When they made it up to the front door, he rang the bell. And sure enough, within seconds, Kate Oswald opened that door quickly. And not warmly either. “What are you doing here?” he asked Trevor, with a fixed frown on her face.
“How are you, Kate?”
“Terrible. My cousin is dead. Thanks to you. What do you want?”
“You know I didn’t have anything to do with Margo’s murder. Because if I did,” Trevor added, “why the fuck you opened the door?”
Kate seemed to realize that small problem, too, and moved to quickly close it back. But Trevor’s big shoe was already in the doorway.
“But since you opened it,” he said, easily forcing the door all the way open, “we may as well come in.”
Kate attempted to resist his force, but she gave it up quickly. And Trevor placed his hand on the small of Carly’s back and they walked on in.
Trevor closed and locked the door behind them.
Kate walked further into the cabin that didn’t look cabin-like at all: not even any paneling or logs were anywhere to be seen. Just floor-to-ceiling windows everywhere. Carly had never seen a cabin look quite that elegant.
Kate was elegant, too, Carly thought. She wore a flowing satin peignoir as if it wasn’t the middle of the day, as she folded her arms and looked at Trevor with particular disdain. “What do you want?” she asked again.
“You know what I want. I want to know who killed Margo, and who tried to frame me for her murder?”
Kate frowned. “Why would I know something like that?” she asked him.
Carly glanced at Trevor. She was certain he found it odd, too, that Kate Oswald didn’t deny that he had been framed.
“You were the one who slept with Ralph Cohen to pump him for info on my life, and my wife’s life. You’re the one who paid Jason Davis to pump my wife for intel on Drena’s dinner party, and whether or not I would be there. You’re the one who got Jason to accept a phone call from Peter King as he spooked my wife, as he called it. And you’re wondering why I’m here?”
Another non-denial, Carly thought, as she stared at Kate Oswald. She could tell Kate was upset. She probably thought Ralph and Jason would never tell anybody about their roles in the scheme. She probably thought she had both men right where she wanted them. “That’s what I get,” she said, “for sending boys to do a man’s job.”
“And what job was that?” Trevor asked.
“What job do you think?” Kate asked, unfolding her arms. “I cannot stand the sight of you. You or your . . . wife.” She looked at Carly as if she was trash. “When he approached me with a chance to take out that bitch and blame you for it, I jumped at the opportunity.”
Trevor stared at her. His suspicion was confirmed. It was no loan shark in Jersey that killed Margo. It was her own flesh and blood.
But Carly was shocked. “You killed Margo?” she asked. She could have understood her hiring somebody to kill her cousin, but to have done it herself?
And Kate did not back down. “Yes, I killed her,” she said proudly. “Yes, I kill that evil witch. They got me inside of her hotel room. She was asleep, but I woke her up. I wanted that bitch to see it all. I wanted to see the pain and the fear in her eyes, just like I felt when she left me penniless because of some man! If it wasn’t for my ability to seduce the rich and famous, I would have been homeless and she didn’t care. I was glad to see her go!”
“Who got you into that hotel room?” Trevor asked her.
“Hancock took care of it,” she said. “He handled everything.”
“Who’s Hancock?” Trevor asked.
“As if you don’t know,” she said.
But Trevor was frowning. “I don’t know! Who is he?”
“He was there, Trevor!” Kate yelled. “He saw what you did. He was there!”
Carly was puzzled. Trevor especially so. He frowned. “He was where?” he asked her.
“In Rosarito,” Kate said. “In Mexico. Eighteen years ago. Remember that day?”
Trevor’s heart squeezed. He’d never forget that day. But who was Hancock? “But I still don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“He goes by Hancock Beverly now,” Kate said. “But back in Mexico, on that day, he was a twelve-year-old kid named Hancock Phillips.”
