Trevor Reese: His Protective Love

by Mallory Monroe

  The waiter arrived to take their drink and dinner orders. Big Daddy and Jenay glanced at each other as Trevor and Carly told the waiter what they wanted. Even they could see the strain on Trevor’s face. He had far too much on his plate, and they knew it. They also knew he could handle it.

  But they were especially worried about Carly.

  After the waiter left, Jenay smiled at her beloved adopted daughter. Although she was closer with Carly’s older sister Ashley, and although Carly and Big Daddy were thick as thieves, Jenay and Carly had a bond too. “How’s life been treating you, young lady?” she asked Carly. “I haven’t seen you since the wedding.”

  “I know. I’ve been meaning to come up there and see the family every weekend, but it’s been so hectic at work and time just hasn’t been generous.”

  Big Daddy smiled. Carly always had a way with words, he thought.

  But Jenay wasn’t letting her off that easily. “You have to make time for your family, Carly,” she said. “I know it’s difficult sometimes to do it, but you have to do it. You haven’t attended any family dinners. Tony said he hasn’t even heard from you.”

  “I talk to Daddy every day,” Carly said as Trevor’s phone rang again. When he saw it was yet another one of his friends calling in, he didn’t answer that call either. “I tell him to tell you guys I love you,” Carly added.

  “That’s not the same thing as you delivering that message, in person, in Jericho,” Jenay admonished her. “Now I want you to do better than that. We’re a close-knit family and we’re going to stay that way. Include us in your life, you hear me?”

  Jenay was sweet, Carly knew, but she was tough as nails too. “Yes, sir,” Carly said, and then quickly corrected herself. “I mean ma’am,” she added, but Big Daddy and Jenay were already laughing. Even Trevor smiled, as his phone rang yet again.

  But Big Daddy was less worried about Carly’s family involvement. He knew she’d come around. He was more concerned about Trevor’s Margo involvement. “Trevor?”

  “Sir?” Trevor was checking his Caller ID. Another friend calling in. Another call unanswered.

  “Just what is Margo Robinet to you?”

  Their drink orders arrived. When the waiter left, Trevor took a sip of his drink before answering. But then he answered. “We used to be an item,” he said.

  “An item?” Big Daddy asked. “I’m from Maine, boy. What the hell is an item? You mean you two dated?”

  Trevor nodded. “Yes.”

  “How serious was it?” Big Daddy asked.

  “If fucking is serious,” Trevor said bluntly, “then we were very serious. If love is what you mean, then we weren’t serious at all.”

  That was what Big Daddy and Jenay both loved about Trevor. He was an honest man. He didn’t sugar coat or dance around tough talk. Carly had a good one.

  Carly knew it, too, especially when the loud stereo system started playing a very familiar song, the song they played at their wedding, and she hit Trevor on his arm.

  “That’s our song, babe,” she said to him with a big smile on her face.

  It was only then did everybody else at their table heard it. It was Dionne Warwick singing the Jennings/Kerr penned tune, I know I’ll Never Love This Way Again.

  “Oh, yeah,” Trevor said, nodding his head. He definitely remembered the song since he was the one who wanted it played at their wedding.

  People were getting out on the dance floor, and Carly was anxious to join them. “Let’s dance, Trev,” she said.

  Trevor ran the back of his hand across his tired eyes. It was obvious to everyone that he was simply too drained. “He’s tired, Car,” Jenay said.

  It was at that moment that Carly remembered who her husband was, and the pressures he was constantly under. And her smile left. She wasn’t carefree anymore. She couldn’t expect him to cater to her whims like that. She was ashamed of herself for even asking him.

  Although Jenay had it right that he was tired, when Trevor looked over at his wife and saw the sadness in her big, pretty eyes, he also knew he couldn’t let her down. Everybody called Carly an old soul. But he knew she wasn’t. She was still a kid.

  “Come on,” he said as he sat his cell phone down, got up, and reached out his hand to Carly.

