In Love and Rescue: When love is the perfect rescue... Page 13

  She chuckled. “Halloween.”

  Desmond looked up. “What’s that?”

  “I looked like this for Halloween,” she repeated. Then, realization struck her like a bolt of electricity.

  “Where would Doug have gotten this picture?”

  *****

  Two heavy trucks came barreling up the front entrance of the villa, tearing through the remnants of the red garden doors. A man jumped off the truck and placed two fingers against the neck of one of the deceased men on the ground outside. When he didn’t register a pulse, he removed his hat and looked around. The area looked virtually undisturbed with the exception of the two doors that had been blasted by his comrades.

  Gano followed, stepping down off of the truck.

  “They’re dead,” the man told him as he walked over. Lighting a cigar, Gano also pressed his fingers against the dead man’s neck. Outraged, he stood and looked around the area.

  “How the hell can it be so hard to catch this stupid woman?” He growled.

  A third, younger man jumped from the truck shakily carrying a laptop computer. “It’s not just the woman,” he informed Gano, pulling up a surveillance image of Desmond and Larke at the resort. “A police officer from the apartment building fire confirmed that she had this man with her.”

  Gano leaned closed to the screen. He didn’t want to believe it, but that was the same man that had been cavorting around the island with Larke just days before he and Tony had abducted her. He had almost been certain that the man had bled out in the suite since the woman at the harbor had only reported seeing Larke and a blonde gentleman get on the old boat. Also, he hadn’t been able to get any information out of the miserable old man and his frigid wife. Yet, the man was there on the island with Larke, and since there was no way that she was capable of evading his men for so long on her own, that meant that this man was not who he said he was.

  “Find out what you can on him,” he ordered and the young man proudly cleared his throat before responding.

  “Well sir, he checked into the hotel under the name Michael Pearce, but when we checked out the name, we ran into a dead end. We believe that it’s an alias.”

  Gano rolled his eyes. “You think?”

  The young man cleared his throat again. “Well, one of the men we sent to the apartment said he spotted the Navy SEAL trident embedded into the design of a tattoo on his arm.”

  Gano rolled his eyes again, motioned with his hand for the man to hurry up, and took another puff of his cigar.

  “He’s ex-military, sir. Special ops. Sniper, reconnaissance, tactical operations, counter-terrorism, you name it.” Then he turned the computer around. “And his real name is Desmond Harding.”

  Gano’s eyes narrowed as he stared at an old picture of Desmond in uniform.

  “I know that name,” he grunted, cupping his chin in his hand. “I can’t put my finger on where I heard it, but I know I’ve heard it before. And I’m like an elephant. I never forget.”

  The boy hid a sly grin. “Yes, sir. You’re just like an elephant.”

  Gano glared at him knowing that he’d made a quip about his girth, but decided that he would handle him later. The boy failed to realize that with all of the poverty and corruption that was happening around Jamaica, finding another body to fill his role would be all too easy. Unfortunately, the new boys coming in had a privileged type of ideology and believed that they could make it to the top without hard work. They would see him driving around the island in his roadster and say that they were going to have one like it someday, but expect someday to be the next week. Then, they would lose their lives trying to sell a few ounces of marijuana as though that would take them to the top.

  Idiots.

  They had no idea how much blood he had to wash off of his hands to get where he was. They were only fighting themselves, all dogs thirsting for the larger bone in the reflection looking back at them. Getting to his position required a certain kind of disdain that he hadn’t been able to find in anyone else, with the exception of Eddie. It was a sadistic ignorance that their upbringing had taught them. He’d always been told that “in a dog-eat-dog world, be the master,” and that was exactly what he was doing, manipulating all the idiotic young men who stumbled into his presence like marionettes with unfettered strings. Young men who had no clue what it was like to live in a house with no mirrors.

  “Get me whatever else you can find on Desmond Harding,” he ordered, shoving the laptop back into the boy’s chest. He then breached the threshold of the villa and ordered some of his men to take the weapons and ammunition that the two dead men inside would no longer need.

  Walking towards the back of the house, he caught the smell of blood and followed it all the way to the marbled bathroom floors off of the downstairs suite. He noticed a few spots on the edge of the tub and the trash filled with used medical supplies.

  “Boy,” he bellowed throughout the house and within seconds, the young man reappeared at his side with the laptop still in tow.

  “Yes sir?”

  Gano kicked the trash can in his direction. “Didn’t you tell me that one of the men said they shot the man with Larke?”

  The boy scrolled quickly through a file with their statements and nodded.

  “Then that’s his blood,” Gano pointed out. “The precinct told me that they were sending some of their men up to check out the premises. Tell them to send their crime scene team. In the meantime, I want you to come up with a background story for Mr. Harding.”

  The boy, puzzled, started to raise his hand but dropped it when Gano shot him a bitter look.

  “What kind of background story, sir?” He timidly asked.

  Gano picked up a blood-stained cotton ball between his fingers. “The story that’s going to explain why a decorated former US Navy Seal would suddenly up and kill a rising Assistant US Attorney.”

  The boy turned the computer towards Gano. “Sir, that’s not all. Turns out, Desmond Harding isn’t only a former SEAL. He’s also Larke Tapley’s husband.”

