Deadly Deception: A Dark Romance

by J.C. Valentine

“This is all conjecture.” I met her eyes. “If you can’t give me more motive than she was manipulative, then I’ll be on my way.”

  “You want motive?” she challenges. “How about the million-dollar life insurance policy she’s cashing out today? Is that enough motive for you?”

  Her anger alone is enough to convince me without proof that she was telling the truth. People’s most honest reactions are often given in a moment of desperation, and this woman saw her window of opportunity closing.

  My heart beats hard against my chest. What policy? I checked her financial records, saw where all of their combined assets were and what she stood to gain. My conclusion was not much. Faith would go on to lead a meager existence, eventually having to find a full-time job to make ends meet because the money would run out.

  There was never a hint of a policy like this woman mentioned.

  “And where is this so-called policy?”

  “With a private bank. I wouldn’t even know about it, except I overheard her conversation with the bank person while I was at her house yesterday helping clean out Glenn’s personal effects.”

  Already? Usually, people waited at least a month before jumping to get rid of the personal stuff. Especially when they were trying to not call attention to themselves. Why was Faith in such a rush?

  “Yeah, I thought it was pretty fast, too,” the woman continues. She must have read my expression. “Faith claims she can’t look at it anymore without the pain overwhelming her. I don’t see it,” she says with a huff. “But I’m glad I forced myself on her to help; otherwise, I wouldn’t have heard what I did. She’s signing the papers today, maybe even right now, and then who knows?”

  She was going to run. On some deeper level, I knew Faith was going to skip town. I hated to believe it—any of it—but this woman, Faith’s mother, was making too much sense. I could make all the puzzle pieces fit, and I don’t like the picture they’re making.

  Had Faith set me up? Had she played me all along?

  I’ve heard enough. I fish a twenty-dollar bill from my wallet and push it across the table. “Lunch is on me.”

  “You’re just going to leave? What about everything I told you?” She’s panicking again, and I fear she might have good reason to. She’d called in her favor, and I’m her only hope of righting an egregious wrong.

  I pause, standing beside the table. “I’m going to look into what you said, and if I find you’re telling the truth, it’ll be handled.”

  Her face lights up, and she reaches into her purse. “I have money—”

  I hold up my hand in a stop motion. “Keep your money.” If I find out that Faith was lying to me all along, no amount of money could ever make it right. If I have to do what I fear I might, then this goes beyond business.

  This is personal.

  Twenty-Five

  ~Faith~

  One month later…

  Beaches as far as the eye can see. Crystal-clear blue waters the color of the summer sky that hovered overhead, not a cloud to be seen. I sit beneath the shade of a mature palm tree sipping my third Mai Tai and enjoying the subtle buzz I’ve developed.

  The Dominican Republic was the perfect getaway, the ideal destination for someone who wants to remain under the radar. All I desire is a quiet life now that I’ve secured my freedom. So the moment the life insurance check hit my bank account, I’d transferred it all to an off-shore account I’d had waiting in the wings for just such an occasion and jumped on a plane headed south where no one would ever think to look for me.

  So far, I’ve visited Santo Domingo and walked the streets, stopping in at small cafes, bars that play live music, and even came across a carnival. The island is full of life, and I can see myself living there for quite some time before moving on to other sights and adventures. Now that I’m on my own and don’t have to worry about money, I have a bucket list of sorts with all kinds of things I want to do and places I want to visit. Nothing is standing in my way.

  I’ve always been a planner, and some plans took longer to realize than others. My marriage to Glenn has been a long game, and I played it well. I lift my glass in a toast to myself and my genius and smile as the cool liquid slides down my throat.

  The breeze is warm and gentle, skating across my skin and through my hair like gentle fingers, tickling yet caressing divinely. I wiggle my toes into the fine sand, surpassing the heat until I reach the cool, moist grains below. This is truly paradise. It makes me wonder if the people who live here appreciate what they have at their fingertips. Do they know what they have, or is it just so every day as to be typical?

