In Love and Rescue: When love is the perfect rescue... Page 7

  “And are somehow able to exchange money without leaving a paper trail,” Desmond added.

  “But why come after me?”

  Doug pulled up another screen. “Larke, how much was Eddie worth when your team looked into it?”

  She thought back to the trial. “About forty-five million.”

  He chuckled and pressed a button as numbers began to scroll across the screen. “Try one-hundred and twenty-million dollars.”

  Desmond sucked air through his teeth. “Damn.”

  “Damn is right,” Doug added. “With men like Jarvis, that money means that they have absolute power. The fact that he was able to keep more than half of his net-worth hidden from the IRS means power even over the US government. Your conviction trumped that power. You threatened his livelihood. That’s why he targeted you.”

  Desmond handed the folder to Larke before grabbing another. “Did you find anything on Cory?”

  “No, but my instincts tell me that he’s not alive.”

  “But he didn’t kill me right away,” Larke suggested. “Couldn’t that mean that Cory is still alive somewhere?”

  Doug and Desmond glanced at each other.

  “Larke,” Desmond began, “the most logical reason explaining why Jarvis ordered to bring you in alive, is because he wanted to kill you himself. You were the direct threat. Cory was the accessory. So, it was less important to him to have a direct hand in Cory’s death.”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, wishing that she could go back to a few years ago, right before she made the decision to accept the position at the US Attorney’s office.

  “I’m sorry,” Desmond apologized. “I didn’t mean to put it that way.”

  She didn’t respond and distracted herself by flipping through the folder. In the file, there were photos of young men that had been killed along with Doug’s notes as to how Eddie was probably connected. The entire thing made her nauseous.

  “Another thing,” Doug continued. He pulled up an image that looked like it was taken from a surveillance video of Delgano standing with an unidentified man. “This third man just recently popped up on the radar, but I haven’t been able to find any information on him down here. My informant has been combing through the island and coming up bone dry. Nobody knows anything about him. Getting this image was pure luck, but I’m thinking that he’s the main link in the chain joining these two together.”

  Larke went to the sofa and continued to flip through the materials. She couldn’t believe that she’d had the nerve to feel triumphant when she’d convicted Eddie on the murder charge. Looking at all the information, the drugs, the money, and the secrecy, it was possible that he was linked to dozens of homicides. George Vickers’s murder didn’t make up for that. It never could.

  A piece about a girl who’d suddenly died within hours of leaving an airplane caught her attention. The girl’s death was never investigated as the coroner reported that it was due to natural causes.

  “This girl, do you have her medical records?”

  She held up the folder for them to see.

  “Taina Bailey,” Doug recalled. “No, I didn’t check for them. She died of natural causes. The only reason her name came up is because she was the girlfriend of a young man whose death I think is tied to Jarvis’ operation. She was called to the police station for interrogation after his death and had nothing to offer, so they let her go. On the flight back to her home in the Virgin Islands, after getting off of the plane complaining about a headache, she died that night in the hospital.”

  Larke brought the folder over to Doug. “Do you think you could get her records?”

  “I can try, but my contacts in the VI are scarce.”

  “What island is she from?” Desmond asked.

  “St. Thomas,” Doug replied.

  Larke pointed to the picture. “This was a nineteen year old girl with no reported history of chronic illness, so for her to just die like that is a bit suspect.”

  Desmond nodded. “You’re right. I mean, it says here that she died within hours of leaving the airport.” He skimmed through the details. “And look at this, she wasn’t even treated in the hospital. She was taken to a privatized facility to seek care. And guess who footed the bill? The Deputy Superintendent himself.”

  Doug grabbed the folder, surprised that he’d missed such a simple connection.

  “I would bet everything I have that the family wasn’t satisfied with her cause of death,” Desmond declared. “If we can get to them, we can get to the records.”

  Doug started to respond but was interrupted by the sound of something solid hitting into the side of the boat. He ducked, pulled a gun out from underneath the desk, and then tossed a matching rifle to Desmond. Carefully peering outside of the window, Desmond made out Gano’s frame about a hundred yards away with a small fleet of vehicles behind him. In front of him, four men were on one knee with their firearms pointed at the boat, while a woman stood talking to him with a baby on her hip. She pointed at Ivor’s trucked parked on the gravel, then at the boat.

  “Come out now,” one of the men spoke over a megaphone. “We know you are on the boat and if you want to keep your lives, you need to come out with your hands raised.”

  Desmond loaded his weapon and motioned to Larke to keep her head down. Doug sank to the floor and moved a few objects around to reveal a smaller circular window closer to the floor of the boat. It was covered by tinted film and had a second opening next to it just large enough for him to fit the tip of his rifle through.

  Gano stomped over and grabbed the speaker from the man. “Look, I know you know who this is,” he bellowed. “And if I didn’t hurt you before, you should realize that I’m not trying to hurt you. There are some people who want to talk to you young woman, so I suggest you give up this nonsense chase before you lose your life.”

  Desmond and Larke looked at each other.

  “He doesn’t know you’re with me,” she realized. Desmond found it even more interesting that Gano hadn’t gotten any additional information out of Eva and Ivor. He smiled at the thought.

