In Love and Rescue: When love is the perfect rescue... Page 19

  They pulled apart, but Desmond continued to press his lips against her forehead, temple, and over her damp eyelids. Her eyes opened and more tears flooded her cheeks, but he flicked them away with his fingertips and placed kisses along the trail of moisture.

  “Yes,” he finally replied, his voice raspy. Larke burst out laughing, her eyes bright, swirling pools of honey. She reached in for another kiss and melted when he hungrily accepted her.

  “Ahem,” a voice interrupted behind them. Slowly registering the voice, Desmond and Larke lazily pulled away, stealing quick pecks for a few more seconds before acknowledging the third person in the room.

  “Doug,” Larke realized, rushing over to give him a hug. “It’s so nice to see you again.”

  “Same here, Larke,” he said, returning the hug. “Do you mind if we have a moment?”

  He pointed between him and Desmond and Larke walked back over to Desmond to place a final kiss against his lips before regretfully retreating up the stairs. When she was completely out of sight, Desmond turned his attention to Doug who was sporting a gigantic smile.

  “So, what was that about?” Doug asked, pointing towards the stairs. “You two were able to figure everything out?”

  Desmond moved back to the bar to finish his watered down ginger ale. “Her memory hasn’t returned, but the heavens are granting me another chance. I’ve got my wife back.”

  Doug’s smile widened and Desmond downed the rest of his drink before taking a seat in the sofa.

  “But we can talk about that later. What’d you need to see me about?”

  Doug stuffed his hands in his pockets and switched back into business mode. “We have a problem. The woman whose name Larke gave us? Joni Westinghouse? Well, she’s dead.”

  *****

  Robert Dillinger listened intently while Joni whispered to someone on the phone in the bathroom. When she’d picked up, he’d heard a man’s voice on the line but refused to believe that she could be seeing someone other than him. She was hopelessly smitten and had revealed to him that there was no one else on Earth she could see herself being with. Yes, there were about three decades between their ages, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t have a lot in common. Joni was everything that his wife wasn’t and never could be. That was all that he needed. As for her, he had power, status, and money. That was all that she needed.

  He pulled himself out of bed and stood next to the door to hear the conversation better.

  “Um…yeah, I can do that,” he heard her say. “Well, my schedule is pretty...I understand. Yes, I understand how important it is. Yes, I will come down right away. No, no. I promise. Okay.”

  As she ended the call, he quickly moved to the other side of the room and randomly flipped through a book that was laying by the bedside. When she exited the bathroom, guilt was evident all over her flushed and fear-stricken face.

  “Who was that?” He nonchalantly asked. “I heard a man’s voice. Was it your father?”

  Joni tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ears. “Bobby, you know that my father walked out on me and my Mom when I was five. God knows where that bastard is.”

  He put down the book. “So, who was it then? Are you seeing somebody?”

  “And if I was? Bobby, you have no right to stand there and accuse me of seeing another man when you’re married with children.”

  Robert groaned. “Not this conversation again. Look, you knew what you were getting yourself into when we first started this, so don’t go acting as if my wife and kids are a problem now.”

  “You’re never going to leave her, Bobby,” she accused, marching around the room and picking up articles of her strewn clothing. “We’ve been doing this for over a year now. When we met, you said that you two were basically like roommates and hadn’t touched each other in months. You said that the love was gone from the relationship and it wasn’t until you met me that you understood what people meant when they said they felt a spark when they fell for someone.”

  “But I never said I would leave her,” Robert argued back. “Look, these things are complicated and you know that. In the public eye, I’m a family man. What do you think will happen to my image if I all of a sudden up and divorce my wife and start dating a woman thirty-five years my junior?”

  Joni stuck a leg through a pair of panties. “Like you would be the only politician to ever leave his wife? You guys get a slap on the wrist for stuff like that. One week it’s heavy in the press and the next week, it’s whatever celebrity has just given birth.”

  Robert pointed out the window. “But that’s them. This is me. They don’t carry the same image that I do. I’m a loyal, God-fearing, family man.”

  Joni scoffed and slipped into a pair of jeans. Even though he was upset, Robert couldn’t help but to be in awe of her svelte figure silhouetted in the denim.

  “But you still haven’t answered my question,” he added. “Who was that on the phone?”

  She sighed and folded her arms across her naked chest. “If you must know, it was the FBI.”

  Just as Robert was about to respond, Eddie entered the room wearing a black shirt, black pair of slacks, loafers, and black gloves. Appalled, Joni grabbed her shirt from the bed and placed it across her chest, however Eddie didn’t acknowledge her nudity.

  “Why is the FBI calling you?” He interrogated.

  Robert’s eyes suddenly began to dart around the room. Jarvis had him on surveillance all this time.

  When Joni didn’t answer, Eddie pulled a black semiautomatic pistol from behind his back and pointed it at her. “Answer my question. Why is the FBI calling you?”

  Joni’s lips quivered. “I—I don’t know,” she replied. “All they said was that my name came up as part of an investigation and I had to immediately present myself for questioning.”

  Eddie’s eyes flicked accusingly at Robert. “What did you tell her?”