  The resort is all-inclusive, catering to many American tourists just looking to get away. Made a person wonder how many are here for the same reason I am. How many have a deadly secret like I do? That’s the beauty of it. There’s no way of knowing. Everyone here is from different walks of life and for different reasons, but all with one thing in common: the need to get away.

  The difference is, I have no intentions of ever going back. And who could blame me? I’m a widow, after all. The heartbreak is immense, possibly too much to bear. If I went off the radar, no one would miss me, and if by chance someone did, they would just conclude that I ran away from my troubles. Which I have.

  No one liked prison.

  I just want to live in peace now, and without the looming feeling of police eyes watching my every move. They weren’t, but a guilty conscience was easier to ignore when there were several thousand miles in between.

  The palm leaves overhead make a swooshing sound as the breeze kicks up once more, sending goose bumps prickling down my arms and legs. It isn’t chilly, exactly, but it is always cooler in the shade and this close to the ocean.

  If only I had someone to share this with…

  “Is this seat taken?”

  Speak of the devil.

  My every hair stands on end, and I bristle, my fight or flight instincts standing on edge. After swallowing several times and taking a few deep breaths, I look up at my unexpected and unwelcome visitor through dark-tinted glasses and cock a crooked smile. “What are you doing here?”

  Declan stands over me, tall and proud, not shaken like I am. Of course, he is the stalker, the killer. Guess we both had something in common now…

  He eases down in the sand beside me, knees to his chest and arms draped casually over them. He is dressed unexpectedly, in a pair of khaki shorts and one of those gaudy Hawaiian print shirts in blues and reds and yellows. Funnily enough, he manages to pull it off.

  “I’m here on a job,” he grunts. Dark glasses obscure his eyes, so I can’t read him any more than he can me, but something about his stillness and the way he stares off into the horizon makes me nervous.

  “Oh? What kind of job?” It is a stupid question. He is a hitman, for crying out loud, but I have to bide myself some time in case this isn’t just a social call.

  “The usual.” His tone is so matter-of-fact, revealing nothing. It is disconcerting, being on the receiving end and not knowing the outcome.

  I play along, knowing there is nothing else I could do. “So you come all the way to paradise just to work.” I shake my head as if disappointed. “What a shame to waste all this beauty. You really should take some time off while you’re here to enjoy the view.”

  “Oh, I plan to. This is my last gig.”

  “Oh?” I’m surprised to hear it. “Then what?”

  “Retirement.”

  Did hitmen really retire? Weren’t they natural-born killers who couldn’t walk away from a good killing? Like those military men who disabled bombs. I’d watched a movie once, based on a true story. The men were so addicted to the adrenaline rush that they’d rather be in the field staring down death every day than lead a normal life with their wife and kids back home.

  But then, Declan didn’t strike me as the type to harbor addictions. He was so controlled. Hell, here he was in the sand and didn’t he even have a drink in his hand.

  “So you came all the
way here,” I hedge, “and just happened to come across little old me. What are the odds?”

  He doesn’t speak right away, but when he does, his response only heightens my worry. “I knew you’d be here.”

  I swallow past the growing lump in my throat, clear it twice, and take another sip of my drink. It was nearly gone now, just a hint of peach color in the bottom and a yellow cocktail umbrella clinging to the edge of the glass, it’s cherry long gone. “So you popped by for a visit before you get to work? That’s sweet.” Maybe he’d missed me.

  “Something like that.”

  He was so short on words. It doesn’t help my nerves at all.

  Maybe that’s why I’m starting to feel light-headed. There is a sick feeling swimming in my gut, and a light sweat has broken out across my forehead. My nerves must be more rattled than I thought. I would say it was nice to see him again, but honestly, I’m hoping he’ll leave soon. We had a nice time together at the cabin, but that was over. I’d put it behind me as a fond memory, and I never intended to look back.