  Carly smiled that smile that kept him going as she gladly accepted his hand and got up from her seat. “Are you sure?” she said to him. “I know you’re tired.”

  “I’m never too tired for you,” Trevor said as he placed his arm on her lower back and escorted her to the dance floor.

  Carly looked back at her parents grinning and she gave them a fist pump of excitement. They both laughed.

  But Jenay was impressed. “I sometimes wished, like you do, that she would have chosen a boring joe to be her husband,” she said to Big Daddy. “But no,” she added, shaking her head as she and Big Daddy continued to look at the couple on the dance floor. “She chose the right one. Because Mister Trevor Reese? That’s a man right there!”

  Big Daddy nodded his head. Although, he also knew, he was a man with a lot going on. But Big Daddy knew Trevor loved and cherished Carly, and could protect her above any other man alive. There was no doubt in Big Daddy’s mind about that.

  And as Trevor pulled Carly into his arms on the dance floor, and they slow-dragged right along with the other couples as the music played, he closed his tired eyes. Margo be damned, he decided. He took her off of his mind for now. His focus, his love, all of his attention was entirely on the woman who deserved it: Carly.

  “A fool will lose tomorrow

  Reaching back for yesterday.

  I won’t turn my head in sorrow

  If you should go away.

  I’ll stand here and remember

  Just how good it’s been;

  And I know

  I’ll never love this way again.

  I know

  I’ll never

  Love this way again.

  So I keep holding on

  Before the good is gone.

  I know

  I’ll never

  Love this way again.

  Hold on.

  Hold on.

  Hold on!”

  But after the dance, and after the dinner, and after Trevor and Carly said their goodbyes to Big Daddy and Jenay and got back into their limousine, Trevor made a series of phone calls. He wanted to find out the whereabouts of Margo Robinet. By the time they made it home, and the limo driver had gone, the writing was on the wall to Carly.

  “You’re going to confront her, aren’t you?” Carly asked him as soon as he unlocked the front door of his home and opened it for her.

  Trevor stood at the threshold and nodded. “I have to, yes,” he said.

  Carly stared at him. He was the man he was and he was never going to be anybody else. And she accepted, and loved him for that.

  She smiled. “No rest for the weary, eh?” she asked.

  Trevor smiled too. “None,” he said. Then his look turned serious. “Except when I’m with you,” he added.

  “Then be sure to get back to me,” Carly ordered.

  Trevor gave her a salute. “Will do, sir,” he said, and Carly laughed. “You stupid!” she said playfully.

  He removed his suit coat and handed it to her, and then he kissed her. “I’ll be back before you can forget me,” he said, and she smiled again.

  But when he walked back down the steps, got into his Mercedes, and sped down the driveway and out of their electronic gate, the gaiety on her face was gone, too, but sadness didn’t overtake her. Anger did. Anger toward Margo and her craziness.

  She closed the door and made her way upstairs. She had total confidence in Trevor. He’d find that bitch, she knew. He’d get her to recant that nonsense. Of that, Carly had no doubt.

  What was bothering her more, and angering her, wasn’t that Trevor would set things right, but that people kept putting him in positions where he had to.

  That, to Carly, was the unconscionable part of
life with Trevor she’d never accept.

  That was why, as soon as Trevor had gone, she pulled out her cellphone and gave Amari a call.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  He parked his car two blocks away and walked casually to the location.

  When he arrived at the luxury hotel, his prearranged contact was waiting to let him in through the service entrance. His contact gave him the bellhop uniform and put him in one of the dressing rooms. Once he placed the uniform over his own clothes, put on the white gloves, and walked out, his contact handed him a tray with a bottle of champagne in a bucket, and a vase adorned with beautiful red roses. He also handed him a keycard.

  “Thirty-seven ninety-two,” his contact reminded him, Trevor nodded, and he was off.