  Robert moved slowly across the room until he was standing between Eddie’s gun and Joni’s body. “I didn’t tell her anything.”

  Eddie dropped the gun down to his side. “You must have told her something for her name to come up. None of you fools can do anything right. I knew that I should have just done all of this by myself.”

  Robert held his hands up in front of him. “Look Eddie, I think we all need to calm down here. So what if they found Larke? It doesn’t mean that she can tie any of this to the rest of us.”

  Eddie cackled a laugh. “I pity the American educational system if you are considered one of its elite.” He pointed the gun back towards Joni. “I know that you’re lying. You have five seconds.”

  Joni’s heart beat rapidly in her chest, her face ashen with fear. “I don’t—”

  Eddie fired a shot that grazed past her head by only a few inches. Joni yelped and burst into tears. He then retrained the gun on her.

  “Fine,” she conceded. “I—I didn’t know what you guys were up to that day when you and your lawyer showed up, but I was with Bobby. He thought that it was his wife coming home early and hid me in his closet.”

  “So, you overheard our conversation,” Eddie accused, briefly making eye contact with Robert.

  Joni’s head fell as she nodded. “Yes, and I heard you say what would happen to Larke if you were convicted.”

  Eddie’s jaw clenched. “Was it you that tipped off the FBI that she’d gone missing?”

  Joni hesitated and he fired another shot that whizzed by her ear, this one closer than the one before.

  “Yes,” she squeaked out. “I was thinking that even if nothing had happened yet, they could still help her. I’ve worked with Larke for years and I was worried about her safety. I didn’t know if you guys were serious about what you said that you were going to do to her.”

  Eddie grimaced and gripped the gun tighter. “Are you aware of what you have done? The fact that she is alive and with the same man we reported killed her means that someone is lying. They are going to say that it was a cover-up and because I wanted th
at woman brought directly to me, I made Delgano do the groundwork. Oversee the whole operation. So that means, she saw him. Which means, it will only take them three seconds to put him in charge of the cover-up and tie him back to me.”

  Robert waved away his words. “That’s a bit elaborate, Eddie.”

  Eddie closed his eyes and inhaled a deep breath of air. “It is still a risk, and if there are two things that I don’t like, they are risks and mistakes.”

  He squeezed the trigger and Robert felt the bullet whiz by his ears before hitting into something behind him. He then heard Joni cry out, but he didn’t immediately turn around. If he turned around, he would have to acknowledge that she’d been hit and with her height compared to the bullet’s trajectory next to him, he knew that she’d received a fatal shot.

  Reluctantly, he turned and cried out when he saw her on the floor, her golden hair spilled all around her. He fell to his knees beside her body, pulled her into his arms, and frantically kissed the top of her head.

  “You bastard,” he accused Eddie. “She didn’t know anything. All I asked her to do was go to Larke’s to make sure that she was home, and keep her there. She didn’t even know why.”

  Eddie lowered the gun and glared at Robert. “Let this be a lesson to you,” he warned. With that, he fired another shot towards Robert’s head and left the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Robert cried out as the metal made contact with his skull. His body jerked to the side, and he fell into a heap onto Joni’s lifeless body. He’d known that Jarvis was a hothead, but he never expected him to be this dangerous, especially when he’d kept both the DEA and Customs off his back when they discovered one of the teddy bears that had been sent from Eddie’s workshop in Jamaica, to the children’s hospital in Miami, had been laced with Oxy powder. He’d even used a personal contact to pull Eddie out of jail. All of them, they’d worked to put together this picture perfect image of businessman and philanthropist Edward K. Jarvis just to line their pockets, but never did they expect Eddie to be a violent man. Even when he’d first proposed killing Larke, no one had taken him seriously. But when they realized what she could do to their lifestyle, Robert could safely say that she’d been their only approved kill. However, Eddie was a coldblooded psychopath…and he’d helped him escape from the one place where the psychopath truly needed to be.

  “Mr. Dillinger, I heard a commotion…”

  Irina gasped and covered her mouth in horror when she saw both him and Joni on the floor.

  “Call an ambulance,” he squeezed out.

  Irina paused for a split second before disappearing down the hallway, and Robert summoned all of his strength to crawl towards the bathroom. Once inside, he reached up to the countertop and felt around until his fingertips grazed the plastic casing of Joni’s phone. He wrapped his fingers around the body, pulled the phone down to the floor, and searched through her call log until he found the last call that she received. Saying a small prayer, he pressed the call button.

  “This is Senator Robert Dillinger,” he answered. “Is this the FBI?”

  *****

  The firestorm had come down on the entire facility. Delgano stood on his porch and watched as the police raided the workshop that he and Eddie had taken such care to build and develop. They ushered out fully-dressed men and women wearing headsets, some of them clutching items from their desks under their arms. Behind them, half-naked young men and women emerged in droves, some of them falling over each other as they scrambled out of the warehouse.

  It was only a matter of time before they came for him, and he didn’t doubt that they’d already invaded the residence at the address he’d kept on file at the precinct. After seeing Larke on television, he’d hidden out in the less conspicuous concrete home he often retreated to whenever he wanted to get away from the world. It was high enough on the hill that he could see everything going on down below, but with all that was about to go down, Jamaica was the last place he needed to be. Without a doubt, he knew that if the police got their hands on him, they’d immediately turn him over to the US regardless of all he’d done for the bastards.

