Zack's Zest: A SEALs of Honor World Novel (Heroes for Hire Book 24)

by Dale Mayer

  She turned, grabbed the shampoo bottle, and thoroughly scrubbed her hair. After it was drenched, she did it again and again and then again. With her body clean, just a little bit of blood flowing from her leg, she turned off the water and reached for the towels that she had stacked up.

  As soon as she dried off, she wrapped one towel around her, bundled up her hair in another one, and opened the bathroom door. There he was, standing in the room, glaring at the window. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think about it. I was looking to get clean clothes and a shower. I would have come down to mention it to you, but I realized going down the stairs and back up again would be too much for my leg, and you guys were talking and making so much noise, I knew you wouldn’t hear me if I called down to you.”

  He held up his phone and said, “What about this? You know? Calling us?”

  She looked at it, shrugged, and said, “I didn’t think about it. I was still crying for my mother, just looking for a few moments of peace.” She walked to the bed, sorted through the clothing, picked up a few pieces, and walked back to the bathroom. She shut the door in his face, then slowly and carefully dressed.

  “How’s the leg?” he called out.

  “Almost better,” she said, lying. “There is a little bleeding, but it’s not bad.”

  “Let me change the gauze. You can put on a loose pair of pants afterward.”

  She froze because she had one leg in and one leg out, but he was right. Her bandage should be changed, and it should be a dry gauze. She quickly put on her bra, happy that it still fit, and pulled on a T-shirt. She wore underwear and still had the yoga pants halfway off. They were soft stretchy material; she rolled up the one pant leg as far as she could, got her sore leg through it. She opened the bathroom door, brushed her teeth, and pointed out her leg to him.

  He nodded and said, “I’ll see if I can find something for it.”

  With that, she finished brushing her teeth, grabbed a hairbrush, and ran it through her hair. Zadie scanned the bathroom to see if she could take any other items with her. With a hairbrush, a toothbrush, and some toothpaste, it seriously felt like she’d won a lottery. All she needed now was a bag to put everything in.

  She used to have some storage totes underneath her bed. She decided to take a look to see if they were still there.

  As she laid her collections on the bed, Zack came back with a roll of gauze and some medical tape. “I found these downstairs,” he said.

  She was bent over and looking under the bed.

  He walked around and squatted to join her. “What are you looking for?” he asked.

  She didn’t reply; she was busy pulling something from under the bed.

  He looked underneath and pulled out what she couldn’t reach because of her leg. A large plastic container. He flipped them all open.

  She smiled to see more clothes. “Summer and winter,” she said. “Now if I had a bag or two, I could restock all my clothing.”

  “What about in your mom’s room?”

  “Yes,” she smiled. “She’d probably have something in there.”

  “First, your leg,” he said. He patted the bed and said, “Sit down.”

  She scooched backward so her leg rested on her wet towel at the corner of the mattress. “It’d be nice to stay here for a couple nights,” she admitted.

  “And what about your mother’s body?”

  She winced at that. “I don’t know what to do,” she said softly.

  “We can contact the police or whoever you need to in order to have the body removed and taken to a morgue or to a funeral home,” he said. “It all depends on the laws here.”

  “I can call the family doctor,” she said. “He could arrange for her removal.”

  “What about a funeral?”

  “She wanted to be cremated and her ashes spread out in Mother Nature.”

  He looked at her in surprise.

  She nodded. “As I said, she was a simple woman.”

  “Well, as soon as we get your leg fixed up,” he said, “I suggest you make that call.”

  “What about the safe?”

  “We found it. Right now, Bonaparte is breaking into it,” Zack said. “But I didn’t hear anything from you, so I came up to check on you.”

  “I didn’t even think about locking the doors to take a shower,” she said, shrugging. “After being on the run for so long, all I could think about was clean clothes and a chance to just destress for a moment.”

  “Understood,” he said. “Next time, text me first.”

  “Will do,” she said. “And thanks for bandaging the leg.”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything. Finally he was done. He gathered the dirty bandages nearby, lifted her foot gently, and pulled out the wet, slightly bloodied towel underneath it. “We’ll take these things with us because we don’t want anybody to know we were here.”

  “I’ve probably got fingerprints everywhere,” she murmured.

  “But you used to live here, didn’t you?”

  She looked at him in surprise and nodded. “So then fingerprints would be the norm,” he said. “In our case, we’ve been using gloves.”

  “Smart,” she said, slowly dropping her foot and then testing it. “It actually feels better after the shower.”

  “Well, cleaning up some of the dried blood would help not pull at the gash quite so much,” he said. He looked at the totes in front of her and the stacks of clothing, and added, “Do you want me to go to your mom’s room and look for a bigger bag?”

  “Or check the closet here,” she said. “I used to have some, but I didn’t check the higher shelves.” He walked over to the closet, opened the doors wide, pulled out another hanger with a jacket on it.

  “There are some shoe boxes,” Zack spoke, as he brought stuff down from the top shelf. And sure enough he found a couple larger tote bags. He brought them over and asked, “Do you think they are big enough? How long ago did you wear this stuff?”

