by Nicole Snow
I hesitate for two more. Everything grows louder, like a violent, throbbing roar in my ears. It's my own blood, seething with adrenaline.
My hand moves automatically, clenching the wrench. I put everything I've got into the swing, my one and only chance to take him out.
There's a wet crack, like someone tossing a pumpkin on the street. The killing hands wrapped around my throat loosen, just as everything goes hazy and black.
I think he's going down, falling on top of me, but I'm too weak to kick him off me.
I pass out, the wrench falling out of my hand, overwhelmed with everything that's happened. Blackness drowns me.
There's no telling how long I'm out. When I come back, the old demon's body is off me. In fact, he isn't anywhere to be found. There's no sign it ever happened, except for a rusty red stain drying on the ground next to me.
Shit. Did he get away? I stagger to my feet, suddenly noticing the black folio, and all the hell tucked inside, are also gone.
“You're lucky I didn't have to throw water in your face, son. That was going to be Plan B.” Bart's voice causes me to jump.
I turn around and see him wiping his hands, cleaning them with some chemical that makes my nostrils pucker. He's watching me sadly, like I've done something irredeemable. It hits me that, Jesus, maybe I have.
Did I kill him? Murder the old man?
I have to explain everything before it's too late. I rush up to the man who's been like a father to me, grab him by the shirt, and stare into his eyes, hoping maybe they'll give me a shred of peace and sanity.
“Where did he go? And the pictures, the wrench...? Please, tell me you didn't let him get away.”
“He's finished, Ryan. Doesn't take a genius to put two and two together. I saw the photos. Then I saw the wrench with your fingerprints on it and the blood pouring out of the crease in his skull. I'm looking at the bruises on your neck right now, son. I know you had no choice.”
“Is he...dead?”
I honestly don't know what answer I want. Is it worse knowing I've killed a man, or that the sick fuck got away?
Bart's expression turns stone cold. He nods. “Caught him trying to get up when I walked in. We're all very lucky on the timing. You hit him hard, enough to do some serious damage. Just not enough to put him away for good. You don't have to worry about him anymore. I finished what you started.”
“Finished?” I realize I'm not looking at my boss or future father-in-law anymore.
I'm staring at a man who used to be special forces more than twenty years ago. Cold blooded, efficient, and always accurate.
Nelson is done. Thank God. That's all I need to know.
I don't need the details, and he isn't offering them.
“What about the folio, Bart? We've got to bring them to someone who knows what to do. I'll tell them how I got them, who was in those pictures with the girls. I don't give a damn if I'm testifying against the mafia. Dead or alive, people need to know. Maybe they can help if his victims who are still out there.”
“You're in no condition to throw your life away, son. Frankly, neither am I.”
His words make me blink. I don't understand. I'm shaking my head, slowly releasing his shirt, pacing back and forth over the blood stain on the floor.
“What are you saying?”
“You're leaving tonight, Ryan. I've done everything I know how to prep his body to be laid out just the way I want, to take the flak off both of us. But I can't work miracles, son. They're going to think it was one of us who did him in, and if I turn over those pictures, it's going to be pinned on us.”
I can't believe I'm hearing this. I'm not sure whether it's the defeat in his words, or the coolness in his voice that turns my stomach the most. “He's dead, man! Gone. There's no way he can come back and twist the truth. Why in the hell wouldn't we do the right thing?”
“Because there's plenty more where he came from, Ryan. The Draytons are a powerful family. You don't just kill their head and expect them to take the fall. They'll stomp us like ants with their money and connections. I've lived in this town a lot longer than you, son. Long enough to know people like us don't win when we take them on through the system. We've done the right thing, the only thing we can, taking it onto ourselves and putting him away like this. That's the best case scenario, son. Unfortunately, with everything else, the damage is done.”
My head's about to explode. Next time I turn around, stop moving, and plant my feet firmly on the ground, I point my finger. “I can't let it go! It's insanity. You saw what was in those pictures, right?”