  By the time he made it to the thirty-seventh floor, he had seen only about four other people and all of them ignored him the way the help was usually ignored. Trevor kept his head down, got off of the elevator, and made his way to room 3792.

  He looked around when he arrived near the room. When he saw no-one but a maid on the other end of the long hall cleaning up what looked like a bad spill, he unlocked the door, staring at her to see if she showed any interest in what he was doing whatsoever. She never even looked up from her mop.

  He went inside of the room where Margo Robinet was holed up. Why she wasn’t at her Boston estate but was holed up in a hotel to begin with was another question he wanted an answer to. What the hell was going on?

  The room was bright because it was floor-to-ceiling windows from wall to wall and the lights of the nightlife were shining through. And it was pen-drop quiet.

  Trevor sat the tray on the side table and pulled out his revolver. He knew how to walk silently, and he exercised it to perfection as he walked through the suite looking for that butt crack called Margo.

  When he saw her, she was in her bed sleeping like a baby. The element of surprise was still on his side.

  He walked gingerly up to her bed. He wanted the gun to her head before she opened her eyes. And he got his wish. He pressed the gun against the side of her head while she continued to sleep, and moved his mouth closer to her face. “Wake your ass up,” he said to her.

  But she continued to sleep.

  It was only then did Trevor realize something profound. He felt no breath on his face, even though he was within an inch of her mouth.

  “What the,” he started to say as he pulled back the covers to check her pulse. Was she dead? Had she died somehow?

  She was and she had. He realized it, not because he checked her pulse and proved it. But because she had a bullet hole in her stomach. Several bullet holes. Blood was all over her torso and the sheets on which she laid.

  Trevor, stunned, took a step backwards as a distressed look appeared on his face. What the fuck was going on! he wondered.

  But he could not even entertain such a thought for very long. Because as soon as he looked around the room, to make sure the shooter wasn’t still in that suite, he heard knocks on the door.

  “Police! Open up!”

  “Shit!” Trevor said out loud. He couldn’t help himself. Because he realized just as sure as he was standing up that he had been set up. Shooting Greg Shaughnessy at his office was the hook. Making those outrageous allegations was the line to get him onsite. Her murder was the sinker.

  He took off even as the cops kept banging on that door.

  But where was he going, he thought as he ran back into the living room. He was on the thirty-seventh floor and there was no balcony! The only way in was the only way out, and the cops were blocking that escape.

  He was in trouble.

  But as they began opening up that door, he wasn’t about to just stand there and let them shoot his ass. He ran back into the bedroom and into the big closet. With nowhere else to go, he went up: onto the top shelf hoping that the cops would play it the way most people played it: whenever they entered a room, they rarely looked up.

  As the cops opened the suite door and were about to enter, the maid down on the other end of the hall, who was staring at the scene now, heard a voice.

  “You? Come here!”

  When she turned and saw a handsome young black man standing in the stairwell with the door propped open, she was at first frightened. But then he smiled. And he flashed a wad of money.

  “Come here,” he said, holding the money out to her.

  Her fear miraculously vanished, she hurried to him then.

  It was Amari. “Go to that room and tell the cops that you saw the guy,” he told the maid. “Tell them he went around that corner on the other end, and into one of the other hotel rooms you think.” He handed her the money. “Do it now.”

  She put down her mop and began to leave.

  “Oh,” Amari added, “if you say a word about me or anybody else, I shall have to kill you.” Then he smiled again. “Go.”

  The woman, confused by him, nevertheless was pleased to earn that kind of money. What did she owe that hotel? They didn’t give a damn about her.

  And she played it to perfection. Just as the cops had entered the hotel and had made their way to Margo’s bedroom, discovering her dead body, she screamed as loud as she could and was running toward Margo’s suite. The cops ran back out.

  “I saw him!” she yelled when they ran out. “I saw him!”

  “Where?” one of the two cops asked anxiously. “Where?”