  “Mr. Richards, the car is waiting for you downstairs,” his assistant, Michele, called after him. “Is there anything else you need before your flight?”

  He tossed his cigarette butt off the porch and into the bushes below. “No.”

  “I take it that you will not be returning to Jamaica?” She probed.

  He shrugged his large shoulders. “Not anytime soon. The island is too small for me now. I think it is time that I retire and spend the rest of my days in luxury.”

  She bit her bottom lip. “Maybe I could come with you, Mr. Richards?”

  A deep laugh rumbled from his throat. “No.”

  He then brushed past her and trudged down the stairs. Eddie had arranged a plane to take him to Mexico until things died down, then from there he would travel to Europe to his villa on the Amalfi coast. He even already had staff waiting for his arrival.

  He squeezed into the car and slipped a pair of sunglasses over his eyes as though they would block out the scene at the warehouse. Even as they passed the carnival of lights from the police vehicles, he refused to turn towards the commotion. It was all eventually going to end sometime, as both he and Eddie knew, but this wasn’t the way that he was expecting to get out. He didn’t like the feeling of heat on his back and had expected to pack his bags in an anticlimactic kind of way. Then, he’d leave for Europe and never look back again. Never be on the radar of any federal agency. But, there wasn’t anything he could do about that now.

  He smirked when he saw the Gulfstream aircraft that was waiting for him on the airstrip. When the car came to a complete stop, he collected his things and trekked across the path towards the steps.

  “Delgano Richards,” a man who’d suddenly appeared in the entryway greeted. “My name is William Wright. I’m an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his breast pocket. “Do you know what I have here?”

  Delgano took a step backwards. “Doesn’t matter.”

  The man chuckled and two more agents appeared behind him in the doorway. “You’d think it doesn’t matter, but this little piece of paper tells me that I can take you with me.”

  Delgano folded his arms. “Jamaica wouldn’t extradite one of its own citizens.”

  The three men laughed. “Well for one, that’s wrong. And two, this little piece of paper tells me that you were born in the state of Florida.”

  Delgano’s eyebrows narrowed. “What?”

  “Yep,” Agent Wright continued, unfurling the paper. “Kyrie Antonio Wesleyan aka Delgano Mylrie Richards, born in Palm Beach County, FL to Marilyn Eliza Coates. And, after talking to a few people Delgano, we understand that after you were born, your father fled to Jamaica to avoid child support charges. Your mother followed him but died shortly after her arrival from an illness related to her pregnancy. So, you see, you’re an American citizen. Which means, you come with us.”

  Delgano took a step backwards and touched his hand to his hip, but the two other agents already had their guns brandished. He’d already known that he was an American citizen because the woman who’d partially raised him had told him the story of how he’d come to be.

  His ailing mother had shown up at the doorstep of a woman named Ms. Annette with him wrapped in a blanket in a tin pail. Once Annette realized that his mother was only a few days away from death, she’d taken them both in and cared for his mother until she passed. Annette had been Eddie’s biological mother and although kind at heart, had lived the kind of life that had forced her to use prostitution as a means to an end. Eventually, her profession led her to a relationship with a man who’d promised to take her away from the shantytown life, but who’d actually turned out to be a married sea captain. The nights when he told her he was at sea, he was with his wife in a massive house in St. Andrew.

  Unable to accept the fact that he’d lied, Annette h
ad journeyed to the house with both he and Eddie in tow, and banged on the wrought-iron gate until the man’s wife came out of the house. He remembered how the wife looked, also a beautiful woman, but with a swollen face and very sad expression. Annette and the woman had talked for a little bit until the man’s car came cruising up the driveway, and when he spotted Annette, he leapt from his car and ordered his wife inside. When the wife finally obeyed, he grabbed Annette by the hair and Delgano remembered thinking that this was the man he’d heard Annette talking about in her stories. The man that she’d called Satan.

  Still with a full grasp of Annette’s hair, he’d jammed his fist into her throat and she collapsed to the floor gasping for air. An enraged Eddie, only seven at the time, had charged towards the man who’d used a single hand to shove him backwards and to the floor. Eddie had scraped his back across the concrete and although Delgano had only been five years old, Eddie was the only brother he knew, so he’d pulled him until he was laying on the softer grass next to the driveway. The man had then picked Annette up, tossed her into the back of his truck, and drove away.

  That was the last that they saw of her.

  Both he and Eddie waited in the bushes until nightfall, but when the man returned, it had only been him. Delgano didn’t fully understand then what he knew now, but even for such a young boy, Eddie understood. And it had changed him.

  “You always have the option of doing this the easy way,” Agent Wright warned. “I didn’t come down here for a bloodbath, but so help me God…”

  Delgano’s eyes darted between the three men before he held up his hands in surrender. It wasn’t in his nature to give up, but there was one major issue poking him in the back of his brain. The only other person who knew that he wasn’t a natural Jamaican citizen, and who could prove it, was Eddie.