Mack puffed air out her nose. “If she’s even still alive. That guy… Dexter? Was that his name? He seemed pretty pissed at you. I’m shocked she’s made it this long. Why is it you haven’t gotten the police involved in this?”
“They told him not to,” said Al. “Said they’d kill her if he did.”
My phone rang again. I didn’t have the heart to answer it. “Someone else answer it,” I said, tossing it onto the kitchen counter.
Al strode over to it and picked it up. He looked at the number on the screen. “Restricted. It’s him.” He held the phone out to me. “Answer the phone, kid.”
I glanced up at Al. His watery eyes told me he wasn’t fooling around. He’d had just about enough of the situation. With my heart lodged in my throat, I sighed and answered the phone. “Yeah?”
“Are you fucking kidding me! You really don’t think I’ll kill her, do you?!”
“I had a feeling you were taking me for a ride,” I bellowed into the phone. “And look! I was right! You kidnapped Mack!”
“Yeah, well, I had to keep Pam for insurance. Just in case you tried something. And whaddaya know, I was right! I got a tiny fraction of the money. Now I really get to kill her!”
“If you kill her, you’ll never get the rest of the money,” I interjected. “Listen, I promise. No more games. No more wisecracks. The money’s yours. Just tell me when and where.”
“I can’t trust you to deliver anymore, now can I, Daniel?”
“You can trust me! I promise. No more screwups. Alright? I-I’ll meet you anywhere you want. I’ll go out right now and bring you the money.”
“It’s too late for that. Too. Fucking. Late.” The phone went dead.
I dropped the phone on the counter. “Shit,” I breathed. “Fucking shit. He’s gonna kill her.”
Al’s face went pale. He shook his head. Then he wagged his gnarly old finger at me. “I told you. Didn’t I tell you?”
“I know, Al! I know!” My ears were ringing now. The tension that had me knotted up on the inside was now playing havoc with my head.
Mack took a step towards me, one hand on her hip and the other pointed in my direction. “Listen, Drunk. You and I had a good thing going for a minute there, but this shit you’re into is fifty shades of fucked up. I don’t want any part of it. I just wanna go home, take a shower, ice my eye, and forget those asshats ever laid a hand on me.”
I sighed. “I’m so sorry, Mack. I really am. I had no idea they’d…” I tried to put my arms around her, but she took a step back and held up her hands defensively as if to say don’t touch me. I nodded. “I’ll take you home.”
“No way. I’ll drive myself home,” she snapped.
“Your car’s here at the resort?” I asked.
“It’s in the employee parking lot down by the security shack. They nabbed me after work.”
“You can’t walk all the way over there by yourself,” said Al. “They could be out there and nab you again!”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll be prepared this time.”
“Come on, Mack. Just lemme give you a ride,” I begged. The last thing I needed was her getting stolen again. Then I’d have two women to figure out how to get back.
“Don’t touch me, Drunk,” she said, snatching her hands away from me. “If you would’ve just given them the fucking money, all of this would’ve been over.”
“Not for Pam!” I argued. I was beginning to get tired of hearing that it was all my fault.
“I’m walking,” said Mack, heading for the door.
Al shook his head. “Oh, no, you’re not, young lady. Not on my watch.” Al dug in his pocket and pulled out the keys to his golf cart. “It’s getting late anyway, and there’s nothing else we can do about this tonight. I should be getting home to Evie. My ride’s out front. I’ll drive you to your car.”
Mack’s ferocious stare turned on Al. She considered him for a brief moment before her look softened slightly. “Oh, fine. Come on. I wanna get home. I need to get up early so I can check the want ads for a new job!”
“Al and I’ll talk to Mari in the morning,” I promised. “We’ll do our best to get you your job back.”
“If it means working with you again, I’m not sure I want it back,” she said, her face screwed up in a pout.
I sighed.
Al gave us a little wave as he followed Mack out to the porch. “Call me in the morning.”
