Tough Justice: Betrayed

“Cass?” she called, voice not entirely aggressive but still warning the woman she meant business. The door opened with ease, and she stepped just inside. Lara paused, not about to go all the way inside until she could confirm where the woman was.

“Over here.”

Lara made out the red hair first before collecting details about the rest of the woman. She was farther back in the corner of the open room, body angled in a way that suggested she’d been looking out through one of the windows at the water. Again, Lara hoped Cass wouldn’t try to swim her way out of the situation.

Light from lamps outside streamed through the large windows that weren’t boarded up. While it gave the open space—which Lara guessed had been planned as the main dining room for a restaurant—enough of a glow so she could see that no one else was inside, Lara pulled a small Maglite flashlight from her jacket and clicked it on. Its beam was small but powerful. Before she moved any closer to Cass, she swept the light to her left. An open set of stairs led to the next floor, splitting and turning out of sight, while two rooms she assumed were bathrooms were tucked in the opposite corner. To her right and across from Cass was another room, doors already attached at two different points. The kitchen if she had to guess. The rest of the open space was oddly barren. Only a few odds and ends and trash littered the floor. Lara walked around the random pieces, noting some of the walls had been tagged with graffiti.

Cass had her eyes averted to the floor. She was perched atop a broken sawhorse left over from the builders.

“You picked one hell of a spot to meet,” Lara finally said, eyeing a plastic bucket in the corner. She grabbed it and placed it across from Cass. She took a seat, mindful to keep her sight line to the front door open. The back door that led to an unfinished outdoor dining area was boarded up.

“I wanted it to be quiet while we talked...” Cass let her words trail off. She finally met Lara’s gaze. It showed her more than she had thought she’d see. Cass looked stricken, miserable even. Her eyes were glazed over and rimmed red. She’d either been crying or was about to start. Lara didn’t know if she felt comfort or trepidation at the obvious guilt. Nick’s words of not wanting Cass to feel as if she had nothing to lose popped into her head. If that was the case, then she was in trouble. “You know, don’t you?” Cass said before Lara could wrangle in what she wanted to say. She decided not to play coy.

“I now know a lot of things. I don’t know why I didn’t put it together earlier. You engineered my running into my long-lost half sister,” Lara continued. “You staged my kitchen to look like my mother’s murder scene. The most horrific event in my life!”

“No! That wasn’t me,” Cass interrupted. “Please, believe me. I did get those files, but it was Katya and her boyfriend who did that. I thought Katya was my friend, but that went too far. I trusted her...” Tears rolled down Cass’s face.

“And I trusted you. But you dug up my past, and you served it to me on a silver platter and then pretended to be as surprised as the rest of us. You.” Lara pointed at the woman for emphasis in a jab that clearly showed aggression. Just because she could control her tone didn’t mean her body language had gotten the memo to quiet down.

Even from the flashlight beam radiating up from the floor, Lara could see Cass’s eyes starting to glass over even more.

She nodded. “Yes, I did,” she admitted, voice dropping in volume. Lara leaned in closer.

“Why, Cass? Why go through all of that trouble? Because I know it must have been a lot of work. Meghan and I have had no contact since I was a teenager and she changed her last name. Sneaking into my father’s house?” Lara’s voice was starting to betray her. It started to slide, riding building waves of anger as she recounted the obstacles of the past several days. Ones that had not only affected the case but had also shaken Lara right to her core. “Why go through all of that trouble? I don’t understand what makes any of that worth it, not to mention how it even fit into whatever plan you wanted to execute by going through all of those motions. Why?” Lara realized her heartbeat had sped up a bit. She wondered if her team could hear it through the mic attached to her.

Cass dropped her chin down a fraction, making her long loose hair cascade over her shoulder. Her glasses slipped across the bridge of her nose, but she didn’t set them right.

“When you first brought down the Moretti organization you came into Victoria’s office and told her about kissing Moretti,” she started, eyes traveling down to her hands intertwined on her lap. “I couldn’t leave it alone. I wanted so badly to understand everything I could about what had happened on the inside. I wanted to know how you’d bested Moretti. I wanted to know for certain that he was really caught this time. That he was really going to pay for everything he’d done. I wanted to know that he was going to pay for what he’d done to Allie.” She gave a weak shrug. “I waited until you were fully debriefed, and I accessed the classified files.” Her gaze went from her hands to Lara’s eyes. “I learned everything.”