When Kate said his last name, Trevor’s heart dropped. The Phillips Family Reunion, plastered onto those SUVs he demolished. And all of those lives he accidentally killed were all Phillips too. He’d never forget those four words on all four of those SUVs.
“He was with his family going to meet up with their relatives in Mexico. It was a family reunion. A simple family reunion. And your killing ass killed damn-near his whole family! Now you know who he is? Now you know?!”
Carly was stunned. What was she talking about? Carly looked at Trevor. Trevor was too stunned to move. His life, sometimes, felt like a vicious cycle.
“Hancock contacted Margo first,” Kate said. “His investigators told him that her current lover, Greg, was cheating on her. He asked if she wanted to take out her current cheating lover and her former cheating lover both at the same time. Kill Greg, they said, although his ass didn’t die, and then frame Trevor as the mastermind. She’d cut a deal that wouldn’t give her any prison time, in exchange for her cooperation. Because Trevor would always be the big fish that the DA preferred. His brother was the former head of the CIA. He just married a Sinatra, as in Mick Sinatra, as in the man every DA in the country would love to put behind bars and throw away the key. He was hated. Margo was beloved. DAs were voted into office. They’d go after the hated one. And it was all set.”
“Why would Margo go along with that?” Trevor asked.
“Don’t you know anything? She was broke. Nobody would hire her and her nasty attitude. She poison to Hollywood. And she also had a drug addiction that they knew about too. But Hancock came to her rescue, at least that was how she saw it. He gave her all of that money she supposed threw at you to represent her. He supplied her habit. He promised her millions when the job was done. He hired me to take her out when she was no longer any use to him. that was my job. And I was glad to accept it.”
Trevor shook his head. “Why?” he asked Kate. “Why would you kill your own cousin?”
“For money. Why else? She didn’t give a damn about me. She left me penniless and started fooling around with you! You’re the bastard in this picture.”
“Then apparently all of that scheming didn’t work,” Trevor said. “I’m still here. I’m free.”
“But I wonder for how long?” Kate asked at the same time that Carly saw something terrifying. She saw that a red dot had suddenly come onto Trevor’s forehead. And she realized in that same instant that it was a laser dot. As in a gun scope.
“Get down!” she screamed and pushed Trevor down with such force that she fell on top of him. And just as she did it, a gunshot was fired into the home through one of those floor-to-ceiling glass windows that missed Trevor and Carly, thanks to Carly, but it didn’t miss Kate.
Trevor and Carly looked at Kate as the bullet pierced through the left side of her chest, and she looked at Trevor as if that was his fault too. And then she fell down dead.
But Trevor knew, whoever was out there, wasn’t done. They apparently had a view into that house. They had to know they missed their intended target, if he was indeed the target. And if the target was still in range, an assassin never stopped shooting.
Trevor was still in range.
And to Trevor’s horror, so was Carly!
He got up quickly, with her still in his arms, and tried to make a run for it out of the front door. But a barrage of bullets followed in such rapid succession, and the sound of boots attempting to kick open the locked front door, forced Trevor to retreat and find a different way out for him and Carly.
He dropped them down to the floor, on their bellies, as they attempted to make it toward the backside of the house. The gunfire was coming from the right side of the house, where the woods
were most prominent, and Trevor, with his own gun out and ready to fire back, steered them toward the left back of the house.
Once he and Carly were clear of the right side windows, they stood up to make a run for it through the back door. Trevor knew he had to stay and fight, to defend their ground, or neither one of them would make it out alive. He had to get them focused on him alone. He had to make sure Carly got out alive.
He hated his soul for not seeing this coming. He hated his soul for putting her in that position to begin with!
“Run around the left side of the house,” he was saying to Carly as he ran her toward the back door. “Stay on this side because the shooter’s on the other side. If the front is clear, you get in that car and take off.” He handed her the car keys. “You run for your life, Carly, you hear me? You run for your life!”
“What about you?” Carly cried.