  “Years, but they should still fit,” she said, as she looked at one of the totes on the floor. “If I filled one of those, can we take it with us?”

  He nodded. “Do you want anything of your mother’s?”

  “That’s something else I’ll have to deal with too,” she said softly.

  “Do you know for sure who owns the house?” Zack asked.

  “Last I heard, it was still ours,” she said, “but I don’t know what the will says.”

  “We found one, but we haven’t opened it.”

  “No one has any news regarding my father’s body, correct?” She looked up at him, worried.

  “That’s correct,” he said. “It hasn’t shown up on the wires as far as I know.” He pulled out his phone. “But let me check with Levi to see if he’s heard anything from the news media.” He quickly sent off a text. “I’ve already updated him about your mother, so let’s get you packed up as much as we can.”

  “Are you expecting the kidnappers to come back?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  He helped her pack up everything into two tote bags. She smiled and said, “This is good. With the clothes I’ve got on, I can throw away everything that I came in.”

  He shook his head, brought out a plastic bag, and said, “Everything is coming with us. Even the old bandages, bloody towel, the clothes you had on, the socks, everything.”

  Zadie smiled. “I’d gratefully get rid of those.” She walked back to the hanger that still had the coat, picked it up, and pulled it over. “This is also good for right now.”

  With everything packed up, and the room empty as far as she could see, Zadie walked to the top of the stairs, dropped her bags there, and proceeded to her mom’s room. She went through the top dresser drawer, while Zack stood beside her and watched.

  “She used to keep money here,” she said by way of explanation. A jewelry box was off to the one side. She opened it, nodded, and said, “And these are real.”

  “Would she have left these behind?” />
  “Yes,” she said. “She left a lot of that kind of stuff behind.”

  “Then we need another tote bag for you to gather your valuables,” he said, checking the first closet, finding a larger tote, and dropping it near Zadie.

  “She has a large jewelry case,” she said, walking to the closet, opening the doors. “Let me fill what I can and take it with me.”

  “And then we must call in the doctor,” Zack reminded her.

  “I know,” she said. “I wondered if we won’t find the intruders first.”

  “You’re probably better off to call the police and make this public,” he said. “We’ll tell them that this is how we found her when we got here.”

  “Good enough,” she said, as he left her alone, closing the door behind him.

  She walked over and brought out the jewelry box that her mom used to carry, hating how much of the jewelry was gifts from her father, who thought it was appropriate to drip his wife in diamonds, not keep everything in the safe, which just blew Zadie away. Although she wouldn’t be surprised if she got them appraised and found out they were all fake anyway.

  Packing up as much as she could of the more valuable stuff, she went through her mother’s drawers. They were half empty, as if they had hurriedly packed. In the bottom drawer was a small book along with the family Bible. She opened up the plain little book, and it had no pages. All had been cut out and replaced with a thick wad of money. She took the little book and the Bible, put them inside the third bag with the rest of the stuff she would keep and went through her mother’s closet, stocked with very high-end designer clothing. Some of it she might like to keep for herself if only for her memories. Also shoe boxes, purses, bags, so much stuff.

  She didn’t know how it would work in terms of the house, but, at one point, someday the place would have to be cleaned out. She was the only one left of the family to do it. With the box of valuables, she turned once again, walked over to her mom, leaned down, kissed her gently on the cheek, and then slowly walked out.

  At the top of the stairs, she stopped and winced. Bonaparte stood at the bottom, talking to Zack, turned, looked at her, and grinned.

  “Trying to come down the stairs?” Zack asked.

  “I can hop,” she said doubtfully.

  He shook his head, walked up the ten steps, grabbed her three bags with one arm, then wrapped a hand around her ribs and scooped her up in his arms and quickly moved her down the stairs. There she landed on the main floor with a gentle thud.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “So this is all that’s coming with us?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “We should probably take it to the car, and this one is full of valuables.” She pointed it out to him. “Make sure it’s locked up. Otherwise I won’t have anything going forward.”

  “Did you make that call yet?”

  “No,” she said sadly. “I was about to do it now.”

  “Come and join us in the office when you are done,” Bonaparte said. He turned and walked away. She pulled out her phone and made the call that she’d been dreading for years.

  *

  Zack listened with half an ear, even as he stood and studied the contents of the office. He glanced at Bonaparte. “She just called the doctor. We should have company here soon.”

  “Absolutely,” Bonaparte said. “Let’s make this as legal as possible. I doubt anybody will get charged with her father’s murder, but her mother’s? I don’t know.”

  “I highly suspect not,” he said.

  A few minutes later, he heard her on the phone again. He just raised an eyebrow to Bonaparte and shrugged. They had a whole mess of paperwork in front of them, and a lot of it wasn’t in English. They needed her assistance.

  When she walked in a few minutes later, her eyes were red-rimmed and a little teary.

  He gave her a gentle smile. “I presume you’ve called the doctor?”