“Goodnight, Al, and thanks,” I said before he left. “I owe you one.”
“I’m keeping count. You owe me half a dozen,” he said. “And don’t forget it.”
“I won’t. Trust me.”
33
The second that Al was gone, I walked over to the cushioned rattan sofa in my living room and fell backwards onto it. My long legs hung over the end. I leaned my head backwards and covered my face with my hands. “Uhhhh. Fuck!” I bellowed into my palms.
I heard the shuffling of feet and felt what I assumed was Francesca staring down at me. I peeked between my fingers only to see Hugo’s long narrow face only inches from mine. He tipped his head sideways curiously.
“Hey, Hugo,” I said, now feeling oddly guilty about having cursed in front of the dog, like he was a little kid or something.
Hugo let out a little whine from the back of his throat.
Francesca padded over to me then. She lifted my legs up off the end of the couch and slid in under them. She patted me quietly. “I’m sorry about Pam, Danny.”
I groaned. “You know, the truth is you shouldn’t be. Because hell, I’m not even sorry. How bad is that?”
“What do you mean?”
I sighed and then scooted up on the sofa so that my back was against the armrest. “I think the cold, hard ugly truth is, I’m not sorry. Pam screwed me over so bad. So bad,” I added under my breath. “And so while I’ve tried really, really hard to do the right thing, I think ultimately, the fact that I haven’t been willing to give up the money tells me that I’m incapable of doing the right thing.”
Her head shook. “No, you’re not…”
“I am!” I shouted, running my hands through my hair like a crazed lunatic. “I am! I’m an asshole! I’m a jerk! When those kidnappers first called, my gut reaction was to tell them they could go ahead and kill her. Who says shit like that?”
Francesca lifted her brows. I could see the unspoken truth behind her eyes. Bad people say shit like that. That’s what she was thinking. I saw it. “I mean, that was just your broken heart talking.”
“Pfffh,” I muttered. “I don’t have a heart. People with hearts don’t tell kidnappers to kill their exes.”
She smiled softly at me. “I’m sure if other people were given the same opportunity that you were given, they might’ve chosen to do the same thing.”
“Maybe a crazy person would’ve! Not someone with a rational brain!”
“But you’re rational now! You regret saying that now.”
“Do I?” I asked, tipping my head to the side. “Do I really? I mean, look, I tried yet again to keep the money. I put money ahead of a woman’s life.”
“Yeah, but that was because you believed they weren’t going to turn her over to you. And look, you were right. They didn’t give her to you. You probably did the right thing.”
My head fell into my hands again. “But what if I just did it because I was selfish? Because I thought I could maybe save Pam and keep the money.”
“Is that why you did it?”
I shrugged. I really didn’t know the answer to that question. I’d rationalized it all in my brain before I’d done it. I’d told myself that I was only doing it to protect Pam. But now that she might actually die, I wondered if I’d really only done it to keep the money.
“I don’t know,” I finally whispered before admitting, “I really don’t want her to die.”
“Okay, well, that’s a start. That means you’re not as cold-blooded as you’re giving yourself credit for.”
“Then why didn
’t I just do what they told me to do? Why did I have to play games?”
“Because you’re a cop,” suggested Francesca. “Look, Danny. You might not have been the greatest cop back home, but even bad cops have to have a certain level of trust your gut in them. You trusted your gut. That’s it. Quit being so hard on yourself.”
“But what if I just got her killed?”
Francesca opened her mouth, but whatever words she had to say seemed dammed up in the back of her throat. Finally, she shook her head. “I don’t know, Danny… I just don’t know.”
For the first time in months, maybe even years, a tear rolled down my cheek. It caught me off guard at first. Like, I wondered if my ceiling was leaking or something. I looked up. And that was when another tear came and I realized the leak had come from my eyes. Was I seriously going to cry right now? In front of Francesca? Over Pam?
Knock it off, you fucking idiot!
Francesca rubbed my leg. “I’m sorry, Danny.”