  “So, what kind of business? Like, plumbing business?” I wipe the back of my wrist across my forehead, clearing the moisture collecting there. It isn’t hot, but I’m clammy, and that sick feeling is intensifying, my stomach turning on itself over and over, like the waves that are rolling in and crashing against the shoreline.

  “Yes, plumbing.” He turns his head, looking at me through those dark lenses.

  Why did that scare her so much? “So who’s the lucky fellah?”

  He regards me a moment before asking, “Are you feeling okay?”

  I try to shrug it off, but the feeling of falling down into an abyss from a high-rise hits me, and I grip the arms of my Adirondack and press my back into the plastic slats. “Actually, not too great at the moment. I think I had too much to drink.”

  I’ve never been much for drinking, but I’ve been taking it slow, nursing my drinks and eating little things in between to make sure I don’t hit my body with a one-two punch. Guess I miscalculated.

  Casting my gaze toward the resort, I mentally calculate how many steps I’d have to take to get back to my room, all the turns and walkways and doors. It seems insurmountable, the effort it would take for me to get there.

  “Right now, I bet you’re regretting coming so far out here, away from everyone.”

  My attention snaps back to Declan, a sinking feeling that has nothing to do with the mounting sickness swimming in my gut. How did he know? “Yeah…” I hesitate. “I just didn’t want to be so close to everyone. The pool can get so loud.”

  He nods as if in understanding.

  “Declan…”

  “Yes, Faith?”

  “Why are you here?” The sinking feeling definitely isn’t just the illness that had suddenly overcome me. It’s more. It’s a warning.

  “I told you, Faith. I have an assignment.”

  Again, I swallow. “Who? Who is your target?”

  I know the answer before he gives voice to it. “I think you already know the answer,” he echoes my thoughts.

  “Why me?” But I already know why, don’t I? How did he find out? No one was ever supposed to know. I’d been so careful.

  “A little birdy clued me in.” The muscle in his jaw flexes. “Why did you lie to me? I told you how I feel about liars.”

  Yes, he had. It was one of his rules he’d outline in the car that first night. And I’d taken the risk anyway because the reward outweighed everything. I have no answer to give, so I remain quiet. It isn’t as if I can do a lot of talking right now anyway. Not with the way my stomach is cramping, and the drinks and food I consumed are trying to crawl their way back up my throat. I clamp a hand over my abdomen and moan.

  “What did you do?” I whimper, abject fear consuming me. Am I…dying?

  “Me?” Declan shakes his head sadly. “No, Faith. You’ve done this to yourself.”

  “I never asked for this,” I hiss, a flash of anger briefly overriding the pain. “I asked you to get rid of my sleazeball husband. To rid me of a lifetime of misery.”

  “You asked me to kill an innocent man.”

  I ignore the accusation. “But you didn’t. In case you don’t remember, I was the one who took care of everything. I solved my own problem, no thanks to you.” Does he think I owe him something? I hired him to do a job that he failed to carry out. If anything, he owes me—a refund!

  “Yes, you did, and I was a party to it. I was there, so my hands are just as dirty as yours.” His lips peel back from his teeth as he leans in. “It never should have happened, Faith, and you know it. Glenn was a good man. You lied about everything. He never cheated on you a day in his life, did he?”

  “Yes, he did. Every day that he lied to my face, he cheated me. Every day he ran around with that trash, he cheated me.”

  “That trash? You mean your mother?”

  The realization that he does know the truth finally slaps me across the face, and I flinch as if it were a physical blow. “Who told you?”

  “From her lips to my ears.” The confession makes my jaws clench even more than the pain. Declan continues. “She found me a few days after the funeral, let me in on a little secret you’d been keeping. How much was the insurance policy, Faith? Enough to get you all the way here,” he concludes before I can offer an excuse. “I’m only mad at myself for missing it. All the little lies you sprinkled along the way to cover your tracks. Stick close to the truth to cover up the lies, right?”