  When the trio didn’t respond, Gano signaled for one of the kneeling men to fire another warning shot which ricocheted off the side of the boat and into the water.

  “It’ll take more than a few weak slugs to penetrate old Cordella,” Doug snickered.

  Gano signaled for a third man to take a shot and as he aimed his gun, Doug fired a shot into the bone of his shin, causing him to topple over and grab his leg in pain. The other men distractedly looked over at their fallen comrade and Desmond took the opportunity to pick off the other three: one in the hip, another in the abdomen, and the third in the kneecap. Frustrated, Gano dropped the megaphone and brandished his own weapon while a few more officers came up to the shore, some to replace the fallen positions and others to tend to the injured. Desmond fired a few more shots and then leaned against the wall of the boat when they retaliated. Meanwhile, unable to directly locate where Doug’s shots were coming from, a few more went down with hits to the legs and groin.

  “Larke, I need you to do me a favor,” Desmond requested. Putting in another round of ammunition, he jerked his head towards the front of the boat. “If you go through those doors, you’ll find where the controls are. I need you to go in, start her up, and get us as far away from these shots as possible. The boat will hold up for only so long and they have more resources than we do.”

  She rose and began moving to the front of the boat, but the sound of another shot bouncing off of the exterior sent her to the floor, frozen.

  “It’s okay,” Desmond coaxed. “Stay low. Doug and I have your back. Just get to the front for me.”

  She closed her eyes to block out the sounds of the bullets and began moving forward again, crawling along the floor. Even though her heart leapt out of her chest whenever a bullet resonated, she knew that if she stopped, instead of the frame of the boat, one of those bullets could possibly connect with her body.

&nbs
p; Once she was inside the captain’s quarters, she cursed when she realized that the only part of the vessel that she recognized was the steering wheel.

  “Dammit, Desmond.”

  She began to look around for anything else that might be familiar, and then her eye picked up a rope chain hanging from a shiny metal key stuck into a port in the boat. Crossing her fingers, she turned the key. After a few seconds, the boat sprang to life.

  When he heard the boat’s engine roar, Desmond plastered himself against the wall again and glanced down at Doug. “Do you think that you can hold them off while I shove us off?”

  Doug fired a few more shots. “Of course man. This is just like the old days.” He jerked his chin towards the cabin. “Get us out of here.”

  Desmond moved swiftly to the cabin where Larke was still examining the controls. Moving around her, he slammed his fist into a red button and the boat teetered as the anchor pulled its way up into the ship. When it was finally dislodged, he pushed the boat into high gear and steered away from the dock. Larke sank into the captain’s chair and Desmond stood behind her, placed a hand on each shoulder, and pressed a quick kiss on the top of her head. As his adrenaline surge abated, he could still feel her quivering underneath his grip.

  “I love the fact that you still spring into action even when under pressure,” he whispered against her hair. “I thought to myself not too long ago that you would have made a solid Navy SEAL.”

  Larke laughed softly and covered his hand with one of hers. “Never. Courtroom for me all the way. I don’t have the nerves for this.”

  He let her hand linger over his for a minute before pressing another kiss atop her head, giving her shoulder a final rub, and going back out to check on Doug. He found him still on the floor on his back with his gun to his side, and his hands relaxed behind his head. The bullets ceased as they got farther out into the water, but he could still see the men at the shore.

  Desmond stood in the frame of the small port window and hoped that Gano could at least see his silhouette so that he knew that he hadn’t abandoned Larke. He wanted the man to then do his research and find whatever he could on him—his military and special forces background, his accolades, his accomplishments—then he wanted Gano to understand that getting to Larke meant getting through him, and that there was no bullet on the Earth that could pierce that deep.

  Chapter Five

  Even though the chaos had ended, Larke’s body was still on alert. Any quiet knock that she heard turned into the sound of a bullet hitting the side of the boat. Sometimes her imagination would stretch the event, allowing one of those bullets to penetrate the boat’s exterior and drill its way into the center of her chest, right through her heart.

  Desmond and Doug were still in the other room going over documents and she was thankful to have a few moments to herself. The two had handled the incident as though it was as commonplace as taking a trip to the grocery store, but for her, it was the closest to a bullet that she had ever gotten in her life. Feigning toughness was no longer an option. She wanted to plaster herself into the corner, wrap her arms around her body, whine, and beg to go home. She thought of her mother’s soft voice waking her up in the morning for school when she was eight, and her father sneaking her a sip of his “special roast” coffee when she was twelve. She wanted that sense of safety and normalcy back, where walking through DC wasn’t culminated by her ducking into a Macy’s to avoid a red dot on her skull. It was all becoming too much and she wasn’t quite sure how much more she could stand.

  “Are you okay?” Desmond’s reassuring voice burst through her thoughts. Facing him, she shook her head and he came over, tilted her face up towards his, and flicked his thumb across her cheek to wipe away a tear that she hadn’t even realized was there. Embarrassed, she vigorously scrubbed her face.

  “Tell me Larke, when was the last time someone tried to kill you?”