I let out a chortled half-laugh as I wiped away the tears. “I don’t even know why I’m crying right now. I hated the woman.”
“You didn’t hate her,” said Francesca. “If you hated her, you wouldn’t have proposed to her. I think the truth is, it’s not hate that you’re feeling.”
I ground the heels of my hands into my eyes and then looked up at her. “No, I’m pretty confident this is hate. I’ve never actually felt this before, you know. I usually get along with everyone. But this—this emotion I’m feeling is pretty intense. It’s definitely hate.”
She smiled gently. “Maybe it feels like hate right now. But from the outside looking in, I don’t see hate. I see hurt.”
“Puh,” I spat. “No, not even. I’m not hurt. I’m mad!”
“When it comes to Pam, what are you mad about exactly?”
I made a face. What kind of a question was that? Where should I start? “Well, I’m mad because I wasted my time on her. I was ready to settle down, start a family, you know, find my person, and all that stuff.”
“And you thought you had found it in Pam?”
I shrugged. “Obviously I didn’t.”
“But you thought you did,” said Francesca. “That’s why you were getting married. And then she made a mistake.”
“A huge fucking mistake.”
Francesca nodded. “Yes, a huge fucking mistake. But that doesn’t change the fact that you loved her enough to want to marry her. Love doesn’t just go away sometimes, Danny. And I think that’s the problem here. How have you dealt with breakups in the past?”
“Breakups in the past?” I said blankly.
“Yeah, like in past relationships.”
“I haven’t had past relationships. Pam was my first real relationship.”
“You’re kidding.”
I shook my head. “Not kidding. I’ve always been kind of a playboy. The truth is, women have always had a hard time taking me seriously.”
“Well, no wonder. You make jokes out of everything!”
“Not everything. I mean, yeah, I might joke around when I’m tense or uncomfortable, but I can be serious too.”
Francesca eyed me.
“What?” I smiled, staring back at her. “I can!”
“In the short amount of time that I’ve known you, I’ve rarely seen the serious side of you,” she countered.
I looked away and shrugged. “Yeah, I suppose it doesn’t come out often. But you know, when I was in my twenties and dating, that was fine. Because for the longest time I was never looking for anything serious. Until I was about thirty-two. That was kind of when I turned a corner, and I decided I wanted to meet someone. I met Pam at church, believe it or not.”
Francesca’s jaw dropped. “You go to church? Get outta here.”
I laughed. “Thirteen years of Catholic school,” I said, bobbing my head. “Yours truly was even an altar boy.”
“I would’ve never guessed.”
I shrugged. “I might have let some of that fall by the wayside after I left home. I’m not a very good Catholic.”
“So Pam really was your first love?” asked Francesca, nodding. “Well, no wonder you’re feeling like this. Losing your first love is hard.”
I turned to her then, curious how she seemed to know this. “You sure seem to know what you’re talking about. Was losing your first love hard?”
Francesca waved a hand at me dismissively. “We’re not going there, Danny. This is about you, not me.”
I sighed. I was tired of talking about me and Pam and the emotions I was feeling. It seemed like that was all I’d been doing since she had shown up on the island.
Francesca pushed my legs off her, forcing me to sit up on the sofa next to her. “Look, as an outsider, I’ve had a chance to kind of see some of the signs your exhibiting.”
I quirked a brow. “Signs?”
She nodded and gestured towards my coffee table, where empty bottles of liquor and sticky tumblers were sprawled around. “Did you drink this much before you and Pam broke up?”
“No, I’d given up drinking when I decided to look for love. But I drank before we met.”
“This much?”
“Maybe not this much.”
She grinned like she’d expected that answer. “As far as I’ve been able to see, you seem to be having a good time with the ladies,” she said. “Were you this, uh-hum”—she cleared her throat—“loose before Pam?”
I grinned and waggled my eyebrows at her. “Maybe.”
“Danny!” she said with a laugh. Her elbow flared out and poked into my side.