He nods.
“Then you also know what a sick fucking pervert we're dealing with. I don't care how corrupt he is. We'll go to the Feds. There's got to be somebody who'll look at all this, bring it where it matters, and end them all if they're in on it, without costing us our livelihoods!”
“There's nothing to show them, Ryan. I took the entire folio out behind the shed in the back, and burned it. I'll be vacuuming up the ashes later.”
“You did...what?!” My ears are ringing.
It's like the world is imploding on itself because I can't comprehend what's happening anymore. Burying my face in my hands, I back into the nearest wall, and start sliding down. It's impossible to stand with the only thing that might save our lives, gone to the seven winds.
“I'm sad that you're going to hate me, son, but I'd rather save your life. Even if we got the evidence into the right hands, the Draytons would have you in the hardest, dirtiest prison they can find.” He grabs a mop, and sloshes another acrid chemical over the blood stain on the floor, calmly scrubbing it with a brush.
“I don't care!” I mutter. It's weaker than it should be, words like lead pushed through my teeth.
“Well, I do. I'm not going to let them bring you up on murder charges, Ryan. I'm also not going to throw Bets, Matt, Kara, and all my employees under the goddamned bus. You'll have to trust me on this, son. You're leaving tonight to make a new life for yourself, and that's the way it's got to be.”
I'm hunkered down in disbelief, my face buried in my hands. At least a half hour blurs by with Bart cleaning the blood.
When he's finished, there's no sign a man ever died on the floor, and I'm no closer to answers.
“Let me talk to Kara,” I tell him, standing, reaching for the landline attached to the wall.
He runs up and tears it out of my hand before I can press a single button. “You still don't get it. When I said you're leaving tonight, son, I meant for good. You're vanishing like a ghost with no goodbyes. I can't allow it.”
I don't know if it's the confusion, or the horror of what he's saying. It takes all my strength to lift him up, throw him against the wall, and scream in his face.
“What the fuck are you talking about?! I have to tell her what's happened here! Or, at least, somebody does.”
“She'll never know a thing. I'm taking this to my grave, Ryan, and it's the way it has to be.” The same green eyes on my beautiful fiance drill into me. They're hard, sad, and determined. “You need to keep quiet, too. The entire town is going to think you killed him, regardless of what we say or do. I told you, I can't work miracles. When I lay his body out, I'm going to tell them I found him like that. The wrench, they'll find in the dumpster out back, but it won't have your fingerprints.”
“You're not telling them anything, you selfish, backstabbing sonofabitch. I'll tell them my version.”
“Son, please.” His eyes turn dark, desperate. “I'm trying to reason with you. Hate me, call me every name in the book if it makes you feel better about what's going to go down. But I'm driving you down to the docks and putting you on the first boat I see. You've been out with the crew enough times to know how to get anything with a motor out on Superior, or near enough.”
No, no, no. Fuck no.
I'm shaking my head, and then I start shaking him. He never fights back, just stands there and takes it. Hot, crazy tears stream down my face as I'm slamming
the only man I loved like family into the wall, raging because he's telling me everything I'll never accept.
I don't care about the truth.
I care about seeing her, fulfilling our promise, making her my wife. One brutal, but justified murder shouldn't fucking change that.
“Please,” he repeats, when I've lost the will to throw him into the brick again. “If you go behind my back, you refuse to listen, I can't stop you. But you'll do it knowing you're ruining your life, and Kara's too. You'll wreck the whole family's.”
“We can all leave. Find another town. They can't keep me in prison forever, and I'll send every damned dime straight to you, if that's what it takes to support the family. I'm supposed to be a part of it, remember?” My eyes search his, looking for the same acceptance I saw the day he gave me his blessing to date his daughter.
“And you always will be. I love you, son, because you're always willing to do the right thing, after all the shit you've suffered. You've got a good heart. There's no man I'd rather hand Kara off to. If it'd been anything but this, you know, I would've walked her straight down the aisle, into your arms.”
