Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three

by Lawless, Alexi

  “I know it.” Sam swallowed the lump of emotion that always seemed to come up when she thought about her father, focusing instead on tidying the cleaning supplies she’d laid out on the desk as she waited for Mack to arrive at the ranch. “Thank you for coming out to see me.”

  “Anytime. So what’s on your mind, Sammy?” Mack asked, settling down in a leather seat in front of her.

  “I need to ask you something,” she admitted frankly. “Something I haven’t wanted to talk about since it happened.”

  Mack’s heavy brow furrowed. “Alright, go on.”

  Sam took a deep breath. Now or never.

  “I need you to tell me everything you remember about the night dad and Ry died.”

  Mack blinked in surprise, like those were the last words he’d expected to hear from her mouth, and they probably were.

  “Why?” he asked, his gaze direct and concerned. “Why the hell do you want to relive the worst night of your life?”

  Sam couldn’t tell him the whole truth, so she told a half-truth with just enough sting to show him she meant it.

  “It’s become painfully clear to me that I haven’t gotten over what happened. I never healed, never let it go,” she glanced out the windows, looking at the garden outside the portico. “It occurs to me—trapped as I am within my corporeal limits—that I can either be haunted by their deaths for the rest of my life, or I can try to find a way to let it go.”

  Mack nodded, rubbing gnarled, age-worn fingers over his lips as he thought over her request. “That kind of hurt, Sammy—it never really heals, but you’re right to want to move on from it. Your daddy and Ry wouldn’t want you lamenting. Not after all this time.” He stood, crossing to the stately oak bar built into the wall. “I need a drink if we’re doing this,” he muttered, glancing over his shoulder. “You want one?”

  She nodded. “Bourbon, please.”

  Mack poured them both a couple fingers into heavy crystal tumblers, handing her a glass before taking a healthy sip of his. He stayed at the large French doors overlooking the seemingly endless acreage of the Wyatt land, looking out at the sun-drenched plains, already hotter than Hades in the midday sun.

  “I got the call from Grant first,” he began. “Local sheriff’s department recognized the Wyatt logo on the side of your daddy’s SUV even though most of the car was charred by the time they found it. The town’s not too far from here—maybe just a little over an hour away.”

  Sam vaguely recalled it. “You flew me and my friend Rita Ramos in the chopper there.”

  “Yeah,” he nodded. “Grant got there before us. He was the one to identify the remains. I’ve known him for years. We came up together—Grant, your daddy, and me. But that was the only time I ever saw Grant Nelson weep.” Mack took another sip of bourbon, his hand trembling.

  She blinked hard, forcing herself not to tear up. Her memories from that time were a painful blur, tamped down by her own survival instinct and her unwillingness to recall the details too clearly. She’d been in so much shock she hadn’t wept until she saw the caskets being lowered into the ground. At that moment, the reality of their deaths ripped away the numb denial she’d been operating in for days. She’d lost it then. Wept like a Sabine Woman for being robbed of her family—her future, her love.

  “Tell me about the man who did it,” Sam asked past the lump in her throat, forcing her mind back to the present.

  Mack looked at her, his brow furrowed, but he nodded. “He was the town drunk. Some roughneck down on hard times. Guy named Earl Childress. He’d worked the fields back during the oil boom, but when the wells dried up, guess he started hitting the bottle.”

  “Did you ever see him?”

  “Yeah, during his arraignment,” Mack nodded. “Then again at his execution.”

  Sam closed her eyes. Childress had been killed by lethal injection just a couple years later—fast-tracked by her family’s attorneys and his own guilty conscience. Childress never admitted outright to doing it—just said he was too drunk to recall anything, but he’d had DUIs before. Even he recognized the pattern of behavior and said as much when he was sentenced. He didn’t fight it. Never tried to appeal anything. Sam had gotten the notice of his death when she was in Kandahar. News of his death had felt so distant and unsatisfying, even then. She recalled holding the email, wishing she could make him suffer as she had, wishing it had been different.