  Her eyes widened in shock. “Minutes ago, Des.”

  Spotting a stool lying against the wall, he pulled it over and sat facing her. “And how many times in your life has that happened?”

  “Never.” She placed her hands over her ears. “I can still hear them, Des. The bullets. I can still hear them hitting into the side of the boat. I keep thinking that one is going to get through and hit me right in the chest. Then, I keep seeing my parents, not like they look now, but how they looked to me when I was a kid. My father’s crooked smile and my mother’s thick, curly hair. I don’t see myself as I am now, an adult with a career, I don’t see that.”

  Another tear bubbled forth and before she could wipe it away, he grabbed her hand.

  “There’s nothing wrong with crying,” he reassured. “Your mind is just trying to find a happy place, a memory from your life that will help you cope with all of this madness. It’s trying to do its best to soothe you so you don’t drive yourself crazy. It’s exactly what I’ve been through, Larke, and I don’t want you to deal with this the way I did.”

  She leaned in closer to him. “And what way is that?”

  “Denial,” he admitted for the first time. “After I saw my father kill my mother, I sat there with my mother’s head in my lap for eighteen minutes before the police came. I didn’t even call them. A neighbor heard the commotion and called 911. When the paramedics arrived, I was sitting there with my mother’s blood and my tears soaked all over my shirt. I don’t even remember them prying me away from her. After that day, I became something of a robot and although I made friends because of my brothers in the military, they all knew that there was a line in front of me that I’d drawn that no one, and I mean absolutely no one, was ever going to cross. I trained and focused hard in my work. I made my way up the ranks and eventually became skilled enough to work in Special Forces. It was perfect for me since I never had to have any feelings. I only had to react.”

  He interweaved their fingers just like she’d done at Ivor and Eva’s.

  “I opened up my agency because there was nothing else that I could see myself doing other than protecting people. What I didn’t realize was that in all the people that I’d protected, I was trying to make up for not being able to save my mother. But, I wasn’t dealing with what was going on inside. Now that I look back at my life, I realize that I have made a pretty lonely existence for myself and that’s what I want to avoid happening with you. Don’t take this traumatic experience and turn it into your focus, Larke. You’re kind and giving and accepting, and I don’t want that to ever change. Don’t become a Desmond clone.”

  She smiled at the remark.

  “So what’s wrong then, with crying?” He asked, wiping another tear. “What’s wrong with being scared when you’re supposed to be scared? You made the decision to trust me and followed me along every step of the way. Putting your faith into someone that you barely know isn’t easy. I was expecting you to fight with me or veer off to find your own path, but you didn’t. You worked with me. We formed a team. That takes courage, Larke, and that’s why you’re one of the bravest soldiers I’ve ever met.”

  She sighed. Here he was, a man who’d survived a past unlike anything she had ever personally encountered, telling her that she was brave and courageous. The compliment meant much more coming from him than he would probably ever realize. It even meant more than she’d realized.

  “Thank you,” she replied before he pulled her into his chest. She sobbed against the fabric of his tee and forced images of her parents standing over her open casket out of her head.

  “Please don’t sell yourself short, though, Des,” she spoke into his chest. “So far, you’ve beat all the odds that fate stacked against you. You channeled your anger into a service. At the end of the day, when I look at you, all I see is a man with a huge, incredible heart.”

  Then she looked up at him, merely a few inches from his face, and he realized that he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to taste the caverns of her sweet mouth again, fasten her body to his, and strip off the dress that she wore so that he could feel
her skin against his. He wanted to meld their bodies together and lose himself in the heated crevices of her flesh for hours, never letting her touch get more than a few inches away from him, and draw her so close that no air could pass between them. Closer than any other man had ever gotten before…

  His thoughts died as his mind recalled that Ivor had said the same about his father’s reaction to his mother.

  “I’m going to go check on Doug and figure out what we’re going to do from this point on,” he abruptly announced, releasing her from his grasp. While disappointed by the lost contact, Larke only watched as he disappeared through the doors. Turning back towards the controls, she basked in the few seconds of warmth his embrace always left behind before it was replaced with the cold loneliness that was certain to follow.

  Desmond joined Doug in the main room of the boat and flopped down on the sofa. Running his hand over his face, he tried to banish the thought of him doing to Larke what his father had done to his mother. In his heart, he knew that he could never hurt anyone the way his father had, but there was no way to be sure.

  Over the years, he’d managed to distance himself from any semblance of a romantic relationship, and although it had been generally easy to meet women, none of them had ever crossed that line. None of them had ever gotten close enough to learn any intimate details about him.

  Only this one.

  His rules had consisted of no deep conversations, morning sleepovers, or any form of physical contact unless it had to do with sex. All of his “relationships” were emotionless physical interactions with women whose families he never expected to meet, and whose birthdays he never expected to remember. It wasn’t as though there’d been something wrong with them. In fact, many of the women had been decent, well-educated, and successful. However, it was the only way that he could prevent them from expecting more. Laying out those expectations in the beginning helped assuage any guilt he felt when one ended up wanting to get closer, and he shoved back in the other direction.