I see the familiar spark in his eyes, behind the sadness. It hasn't changed. He puts his hands against my chest, gently pushing me away, and gives me the saddest smile in the world.
“Think about her for a second. She'd want you to be happy and alive, Ryan. Not stabbed to death by some punk in the shower because he's pissed you won't join his gang for protection. You're too good a man for prison. You'll wind up dead if you go there. I don't care if we ever clear everybody's name, including yours. It's no good if you're gone, and my girl will never forgive me if I had a way to stop it. Well, I do. If you come to your senses, we'll get in my truck and go right now. I'll hand you all the money I can spare, and make it up to whoever's boat we steal later, one way or another.”
He won't stop stabbing me in the chest. I've stopped resisting because he's right, damn it, he's so right it's killing me worse than Nelson's evil hands ever did.
There's a boom in the distance. Loud and mournful, dense enough to shake the ceiling. Bart puts his hand on my shoulder, giving me the most fatherly squeeze I'll ever get.
“Go, son. Leave the rest to me. You have to get on that ship and go now. It's your only chance. Remember – and it's going to be an absolute bitch – you can't come back. You can't call her. You can't write, phone, email, or send a note by fucking pigeon to anyone here. Because if you do, and they realize where you are...”
I get it. Fuck, do I understand, like a blow to the face.
Defeated, I follow him out to the truck. It's raining by the time we get to the marina. He leads me over to the best boat docked there, the new thirty foot baby with the little cabin old man McCoy bought when he sold his land in Wisconsin last year.
He's trusting, like most people still are in this little town. It doesn't take us long to find the spare keys he's tucked into the ship's rear storage.
It's bigger than anything I've ever piloted before, but the controls seem familiar. Bart stands over my shoulder in the cabin. He doesn't leave until I've started her up, done a few checks, and taken down the tether from the dock. Then he takes an envelope and shoves it into my hand.
There must be two thousand dollars stuffed inside, maybe more.
I look at him, nodding glumly, hating how it feels when I jam it into my pocket. The money is a curse, a one-way ticket to a lonely new hell. I already want out.
“Take care of her,” I say, throwing my arms around him for the last time. “She's going to need everything to make it through the heartbreak. If you won't let me give her the life she deserves, I'm counting on you to do it. Make it right. Make her happy.”
“That's all I ever meant to do, son. Curse me when you're on the other side of the country if it helps. Best thing you can do is forget. It'll take time, but you can make it happen. Just forget about this town, about Nelson, about the family, and me. Forget her. Forget everything, and live your life.” Every time he says forget it's like another rusty blade digging through my ribs. “Because if you don't, if you ever come back, and you get busted...”
He doesn't finish his last thought. I push him away, turning back to the ship's controls, watching a bolt of lightning crackle through the sky.
“I'm sorry it has to be this way, Ryan,” he says, stopping one more time on his way out. “You deserve a second chance, and so does she. I'll fall all over myself to give it to you. I'll die, if that's what it takes.”
By the time I watch his dark shape climb onto the dock through the rain, he's already dead to me. I'll never have as much love and hate warped together as I do him in this moment.
Soon, I can't think about anything at all, except how much the ship is about to break apart. It's dark and terrifying among the high waves. They kick me around, tip the entire ship, barely let me stay on the GPS course.
I'd be scared, if I weren't numb to everything. I'm drifting further into the night, remembering the last flash of lightning over Armitage Lighthouse, as brief and harsh as seeing Kara herself ripped away from me.
I can't remember how I made it near Superior in one piece, grounding the ship on rocky northern shore sometime before sunrise, or how I hitchhiked all the way to Saint Paul to get on the train going west a few days later.
Somehow, I made it. I got to Seattle through the horror, the fury, the loss, and then I broke my promise to Bart on the first day. Standing there by the ferry terminal, looking out across the Puget Sound, I swore I'd see familiar waters again.
