could not numb the resentment washing over him.

  “Grant?” she asked gently. “What happened that day? Will you tell me?”

  He leaned against the console and rubbed his hand over his clipped black hair. He sighed, glancing out the window to see Sophie conversing with a female passenger on the deck below. He did not want her to learn the sordid details of his crimes, but he supposed he owed the story to the mother of his nephew. Maybe once Ashley heard the tale, she would cease recruiting him as a positive role model for her son. Ben certainly deserved better.

  “It was two years ago, in March,” he began.

  The brothers continued to stand at their mother’s grave, planning a robbery over her plot. Grant felt sick.

  “We need the security code to the basement room in that bar near the base,” Logan said.

  “And why do you think I would know it?”

  “Because you have Navy buddies who gamble there all the time.”

  “It’s against regulations to go down there.”

  “You always had to follow the rules—Uncle Joe’s good little boy,” Logan sneered.

  Grant’s blood boiled. “You never gave Joe a chance!”

  The older brother, stronger and burlier, held out his arm to restrain the younger one. “Do I have to remind you what’s at stake here? The very man you’re defending. Get that code or Joe is dead.”

  Grant had no choice. He got the needed information from his old bunkmate, Simkins, who was still stationed at Great Lakes. The next day he found himself in the driver’s seat of an unfamiliar car, idling outside the bar near the naval base. Logan sat next to him, dismayed to see his little brother trembling with fear.

  “It’ll be okay,” Logan promised. “You’re a Barberi. You’re Dad’s son. This stuff runs in our blood.”

  “Dad got caught,” Grant reminded him.

  “We both know that wasn’t his fault. He was only protecting his nephew. Family means everything to him.”

  “Whatever,” Grant scoffed, turning off the ignition. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Wait,” Logan insisted, extending his arm across his brother’s chest. He reached into the waistband of his jeans. “You need some protection.”

  Grant gasped when his brother extracted the gleaming handgun from its hiding place. He thrust the weapon at Grant, who eyed the Glock 17 with trepidation. “I won’t need that, Lo.”

  “I’m not gonna have my brother go in there holding only his dick.”

  “I’m not going to shoot somebody!”

  “Take it. You never know what you’re going to find. Just having a gun on me has gotten me out of some tight spots.”

  Grant’s breathing quickened as his eyes locked on the weapon. He had trained with quite a few handguns and rifles in his Navy career, but those weapons were legally issued by his superior officers, who sanctioned and ordered their use. This was quite different. Grant was sure this gun was as illegal as the theft he was about to perpetrate.

  “Take the damn gun! We’re stealing money from a gambling establishment, Grant, not robbing Garrett’s Gourmet Popcorn. If anybody catches you, this gun may be the only thing that saves your life.” Logan added condescendingly, “Joe would be crushed if his cherished nephew died because he was unprepared.”

  Aiming a hostile glance at his brother, Grant yanked the weapon from his grasp and placed it in the rear of his waistband, tucked securely against the small of his back beneath his uniform. The cold metal felt odd against the sweat sliding down his spine. Get it under control, Madsen, he silently told himself. You can do this.

  “What if I can’t find the bag?” Grant asked for about the tenth time. Logan had lost a substantial amount of cash to a Navy lieutenant in a poker game at Angelo’s club in downtown Chicago a few nights before, and afterward he’d tailed the lieutenant north to this bar. Logan had watched the lieutenant carry the bag of cash into the bar, then emerge empty-handed. There had been more than one hundred thousand dollars in that bag, and now it was stashed somewhere. Logan knew if he didn’t get the money back, Carlo would be quite angry—the kind of anger that led men to kill.

  “You’ll find the bag. Get into the basement room your buddy described, and I’m sure it will be hidden there somewhere.”

  Grant, ever the planner, felt increasingly nervous as the robbery approached. “What if they’ve changed the code? Simkins hasn’t been there for months.”

  Logan sighed. “Calm down. It will be fine, okay?”

  “You’re calm because you’re fucking staying in the car! Why don’t you do this?”

  “Because I already have a record, unlike you, Mr. Über Patriot Boy. And because that Navy uniform will help you blend in.”

  Logan placed a large hand on Grant’s forearm before he exited the car. “You’re not going to run into anybody you know, are you?”

  “I doubt it. I haven’t lived on the base in ten years.”