  Gano smirked and tossed the cotton ball into the sink. It was all just too easy.

  Chapter Eight

  Wren Tapley absent-mindedly paced in the middle of her kitchen while waiting for her electric tea kettle to boil. The display on the microwave reminded her that at three o’clock in the morning she needed to be asleep, but whenever she put her head down, memories and images of her sister flashed through her mind like a never-ending movie reel. Also, ever since they were notified of Larke’s death, it didn’t help that she’d gone through every album at their parents’ house, pulled out whatever pictures she could find of she and Larke, framed them, and plastered them around the apartment. No one was going to tell her that she would forget even the slightest detail on her sister’s face. It just wasn’t going to happen.

  She’d made a recording of the last voicemail that Larke had left on her cell phone, then printed a copy of the last email that she’d sent and pinned it to the refrigerator. While she’d appeared sane on the outside, in reality, she felt as though she was going crazy. Nothing that the officials told them had made any sense. Larke had never mentioned going to Jamaica for a few weeks to unwind. Historically, whenever she went on vacation, she’d made sure that the family had the information for the resort where she would be staying, and a way to contact her in the event of an emergency.

  It was also unusual that, somewhere in the recesses of her heart, Wren hadn’t been able to accept the fact that her sister had died. She just didn’t feel as though Larke was no longer alive.

  The doorbell chimed, surprising her. Padding across the room, Wren peeked out of the peephole directly into the logo on Jay’s gray high school sweatshirt. When she opened the door, he trudged in, the hood of the shirt draped over his head and sprinkled with rain droplets. It wasn’t until she saw him that her mind registered the light patter on the rooftop.

  “Jay, are you okay?” She asked, closing the door behind him. He peeled off the sh
irt, tossed it to the floor, and plopped down in the sofa. His eyelids drooped lazily and his usually low-cut hair stood a little higher on his head.

  “Can I sleep here tonight?” He asked, stretching out on the sofa. Normally she would laugh at this moment, him asking to do something that he was already in the process of doing, but laughing at anything felt wrong these days.

  “Of course you can,” she cooed, sitting at the edge of the cushion near his feet. “You can’t sleep either?”

  “Nope,” he answered, shaking his head.

  “I’m about to make some herbal tea that’s supposed to help you sleep or something like that. Would you like some?”

  He nodded and she went to the kitchen to fix two mugs. Returning, she handed him a cup, sat on the floor, and rested her back against the television entertainment console.

  “Does it help?” Jay asked, now seated and staring into the steam floating from the mug.

  “Like does it help me sleep?” She glanced behind him at a picture of her and Larke at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg. “Not really, but it’s soothing. It reminds me of me and Larke sitting up until five in the morning drinking tea and eating those coconut bar cookies while talking about our nonexistent love lives.”

  Jay smiled slightly. “And then came Desmond.”

  “The love of her life,” Wren added. “The way Larke lights up whenever she starts talking about Des…I wonder how he’s taking all of this.”

  Jay continued to stare mindlessly into the mug. “And no word from him on your end?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I still don’t know what happened between them.” He swallowed a gulp of tea. “Remember the first time we met him?”

  “And how Daddy was ready in the kitchen, waiting to give him the evil eye, then Des walked in towered over everybody except you?”

  “That look on Dad’s face.” Jay contorted his own attractive features to mimic his father’s expression.

  “No, no, it was kinda like this.” Wren widened her eyes and pulled her chin into her neck in mock surprise. She then flailed her hands above her head. “And this is Daddy’s red hair.”

  Jay chuckled and immediately felt guilty for laughing. “I thought they’d have kids by now,” he went on.

  “I used to constantly badger her about a niece or nephew.”

  Silence fell between them.

  “Do you think that’s why she might have gone to Jamaica without telling us?” Wren asked. “Because she wasn’t taking the separation well?”

  Jay placed the mug on the coffee table and nervously drummed his fingers on his knee. He hoped that what he was about to say didn’t sound as crazy to his sister as the thought had come off to him when it initially ran through his mind.

  “Wren, do you ever get the feeling that, maybe, she’s not gone?”

  Wren also set down her mug. “I swear to you Jay, I was just thinking that same thing before you walked in.”

  She rose and rummaged through a drawer in the console before pulling out a few sheets of paper. “These are the hotel and flight confirmations from Larke’s last seven trips. Seven. But now, all of a sudden, she doesn’t even tell her family that she’s leaving the country? Then you have Cory Adelson, her witness, and Edward Jarvis, the same man she convicted, missing and no one is calling foul play?”

  A glimmer of hope fluttered in Jay’s chest. “Doesn’t Dad have some connections with the Wisconsin police department? Do you think we could talk to Mom and Dad to see if they could, I don’t know, get them to check some stuff out? I don’t feel comfortable just not fighting for answers, especially when nothing adds up.”

  Wren scanned the papers once more. “I’d like to try. I mean, it could just be that we’re still in the denial stages of grief, but I would feel much better if we at least tried to get some answers.”