“I’ll be fine,” Trevor lied. “Don’t worry about me. You’ve got to get out of here alive! Save yourself. Please, Carly!”
And he didn’t wait for her response. He couldn’t wait for her response. He looked out of the backdoor, saw no one, and pushed her out of it. “Go!” he yelled to her.
And then he ran back toward the front of the house just as the front door was kicked in. But Trevor knew his only hope was the element of surprise. He had to get up high. People rarely entered a room looking up. They entered looking to get even.
Trevor jumped on a side table and hoisted his body up onto the massive dining room chandelier.
As soon as the four gunmen ran in, they began firing at eye level. Exactly as Trevor wanted it. He, instead, began firing too. And he picked them off quickly, one by one, before they could look up and see where the shots were coming from.
Until a second wave of men ran in just behind the first wave, and when that second wave looked to be an army of men, Trevor knew he couldn’t possibly kill that many. His ass was in the fire, as Hammer used to always say whenever he was ready to finish off an enemy, and he was done.
But Carly wasn’t.
As soon as the second wave entered the home, and began firing on Trevor, matching him bullet for bullet and then some, just barely missing him as he swung around on that chandelier, Trevor’s rental car came flying through the front floor-to-ceiling window and ran over most of that second wave of men like she was running over roaches. And those she didn’t run over, they were trying to get out of the car’s way. But they were right in the line of Trevor’s fire. And he took them out too.
He jumped down from the chandelier, onto the hood of the wrecked car, and jumped in through the open window. He didn’t know if there was a third wave, but he knew that assassin was still out there.
“Drive!” he yelled, but Carly was already putting the car in reverse and speeding backwards out of the cabin. Trevor jumped into the backseat as Carly sped the car around, and waited for the assassin to show himself.
As soon as the assassin came out of those woods, firing on the car, Trevor fired back. That assassin’s aim might have been good, but nobody was better than Trevor. He took out his target in three quick shots.
The assassin fell on top of his rifle.
But Carly continued to floor it. She was not going to rest until they were completely off of Kate Oswald’s property.
“Are you alright?” she was anxiously asking Trevor as she drove.
“I’m fine,” Trevor said, breathing so heavily he could barely speak. “You disobeyed me.”
“Shoot me,” Carly said, and Trevor laughed.
Carly smiled, too, because they made it. She drove off of Kate’s property.
And just as she made it onto the road fronting that property, she let out a sigh of relief. She didn’t see the transfer truck coming. Neither one of them saw it. As it slammed into the side of that car so hard that it slid nearly ten feet before they started flipping and flipping and rolling down the road flipping. Nearly fifty feet down that road, the car landed on its roof.
And men in that transfer truck jumped out, and with their guns drawn ran toward the emasculated car where not a soul was stirring.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Trevor woke up to the feel of tough terrain beneath him. He was in an old rusty Jeep, being transported through what looked like a dustbowl. He squinted his eyes and looked around. The sun was so bright he had to move his head down and look up almost sideways just to make out anything at all. And what he made out was foreign even to his well-traveled body.
“Where am I?” he asked.
The guard sitting on the backseat was carrying a rifle. That was not normally a problem for Trevor. Even in his weakened state where his body felt as if it had been run over by a train, he still could have put up a major fight for control of that weapon. But his hands were tied. Both hands were in chains in front of him. He was no superman. He was not about to try and fight that big guard with no hands. No way.
“Where am I?” he asked again. But just as he asked it, he realized something earth-shattering. And suddenly he didn’t give a damn about where he was. “Where’s my wife?” he asked anxiously. So anxiously that the driver of the vehicle glanced at him through the rearview mirror.
But Trevor was about to jump out of that Jeep, hands tied or not, if somebody didn’t tell him something! “Where’s my wife?” he asked again.
The guard looked at him.
“Where’s the girl who was with me? Where is she?”
The guard stared at him a moment longer, and then looked forward again. “Dead,” he said as if he was saying how hot it was outside. “The girl is dead.”