  He was exactly right. I learned early on in life that lies have to skate as close to the truth as possible to ring true. It was difficult to remember lies since they had no basis in truth, which is why so many liars get caught. What I’d found out was that if I stuck close enough to the truth, if I said it enough times, if I believed in it myself, no one could tell the difference. It was all about having faith in yourself, in your truth. Glenn had cheated me. Out of everything.

  So I’d found a way to cheat him. Of his life.

  And I’d managed to trick the man who made it his life’s mission to see through the bullshit. I’d say I’d done pretty damn well for myself. Until now.

  “I have to say after the initial anger passed, I was impressed. You got past me, and it’s my job to spot liars. I believed in you so much, I didn’t dig deep enough to uncover your little plan. Instead, I only scratched the surface. I played right into your conniving little hands, saw what you wanted me to see.”

  Glenn hadn’t been totally innocent. He’d always been a huge flirt. Couldn’t pass by anything in a skirt without smiling and chatting them up. He had a wandering eye, but he was never unfaithful in the physical sense. I could have dealt with all of that, but then he’d crossed the line, befriending my mother. The one person in the world I couldn’t tolerate, had the worst relationship with, and despised to my very marrow. No amount of requests could sway him. Glenn went out of his way for that woman, helping her when she should have been left to fend for herself. He could never understand why I hated her so much, but when a mother keeps something as important as a child’s father from them, it tends to breed a hatred deep enough to scorch the very air they breathed.

  When I learned my father’s identity, it was already too late. He’d been gunned down years before by some rival. But that’s what happened when you were a member of the mafia, I suppose. He had an expiration date, but I might have gotten to know him, just a little, had my mother not kept him a secret.

  I will never forgive her.

  “Congratulations,” Declan interrupts my thoughts. “You deceived the deceiver. You managed to get past my defenses, got me to let my guard down, to trust you enough to let you in. You tricked me.”

  I smirk. “The darkest deceptions are often the deadliest. You should have done your research better.”

  He tips his head. “You’re right. I was complacent. I broke my own rules, and look what happened.” He shakes his head, admonishing himself.

  I open my mouth, prepared to say s
omething that will rub more salt in his wounded ego, but a coughing fit overcomes me instead, ripping through my chest and throat like a raging inferno of pain, until I double over and vomit onto the soft golden sand.

  “It’s working faster than I expected.”

  What? Horror struggles to reach past the fog of pain and illness as I heave.

  “It’s a good thing you decided to come all the way out here, away from everyone. No one will notice until it’s too late.”

  “Notice?” It’s a strain to get that one word out. What is happening to me? “What…have…you…done…to me?”

  Declan sighs and relaxes back, bracing his arms behind him in the sand. “At first, when I heard you were boarding a plane to the Dominican Republic, I was enraged. Even more so than when I found out and confirmed the existence of the insurance policy you hid so well. I’d ask you more about that, but you don’t seem to be in a chatty mood.”

  Was that his attempt at humor?

  “Then I remembered the stories in the news. Oh, you probably haven’t heard. They’re keeping a pretty tight lid on it,” he says as casually as if we were just having an everyday conversation and I’m not struggling for breath right beside him. My chest aches, a constriction like I’ve never known.

  He continues. “People have been dropping dead here for a solid year now. Tourists, not locals. Weird thing is, they all appear to be heart attacks. Isn’t that strange?” He glances over at me, removing his glasses so I can meet his eyes—dark eyes that once again remind me of a shark, cold and deadly, devoid of life.

  “I bet that’s how you’re feeling right now, isn’t it? Like you’re having a heart attack.” He shakes his head again as if clearing the thought so he can get back on track. “A whole year. Makes you wonder if a serial killer is roaming these beaches, doesn’t it? Someone targeting tourists. It’s amazing to me that it would take so long for authorities to start making connections. It’s why I chose this method for you. Sure, it kind of makes me a copycat, but hey, when something works, why fix it?”

  He shrugs and flips his sunglasses back into place. Pushing to his feet, Declan brushes the sand from his backside and stretches his arms into the air, taking time to work out any kinks that have found their way into his back during his short visit.