  Reluctantly releasing his grasp, Logan added, “If anything bad goes down in there, you don’t know who I am, got it? You don’t want anything happening to Joe.” Logan let his cruel words sink in before adding, “Be careful, bro.”

  Grant glared and felt a catch in his throat as he stared into the deep-blue eyes of the brother who once tried to protect him from their father. Their adult relationship could have been different. Grant could have loved his older brother, if only Logan had let him. And Logan could have encouraged his little brother, instead of threatening him and dragging him into criminal activity. But wishing it didn’t make it so.

  Hastily exiting the vehicle, Grant straightened his khaki uniform and strode into the bar, hoping nobody could detect the quivering throughout his body.

  He gave a plastic smile to the bartender, then turned to the stairwell. Grant quickly descended, pausing for a moment at the base of the stairs. He glanced to his left, the direction he intended to go, and then to his right, where the restrooms were located. At just that moment, the door swung open and Grant froze as a man in a captain’s uniform emerged. Grant spun on his heel and headed left when he heard a deep voice call out behind him.

  “Grant?”

  Shit. He had seen him. Closing his eyes, Grant turned and faced his uncle’s former boss. They exchanged salutes. “Captain Lockhart! How are you, sir?”

  “That is you!” Archibald Lockhart’s booming voice rang out in the basement corridor as he gave a big smile, stepping closer.

  Feeling his face flush, Grant tried to hide his palpable anxiety.

  Archie’s smile faded. “Is something wrong?”

  “N-n-no, sir. I was just looking for the bathroom.”

  “Well, you know where it is, Grant. You used to come here all the time with Joe.”

  Grant nodded. “Yeah, I guess I got turned around or something.”

  A lieutenant came bustling down the stairs, and she stopped immediately upon noticing the captain. Archie tilted his head dismissively, and she scampered toward the women’s restroom.

  After an uncomfortable silence, Archie finally spoke. “So, you decided to visit your old stomping grounds?”

  “Yes, sir, something like that.”

  “Why don’t you come join me for a drink, Madsen? You can fill me in on how that fucker Joe is doing.”

  Grant laughed nervously. “Uh, thank you, sir. But I, um, I can’t.” He forced himself to relax. Nodding his head toward the bathroom, he said, “I gotta hit the head. Good to see you, sir.”

  Grant quickly ducked into the restroom, hoping the captain wouldn’t follow him. The few moments he waited were beyond tense, but the door never opened.

  Stealthily emerging from th
e restroom, Grant peeked out the door and swiftly made his way down the hall, his heart pounding furiously.

  He arrived at a heavy steel door at the end of the hallway, just as his buddy Simkins had described it. Grant was suddenly thankful for Simkins’ otherwise annoying motormouth. There was a keypad located on the wall to the right. Furtively glancing down the dimly lit hall, Grant held his breath and entered the code: POKE HER, 7-6-5-3-4-3-7. Though the code was incredibly sexist, Grant was relieved to have the reminder for his fear-addled brain.

  Sighing with relief when the door clicked open, he slipped inside. He stood in the darkness for a few seconds, listening to the frantic beating of his heart. Groping along the wall, he located the light switch, and suddenly the room was bathed in buzzing fluorescent light.

  Grant heard himself panting and willed himself to relax, knowing he would not find what he needed if he continued to be this jumpy. The framed painting was right where Simkins had told him it would be, hanging slightly askew on the left side of the far wall. It was, of course, a group of dogs playing poker, and Simkins was right. It stuck out in otherwise bare room, and its off-center placement looked suspicious.

  Grasping the sides of the ugly brown frame, he lifted it off the wall and discovered a secret compartment behind. He set the framed picture on a wooden table and studied the thick padlock on the little handle to the compartment set into the wall. He had brainstormed several possible lock combinations involving famous Navy dates, and Grant swiftly took out a crumpled piece of paper before spinning the numbers on the lock.

  To his surprise, his fourth try, 12-7-41, resulted in a beautiful clicking noise as the lock fell open in his hand. Grant froze, but there were no angry knocks at the door, no shouts about an intruder breaking in.

  Gulping, Grant opened the compartment. To his immense relief, he found a blue gym bag stuffed inside. Carefully pulling out the bag, Grant unzipped it and peeked in, detecting bundles of cash. Joe would be okay.

  Grant was then all action: in one motion closing and locking the compartment door, then replacing the hideous poker painting on the wall. Checking around him for any evidence left behind, he backed out of the room and slowly creaked closed the steel door.