I rubbed my ribs, pretending that it had hurt. “Okay, fine, maybe not to this extent.”
“Right. See, what you’re doing is, you’re using alcohol and women to fill the gaping hole that Pam left in your heart when you broke up. That’s not hate, Danny, that’s hurt. She hurt you.”
I lowered my head. “And you think that makes a difference?”
“When people are hurting, they do dumb things. Sometimes they want to lash out and hurt the people who have hurt them. I don’t think you’re a bad guy, Danny. I think if all of this kidnapping and ransom stuff had happened before the breakup, there wouldn’t have even been a question about the money. If you’d had it, you would’ve given it all up for the woman you loved. Am I right?”
“Yeah,” I whispered hoarsely. “Of course I would have.”
“Exactly! That’s because the true Danny Drunk, the one inside, is a good person. He’s not money-hungry and greedy. He doesn’t put his needs in front of the person that he loves. He’s just gone off the tracks a little, in more ways than one,” she added, her eyes skirting my messy house. “But that’s only because he was burned and he’s hurting right now. You’ve got to figure out a way to forgive her. That’s the key, Danny. You have to forgive Pam.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You have to. It’s the only way you’re going to move on with your life. It’s the only way you’ll ever find love again. It’s the only way you’ll be able to put this whole situation behind you. You have to forgive her for making a mistake. That doesn’t mean you have to take her back, but you have to recognize the fact that she’s human and she made a mistake. I’m sure she regrets it. That’s probably why she came out here. To tell you she regrets it.”
My head bobbed up and down.
“See! You might not have seen it this way, Danny, but she was trying to give you a gift.”
I looked up at Francesca sharply. “A gift? What are you talking about? She was only trying to get me to forgive her so we could get back together.”
“Maybe. But the gift that she was giving you was the ability to find closure. The way I’ve heard the story, you took off after you found her in bed with her ex. I bet the two of you didn’t even have a chance to discuss it. I bet you didn’t even take the time to tell her how you felt, did you?”
“Hell no. I hightailed it out of there.”
“Right! So here you are, still de
aling with this hurt over what she did to you, and then she goes and gets kidnapped. The normal you, the rational, level-headed, big-hearted Danny Drunk, wasn’t around. The hurt version of you was what was here, and that’s why things have played out the way they have. You have to figure out how to forgive Pam, and you have to get the closure you need to move on.”
I turned my head to look at her. She had such a beautiful face, and it was more relaxed than I’d seen it before. She made it all sound so easy. “How am I supposed to just forgive Pam for what she did? She took away the future we’d been so excited to build together. She wasted my time, the time I could have used to find the right person.”
“You know, Danny, if you’re at all a religious guy, like you say you were brought up to be, then you have to have some kind of sense of the bigger picture. You have to believe that everything in life happens for a reason.”
My brows shot up. She couldn’t be serious. After everything that was going down! “What reason could there possibly have been for all of this to have happened?”
Her head shook softly. “I don’t know. Maybe all of this happened so that you would come to the island. And maybe Pam was kidnapped so that you could figure out how to forgive and to get the closure you need so you can quit being such an island bum. We have enough island bums. We don’t need another one,” she chuckled. “Maybe ultimately you were led here to meet the woman you were destined to spend your life with.”
I turned to look at her then. Her face was only inches from mine. Her big brown eyes looked up at me with such sweet tenderness that the sudden desire to kiss her came at me hard. My heart raced in my chest. I could read the signs, and in that moment, I felt like even she wanted me to kiss her.
My jaw clenched tightly. Because as much as I wanted to kiss her, I knew I wasn’t ready for that. She had to know I wasn’t. I was a broken man, and before I could even consider thinking about Francesca in that way, I had to fix myself.
I reached a hand out and cupped the side of her face. I pulled her to me and did the only safe thing I could do that would even remotely quench my thirst to taste her skin. I pulled her to me and kissed her on the forehead.
Drunk on a Boat Page 18