  “He run around that corner and down the other hall. He probably in another room by now, I don’t know. But I saw him run away!”

  Both cops took off down the corridor, away from where Amari stood, and around that corner.

  Trevor, who heard her screams, jumped down from the closet and cautiously ran out of the bedroom. When he realized both cops were gone, he ran out of the room.

  “That way,” the maid said in a whisper and Trevor ran toward the other end of the hall. When Amari stepped out of the stairwell and revealed himself, Trevor’s heart soared. His son was there. Somebody he could trust had his back!

  “What took you so long?” he asked his son as he ran into the stairwell and both of them began running down the stairs.

  “Traffic,” Amari answered in his usual good-humored way, and Trevor relaxed. He’d been forgiven. That, he was learning, was what families did.

  But it wasn’t until they made it out of that hotel, through the service entrance, and casually walked the two blocks to where Trevor had parked, did they exhale. They knew a job wasn’t complete until they were off scene. They were off scene.

  “I started to ask where you parked,” he said, “but now I see.”

  He saw that Amari’s Camaro was parked right behind his Mercedes.

  “When Carly phoned and told me what you were going to do, I contacted some of your contacts and they told me where you’d gone. So I came here, looked for your car at least two blocks away, and found it. Then I found you.”

  “Good work,” Trevor said. “And thanks.”

  Amari smiled.

  “Now get out of here,” Trevor said, opening his car door to do that himself. “Oh,” he added as Amari walked to his car. “Why didn’t you show up for dinner tonight?”

  “I had to nurse my wounded pride,” he said to his father as he opened his own car door. “I can be a bitch sometimes you know.”

  Trevor smiled. Amari was such a joker. And then he laughed. Amari, laughing too, got into his car and both men took off. In different directions.

  But later that night, after Trevor had made it home and into Carly’s arms, thanking her for calling Amari, and when all seemed right with the world again, it wasn’t. His escape and Amari’s efforts were all in vain.

  Visitors came to Trevor’s home. In the form of the Boston PD.

  “Trevor Reese,” the Robbery/Homicide Detective said, “you are under arrest for the murder of Margo Robinet.”

  And, to Carly’s horror, they proceeded to frisk, handcuff, and take Trevor downtown.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
>
  Big Daddy Sinatra and his wife were driving near the outskirts of New Hampshire, heading back to their home in Maine, when they got the call from Carly. Without giving it a second’s discussion, Big Daddy slung his Jaguar XJ around, and headed back to Boston. They met Carly at the police station.

  They headed in, and were about to hurry to the information desk, when Jenay spotted Carly. “There she is,” she said as she patted Big Daddy on his suitcoat sleeve. Big Daddy looked. When he saw Carly and Amari sitting against a back wall, he took Jenay’s hand and they headed in that direction.

  Amari stood up when he saw Carly’s parents coming, and when they arrived he hugged both of them. “Sorry I missed dinner tonight,” he said.

  “No, you aren’t or you would have been there,” Jenay said, admonishing him.

  Amari couldn’t help but smile. He knew there was no excuse.

  “Do better,” Jenay said, and then she pinched his cheek. She liked Amari. Big Daddy did too. Everybody in their family did.

  But Big Daddy was most concerned about Carly. His eyes never left her. “You okay?” he asked as he moved toward her.

  She sat there, with her legs crossed and her small body leaned forward, and nodded her head. But he knew her better than anyone. She wanted to cry.

  He sat beside her and placed his arm around her waist. “It’ll be okay,” he comforted her.

  “Any word?” Jenay asked Carly as Amari made way for her to sit beside her daughter too.

  But Carly shook her head. “They won’t tell us anything.”

  “Well where’s his attorneys?” Jenay asked.

  “His lawyers are here, their upstairs demanding to speak to him, but they keep saying he’s being processed and they won’t tell them anything either. But it shouldn’t take them all night to process him, Daddy. They can at least let his lawyers see him so that they can tell us if he’s okay.”