  Maybe this was why she’d never felt attached to the proceedings or the end result. Maybe because she’d known somehow that there was more to it than a drunken hit-and-run.

  “Uncle Grant said he didn’t go to the execution,” she said aloud.

  Mack turned to look at her. “I was the only one. I wanted to see that bastard burn in hell for what he did. You ask me, what he got wasn’t enough.”

  “Is there—” she took a quick breath. “Is there a chance Childress didn’t do it?”

  Mack frowned at her, his mouth compressed into a thin line. “What the hell are you talking about, Sammy?”

  She took a small sip of her bourbon, thinking about the file she’d read a hundred times by now. “I need you to tell me about Dad’s enemies, Mack. Was there anyone who would have wanted him dead?”

  Mack released a gruff, incredulous laugh. “Rob Wyatt had a list of detractors about as long as my arm, but murder? That’s a slippery slope and a long shot, darlin’.”

  “Is there any possibility that there was any foul play?” she asked again, insistent.

  “Sammy, what the heck is going on?” he asked, his face a mixture of bewilderment and consternation.

  She sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Dad was a powerful man, but he was also an asshole—ruthless. You and I both know he’d do whatever it took to get his way. I guess what I’m trying to reconcile here is whether he and Ryland died in some truly senseless accident or if there was any chance that Earl was just some poor patsy who took the fall for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  Mack shook his head. “I looked into Earl. He died penniless. I made sure of it. He would have had nothing to gain by taking a fall.”

  “But you’re not entirely certain Dad wasn’t the victim of something bigger, are you?” she continued, sensing some hidden doubt in him, even as he frowned at her.

  “Sammy, honey, are you trying to heal or are you digging up snakes?” he asked her, point blank.

  She shrugged a little. “Bit of both, I wager.”

  Mack knocked back the rest of his bourbon. “You want me to look into the people I think are most likely to have wanted Rob dead, don’t you?”

  “I do.” Sam stood slowly. “You’re the only one who knew him well enough to know all the players. I need to know what really happened that night. If you can tell me with one-hundred-percent certainty that no one wanted my father dead, then that’ll go a long way toward helping me heal, Mack. I wouldn’t ask you to do this otherwise.”

  Mack looked at her in that direct way of his. “None of this will bring them back, darlin’.”

  She nodded, leaning on the desk. “But it will put them to rest in my mind, and sometimes that’s all the satisfaction we get.”

  *

  March—Mid-Afternoon

  Dr. Carmichael’s Office, The Loop, Chicago

  J A C K

  “You look tense, Jack. How are you feeling today?”

  Jack’s mouth twisted as he looked out of Dr. Carmichael’s window down at the “L” cutting a swatch through downtown Chicago. In the glare of the morning sun, the elevated tracks gleamed like a steely exoskeleton.

  “I feel like I usually feel these days.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Restless,” he answered curtly.

  And that restlessness only continued to ratchet higher with each passing day. It didn’t seem to matter how preoccupied he was with work or his family. There was an uneasiness that kept him on edge, like he was poised for flight at any moment.

  “Have you been in therapy before rehab,
Jack?”

  “Sure,” he answered easily. “Boxing.”

  Carmichael laughed lightly. “You’re standing at my window like you want to leap out of it just to get out of here.”

  Jack said nothing. He wasn’t wrong.

  “So did you feel that way before?” his therapist asked from behind him. “Restless, that is.”

  Jack turned. “Before what?”

  “Before you relapsed,” Carmichael clarified. “Did you feel restless?”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to deny it, but now Jack considered the question.

  Had he?

  His mind retraced its steps, thinking about how he’d felt before things had gone pear-shaped, how he’d felt in the months even before Samantha had ever darkened his doorway. Jack considered the work he’d been doing, the women he’d been seeing.

  “I suppose in a way, yes,” he said, moving away from the windows. “I’ve always been active. I had a hard time sitting still growing up.” He scratched his cheek. “Add to that the insomnia, and I’ve never been very good at being patient,” he admitted wryly.