  “Yes. The doctor had me call a service to come and collect her.”

  “Is the doctor not coming himself?”

  “He is on the way, but he said it can take time for the others to come—and the police.” She shrugged. “We’ll have company soon.” She looked around at the office and added, “They really made a mess, didn’t they?”

  “They did. We found these in the safe. Can you tell us what they are?” She walked over. One of the envelopes he knew was the will already because he’d looked the word up on his phone.

  “This is all of it?” she asked, as she set it off to one side, and she went through the rest of the paperwork and several of the envelopes. She frowned. “This envelope, you haven’t opened it, but he says it’s valuable.” She quickly slipped her finger underneath the flap and ripped it open. And out came paperwork, all sheets and ledgers.

  “This is probably what the kidnappers were looking for,” Zack said.

  She nodded and winced. “We need to get rid of this.”

  He picked up some of the photos. “I presume blackmail?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know for sure.”

  “We can’t get rid of it ’til we know what it is,” Zack said, picking up the envelope. “Let me take photographs of it. I can send it to Levi, and then we can destroy all these.” He then picked up a box and handed it to her. “This was in the safe too.”

  She quickly opened the box and swore. “A lot of money is here,” she gasped.

  “There is,” he said, “but no good leaving it behind.”

  She just nodded, and it disappeared from Bonaparte’s hand into one of the bags she had packed. She looked around and said, “I don’t know if I need to do anything with all this here.”

  “Open up that envelope with the will in it and see if it’s how you expect it to be.”

  She winced, picked it up, opened it, and pulled it out, flipped through the top few pages, went to the last and nodded. “Two wills. One for my father. One for my mother. As expected, everything comes to me.”

  “Good,” he said. “That makes it easy.”

  “Does it?” she said sadly. “This house has a lot of memories. I’m not sure any of it is good.”

  “You don’t have to keep any of the memories either. I highly suggest you sell the house and create a new life for yourself, one completely unrelated to the life you lived here with them.”

  “That’s a good idea,” she said. She stared around at the mess in the office. “Do you think they found anything useful?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I suggest we take the things from the safe. We’ll sort it out later.”

  She nodded. “We will have people here soon, so maybe let’s take these out to the car now.”

  Zack and Bonaparte quickly loaded up the contents of the safe into a box from a closet.

  She cried out, as if just remembering, “A vehicle should be in the garage.”

  “Good,” Bonaparte said. “How long ago was it stored in there?”

  She stared at him and nodded. “For a long time.”

  “Is it yours?”

  “It’s my mom’s,” she said. “I drove it for a long time.”

  “Maybe it’s not even there anymore.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “That would be ideal, although that would be easy to track too,” he said. “But that’s all right. We can switch the plates and that would gain us a little bit of time.”

  She nodded and walked around the office. There were papers, files, envelopes, scratchpads, everything just tossed. The desk itself was broken; the books on the shelf tossed. “They really made a mess, didn’t they?”

  “They did, and sometimes people do that just as a show of frustration.”

  “I guess,” she said. “Just a mess to clean up.” She stopped, looked around at the trashed office.

  He could see that finally all the dark shadows recently in her life had taken their toll. He gave a strangled exclamation, walked over, and wrapped her up in his arms.

  She cuddled in close, and she wh
ispered, “I’m not normally like this, but seeing my mother up there …”

  “Anybody would be shaken,” he whispered against her auburn hair. “That’s not an issue. Just take a moment. It’ll be chaotic when the doctor gets here. And the police.”

  She nodded. “It’s standard protocol.” She looked down at her parents’ wills still in her hand and said, “I feel like I need a digital copy of this.”

  “Do you think his office equipment works?”

  She frowned and walked over to the office copier. She quickly fed both wills into the scanner and then added an email to the machine to send it to herself. As she stood here, she waited for her phone to buzz, and she brought it out. “That works,” she said. “My dad always had to have a full office at home.”

  “Sounds like he ran a lot of businesses, whether they were legit or not,” he said. “I’m sure he was busy.”

  “That’s one word for him,” she said with a broken laugh. She picked up the wills, photocopied them so she had a duplicate hard copy, in case she couldn’t access her phone, and put them both back in the envelope. “I need to keep this close, and, as soon as we get a death certificate for my mom,” she said, “I must make funeral arrangements.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I guess the real question at this point is what you want to do from here.”

  Startled, she turned to look up at him. “Right,” she said. “I didn’t even think about that. Do you think I’m still in danger?”

  He stared at her steadily, not sure how to formulate an answer. “I thought the guys who kidnapped you had a different reason than anything to do with your parents.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But I’m not exactly sure where any of that stands right now.”

  “Just take it easy,” he said. “A lot is still going on in your world right now.”

  She took a slow, deep breath and then nodded. “I feel like I’m okay here. This is home, and I should just stay.”

  He stopped and stared at her. “Seriously?” He frowned.

  She nodded and tried to explain. “I know you came to help me escape, and you did that,” she said, “but both of my parents are dead, and that changes everything.”