I wouldn't let her go, or Split Harbor.
I'd come back someday. Bigger, stronger, and better equipped to marry the only woman I ever loved. I'd find a way to erase the nightmare that went down that night, even if it meant stopping Bart from taking the dirty secret to his grave.
“I'm going to be sick,” Kara says, arms pressed tight, clutching her belly. “I can't stop thinking about the Draytons. Jesus, I was going to fucking marry one of them!”
“You aren't anymore,” I say, pulling her onto my lap, running my fingers softly through her hair. “That's all that matters, babe. You didn't know. Your father was hellbent on making sure you'd never find out.”
“I'm not sure that's true.” It takes her a moment to look at me. “I knew something didn't add up. He always walked away whenever I tried asking questions, told me he wouldn't talk about it. But the night he died, before he slipped into his coma for the last time...he wanted to tell me the truth, Ryan. I know he did. He regretted it. Knew he made a mistake. He knew I never stopped loving you.”
I've forgiven Bart for what happened over the years. He saved my life, even if he had to become one of the biggest bastards in the world to do it.
But hearing her tell me he cracked, almost confessed...I'm floored.
It's too much to take in all at once. There are no words.
So, I just sit there with her wrapped my arms, rocking her on the chair next to the bed we just crashed. Entire worlds split apart, burn, and start to make sense.
The alarm on my phone goes off, the last warning I set to get going to the airport, jarring us out of our emotional trance. She throws her arms around me, wiping the tears that have already begun falling, burying her face in my chest.
I kiss her, hold her, rock her like the miracle she is.
Christ, I've taken her back, against the odds, and I'll never, ever let her go.
“You have to come clean,” she says, looking up. “Jesus, Ryan. We have to find the right authorities, clear your name, tell them what really happened. There has to be some kind of statement we can make, something to lead them in the right direction, even if there's no evidence.”
I nod, knowing there's only one way we've got a chance. She's still shaking, and it takes me a minute to calm her, folding my embrace tighter.
“God, what was he thinking?” she snarls, banging her fists on her knees. “I can't believe daddy burned the creep's book.”
“Not ever
ything,” I say, smiling when I see the hope sparking in her eyes. “I stuffed a single page in my pocket. Forgot about it until the first driver gave me a break the next morning, taking me out of Wisconsin. I've kept it after all these years, and had a P.I. take a look at several of those names.
“And?” I can tell she's holding her breath.
“One's behind bars, busted for sex trafficking in Chicago a couple years back. The others are like him – entitled, heartless bastards who believe they can do the sickest shit in the world and never get caught. One good lead will bring them down, soon as we bring it to the right place. I would've done it already, but bringing you back into my life was more important. Plus the town might've beat me alive if they realized who I was the day I came in to cut the banner, opening Punch Corp here.”
“We shouldn't wait,” she says, standing up, her hand still grabbing at mine. “We should go now, or as soon as we land in Seattle. If we talk to the police there, surely they won't be corrupted by the Draytons.”
“It's time to go, Kara-bou,” I tell her, planting one more kiss on the forehead. “I have a few ideas, and we're going to discuss everything on the flight out there. Then we're going to forget all this, enjoy some alone time, and remember why every fucking punch we've taken is absolutely worth it.”
When we're finished dressing, I take her hand. There's hardly a moment her fingers leave mine the whole way to the airport.
11
Rekindled (Kara)
It's a big blue Gulfstream jet that takes us to heaven, emblazoned with the Punch Corp logo on the tail. I've never been on a private plane before. Ryan teases me the whole way to Seattle. We share wine and coffee. I curl up next to him on the ivory sofa, only looking up when someone from the crew comes by to ask us if there's anything else we need.
The next three days are just as much a whirlwind. He shuttles me around to the city's best restaurants, the art museum, and half a dozen awesome coffeehouses. I'm going to go home bursting with new ideas for Grounded.