  “So restlessness is a natural state for you?”

  He shrugged. “I suppose to some extent.”

  “Is that why you used?” Carmichael asked bluntly, pinning him with his blue eyes.

  Jack sighed, fiddled with his cuff link in a poorly-disguised attempt to gauge how much time he had left in the session. It should be easier to talk about by now. God knew, he’d been telling the same story for months. But if he was even a little honest, the shame that blanketed him since London hadn’t totally abated—no matter how many times he was told he had a chronic, relapsing biological disease. It didn’t matter how often he’d been told his impulses with drugs were involuntary compulsions, the result of chemical and physiological urges that hampered his ability to resist his own intense cravings. But any way Jack looked at it, the truth was he was just an addict, and every day was a struggle to regain control, dignity, and some kind of relief.

  “I tell myself it all started in good fun. A bit of this and that, but the truth was, I always more than liked it,” he found himself saying. “I needed it—to take the edge off; to relax, to sleep, to numb out, to feel good. Whatever.” Jack shook his head. “I did everything but inject, because I thought if I didn’t do that, I wasn’t an addict, and what I did wasn’t a problem.”

  “It’s not uncommon to play games with ourselves,” Carmichael pointed out, resting his chin on his hand. “To set limits that we think help confine the problem to a narrow set of parameters so we believe we still have some kind of control over it.”

  And there it was. The constant reminder that Jack didn’t have any control. Not really. To a man who had prided himself on building a business worth billions, who had only ever done what he wanted his entire life, that reality was a vicious punch to the gut. Besides everything he’d accomplished, all the money he was worth, and all the power he wielded—Jack had been leveled by his own lack of control, his own lack of discipline.

  “I’d like to suggest something to you,” Dr. Carmichael continued. “Something I hope you will consider.”

  Jack met his frank gaze. “Alright—what?”

  “You’re here because you have an addiction to narcotics, yes—but I’d like to suggest that the issue might be larger than your biochemistry.” His therapist paused, steepling his fingers. “Have you considered that your restlessness might have more to do with an addiction to the euphoria of monumental wins with incredibly high stakes?”

  “You’re talking to me as if I’m some sort of adrenaline junkie.” Jack frowned. “You don’t see me hurling myself out of planes or swimming with sharks, do you?”

  “Aren’t you an adrenaline junkie, Jack?” Carmichael pushed back reasonably, his head cocked. “What do you do with your time? Your business is leveraging high-stakes buy-outs of multi-billion-dollar enterprises, and you also gamble the equivalent of most people’s mortgages playing poker to unwind,” he pointed out. “You have impromptu boxing matches with professional fighters to work out, and you’ve made a hobby of chasing some of the most glamorous, high-profile women in the world. If those aren’t prime examples of your taste for the high wire,” he shrugged, “Then, Jack—I don’t know what is.”

  “Are you suggesting drugs are the least of my problems?” Jack quipped.

  “I’m suggesting we look at the bigger picture related to your personality and personal preferences as the source of the behavior.”

  Jack shrugged. “I think it’s much more simple. I like making money, spending money, fighting, and fucking. That makes me a pretty typical heterosexual man, don’t you think?”

  Carmichael chuckled. “That’s a vast oversimplification, Jack—and you know it. You’re several tax brackets away from the average Joe, and the last time I checked, the typical heterosexual man doesn’t get to date movie stars and swimsuit models in the same year.”

  Jack shrugged again. So he’d had a proclivity for playing with fire long before Samantha came along. He lived life at the extreme edges—but something about being with her transcended all those previous exhilarations, making them feel diminutive and inconsequential. What could be enough after her? What high as thrilling? Christ, he was in trouble.

  “Getting high gives you temporary relief from the constant restlessness you struggle with, Jack.”

  “You’re saying I used one addiction to manage another?” Jack asked, looking at him.