But Trevor was still staring at him. He did not believe it. “What do you mean dead? She’s not dead. What are you talking about, motherfucker? She’s not dead! She can’t be!”
The guard angrily held his rifle with both hands and placed the barrel of the rifle against Trevor’s neck. “Shut the fuck up,” he yelled, “or you’ll be next!”
After a few heartbeats, the man removed the rifle and returned to his position.
But Trevor was devastated. It wasn’t true. He knew it wasn’t true. He would have felt something, something, if Carly no longer walked the face of this earth. That fucker didn’t know what he was talking about. That was the answer to Trevor.
It had to be.
They arrived at a big, beautiful house in total isolation from any civilization for as far as the eye could see. They could have been in Death Valley in the Mojave Desert, or they could have been on the other side of the world in the Australian Outback. Trevor didn’t know. And he didn’t give a fuck. All he could think about was Carly.
Once the guard got out and walked around to Trevor’s side of the Jeep, he grabbed Trevor and forced him to get out. “Move!” he said angrily, and flung Trevor out of the Jeep.
He kept his hands on Trevor’s big, upper arm as they made their way up to the entrance. There was a big infinity pool on the far side of the house, with statues of naked ladies surrounding the edge. There was a golf course and tennis courts out there too. It seemed almost surreal that this beautiful place would be where the person, whom Trevor assumed was the mastermind, would be holed up.
When they walked inside and made their way into the beautiful living room, everything changed. Not because Hancock Beverly was there. Not because his boss, Scrathland Buroot, was there. Everything changed for Trevor because Carly was there too.
His heart leaped with joy. “Carly!” he cried out, unable to restrain his joy. She was alive. Her hands were tied, too, and she was standing in front of Buroot, as if she was his protection. She was scarred like Trevor, from the accident, but she was alive. Thank God, he thought. She was alive!
Carly, too, was happy to see Trevor. They had separated them at some point that neither one of them could remember. Both of them had been rendered unconscious when the accident occurred.
“That’ll be all,” Buroot said to the guard and driver, and both men made their way back outside, closing the door behind them
.
But Buroot put a damper on Trevor and Carly’s enthusiasm too. “Don’t get so happy,” he said to Trevor. “She goes first.”
Trevor’s heart squeezed. He forgot just that quickly that they were, by no means, out of the woods.
“You must be Hancock Beverly,” Trevor said.
“No,” said Buroot. “He is.”
“Not only did you kill my mother and almost her entire family,” Hancock Beverly said, “but you destroyed my life, too.”
Trevor knew it was the mistake of his life, and he was willing to face the consequences of that horrible mistake. But he was playing for time. He was trying to figure out just how was he going to get Carly out alive.
“My father,” Buroot said, “or as you knew him all of those years ago, was Echo 9.”
Trevor frowned. “Echo 9?”
“That was the codename they gave to him,” Buroot said.
Trevor remembered Echo 9 “He was my advance man that day,” Trevor said.
“Yes,” Buroot said. “He was. And when you fucked it all up, the Agency didn’t blame you. Oh no. You were the boss’s brother. They’d never blame Hammer Reese’s kin. But they blamed mine.”
Buroot had nothing but hate in his eyes. Even Carly could see that. And Trevor knew, barring a miracle, he didn’t bring them all the way to his desert to let them go free again.
“They banished my father from the Agency,” Buroot said. “And when he committed suicide, they knew they couldn’t have that hanging over their heads. So they had to frame somebody for his murder. A murder that never took place. I was a thug back then, and my father and I were not close. We had some tough times before he passed away. So they framed me for his death, and sent me away to prison. They threw away the fucking key!”
Trevor exhaled. It didn’t surprise him that the Agency would cut its losses. That was what it did. He didn’t know anything about what happened with Echo 9, but it didn’t surprise him what his son was saying.
Trevor Reese: His Protective Love Page 16