  Then her shoulders fell and Jay crept down to the floor and wrapped his arms around her. They both were struggling with the notion that they could be wrong and would one day be forced to fully mourn the loss of their sister, while on the other hand holding on to hope that they could be right and maybe one day see her again. Unfortunately, that glimmer of hope was coming in much weaker than any gleam of certainty.

  As Wren and Jay sat in their parents’ living room the next afternoon, the glimmer slowly began to fade. Heather and Thomas Tapley stared at their children in complete disbelief, her from the loveseat across the coffee table while he stood with his hands in his hair in front of the French doors that led to the patio. Neither of them could believe what they were hearing. Larke was gone and they understood that accepting that would be difficult, but the fact that their children were actually refusing to accept it was something different altogether.

  “Wren, Jay,” Thomas began. “I understand that this news has been extremely difficult to accept—”

  “Impossible,” Jay corrected. “It’s been impossible to accept Dad and you can’t tell me that you don’t feel the same way. You can’t tell me that you’re okay with a press release and crappy funeral service where we won’t have a body or even ashes to mourn.”

  Thomas gripped his hair. “Do you two think that you’re the only two in mourning right now?”

  Realizing that a line had been crossed, Heather raised her hand. “Thomas, honey, I think they understand that it’s been difficult for us all.”

  “But Heather,” he argued back, “this is ridiculous. How are we, as a family, going to heal and move on if we don’t accept it?”

  Wren angrily stood. “Move on? Really? You’re accusing us of holding on too long when obviously, you’ve let go too easy.”

  He moved towards her but his wife stood in his path.

  “I think we’re all getting a bit too heated here,” she warned. “We’re saying things that we’ll regret later, and I know that we’re not really angry at each other.”

  Wren reclaimed her seat next to Jay in the sofa and Thomas dropped down in the loveseat. He was angry—angrier than he’d ever been in his life. Yet, he wasn’t angry at his children. He was angry at himself. He’d had no idea that Larke had gone on any type of vacation out of the country. She used to tell them everything, but over the past couple of years, her communication with them had dwindled.

  He was angry that he hadn’t made a fuss of it and picked up the phone a few more times to talk to his daughter, or make the trip out to see her. In such a short time, he was already starting to forget the last time he heard her hearty laugh. He was also beginning to forget the subtle nuances of her face and spent several minutes staring at both his and his wife’s image in the mirror to piece her back together. How had nearly a year passed since he’d last seen his daughter? Had he just gotten comfortable with the fact that she would show up during the holidays, spend a few days during Thanksgiving and Christmas, and that would be enough for him? When did he become the kind of father that stopped trying?

  He examined his children. Jay was turning into a man right before his eyes at the tender age of seventeen. Soon, he would be leaving the comfort and safety of home to attend a university that could possibly be on the other side of the country. As for Wren, when did she stop being a seven-year old ginger with an arrangement of colorful beads in her coily hair? Now, that same coily hair was flat-ironed straight down her back and adorned by a simple scarf headband. Round cheeks and large, curious eyes were nowhere to be found. If something were to suddenly take them both from him as what had happened with Larke, would he remember those things? Would he even remember the angry creases they now wore in their brows as they sat across from him with the gall to think that he could move on from Larke’s death?

  “Wren, Jay,” Heather was saying, “all we’re saying is, this isn’t healthy. We understand that it’s natural to be in denial when something tragic like this happens, but if you aren’t willing to work through it, you might become obsessed and not able to carry on with your lives in a normal way.”

  Jay turned away and Wren bit the inside of her cheek
. “Just hear us out?” She pleaded.

  Thomas dropped his face into his palms. “Look, I want the two of you to know that your mother and I aren’t saying this because we’ve somehow figured out a way to move on. We love Larke too, you know. I can still remember when she was nine and we first spotted a Mute Swan over in Chippewa County. I mean, sitting there and waiting for a rare bird to show was probably the most boring thing in the world to do, and I was pretty sure that it was the last thing that a nine-year old girl wanted to do, but the way her face lit up when we saw it was a special moment for me. That quiet excitement between father and daughter and the realization that she was a part of me. It’s something that I’ll never forget. Those are the things we need to be focusing on. We need to keep the happy memories alive in order to keep her spirit alive. Larke will always be with us wherever we go. She will never be lost.”

  No longer able to withstand his father’s words, Jay stood, tossed a pillow towards the patio doors and left the room. Wren forced back tears as she watched him leave. She couldn’t believe that her parents couldn’t even give her theory a few seconds of thought, or at least give them a lazy ear. She knew that they were concerned about she and Jay holding onto grief and eventually succumbing to depression, which is something that only great parents would do, but the least that they could do was let them fully explain their stance and why they decided to take it.

  “Fine,” she conceded. “Jay and I won’t bother you with this anymore. You guys can handle your grief your way. We’ll deal with ours our way.”

  Then, she followed Jay’s path out of the room.

  “Do you think we’re doing the right thing, honey?” Heather asked, rubbing her husband’s knee. “They looked so hopeful. Maybe we should have listened a bit just to get them to confide in us and work from there.”

  Thomas pulled her into his arms and kissed her cheek. “We need to give it a bit more time for some of the shock to wane. We’ll be able to better talk to them once that happens.”