  “Is that so crazy?” Carmichael responded amiably. “What you really seem to jones for is the euphoric spikes associated with taking and winning incredible, outlandish gambles,” he continued. “Your relationship with Samantha Wyatt for example. Your feelings for her were the highest emotional stakes you’d ever played. Pursuing her became the ultimate high—an intoxicating and exhilarating gambit. And when you lost, you upped the stakes by risking your company, your fortune.”

  “I was also high when I made those decisions,” Jack pointed out.

  “Yes, because you were seeking psychological and emotional relief, where you couldn’t have one through a relationship with the one person you wanted above all others. The drugs were an easy fallback. Instantaneous feel-good.”

  Jack considered Carmichael’s points carefully before he admitted, “It wasn’t enough though.”

  “Nothing outside of you will ever be enough, Jack,” Carmichael replied. “That’s the wisdom of the ages, and yet we always fail to see it. It’s so much easier to address the void with other people, things, and circumstances. We’re all looking for quick fixes all the time—even as our dissatisfaction continues to grow.” He paused. “What else did you do when you realized Samantha was gone? Do you recall?”

  Jack’s mouth thinned to a hard line. He remembered enough of those black days. “I tried to fuck her out of my system.”

  Carmichael nodded. “How did sleeping with other people make you feel?”

  Jack looked out the window.

  “Lonely.”

  Carmichael waited.

  “I don’t want anyone else, alright?” Jack admitted, rubbing a hand over his face. “Everyone I’ve slept with since is just a weak substitute. She’s inside me now.” He unconsciously touched the strange, empty ache in his chest.

  “Nothing outside of you will ever be enough,” Carmichael had said. But wasn’t having Samantha back enough? Wasn’t having a life with her beside him the only thing he wanted that he couldn’t have?

  “Jack, it’s no surprise everyone else feels like a weak substitute. You’ve led a charmed life, by your own admission. You rule and strategize from a throne, and yet you picked a woman who lives at the very epicenter of danger.”

  “I never said I was sane, Doctor.” Jack slanted him a look.

  Carmichael laughed. “You know, there’s an old Irish saying my father was fond of: Men either find themselves in God, or they lose themselves in women.”

  He frowned. “That sounds…painfully accurate.”
>
  “Maybe.” Carmichael shrugged. “Maybe not. I’d like to suggest that you may have found yourself in this particular instance, Jack. You’ve been safe and protected all your life, controlling and directing the scenes—taking calculated risks. Samantha doesn’t just take risks—she is the risk,” he pointed out astutely. “She’s the unexpected thing you yearn for.”

  “Everybody’s got a gateway,” he remarked, searching for levity though his heart felt heavy.

  Carmichael considered Jack a moment before speaking. “Jack, a femme fatale is a woman who is utterly in charge of her own sexuality, who’d take charge of yours as well. What is more existentially exciting to a man at loose ends in his life than a woman who represents an archetype of dangerous, compromising, and otherwise deadly situations? Nice try, but Samantha’s not a gateway—I’d wager she represents the most powerful high you’ve ever encountered. Ask yourself, Jack: Are you in love with Samantha because of who she is? Or is she just the ideal personification of your favorite fix?”

  Chapter 10

  March—Evening

  Tel Aviv, Israel

  R O X A N N E

  Roxanne was waiting for Avi in his apartment when he arrived home the next evening, her legs kicked up on his coffee table as she drank one of his fine Bordeaux’s from a hand-blown wine glass.

  The moment he swung open his door and spotted her, he sighed, tossing his keys onto the counter. “That was a new lock, neshama.”

  “Seriously?” she replied, sipping the wine. “I broke in here faster than last time. You’ve got to up your game, Avi.”

  “Or I need to associate with less women with a skill for B&E,” he countered, loosening his tie as he approached. He set his briefcase down on the sofa before taking a seat beside her.

  “I see you helped yourself to my wine collection,” he drawled, extending an arm over the back of the sofa.

  “Oh, I did,” Rox winked, holding up the glass. “I don’t know anything about wine, but this is some good shit, Avi. You know your stuff.”