by Dale Mayer
“We’re not going there,” Laysa whispered. “It was hard enough to lose him. No way I want to consider that he was murdered.”
“We don’t know for sure that he was,” Taylor was quick to point out. “Think about it though. It was almost a year ago. Was anything else happening in his life then?”
“Me,” she snapped. “I was happening. We were arguing just before his death because I wanted to start a family, and he didn’t.” There was a note of bitterness in her tone.
After her miscarriage, Blake had said to Kanen, in private, how Blake had been relieved and wasn’t sure he would ever be ready to have a family, not with his affinity for risk-taking hobbies.
And yet, Kanen could see that, for Laysa, this would be a big deal. Kanen had planned to visit them anyway and had come soon afterward. He’d held her for hours as she had grieved for her lost child, taking a week off from teaching, yet Blake continued working his job. She’d always wanted a family, a big family preferably, but would be content with just two children if that was all they could manage.
For the first time, Kanen wondered what would have happened down the road if neither would have been willing to budge on that major point.
Kanen frowned as they walked. They’d found the answers they came looking for in Spain. Of course that spawned many more questions, but, in the meantime, they had a free afternoon ahead of them. He wanted to walk through the village, to enjoy the sights, maybe to stop and have a coffee and a treat somewhere along the line. But now that they’d brought up this topic, and he knew it would be hard to come back from.
“Was there anything else happening to Blake at that time?” Nelson persisted. “We have to consider everything.”
She shook her head. “I don’t like this line of thinking. I get that you have to ask, but Blake wasn’t the kind to get into trouble.”
Kanen came to a stop at that. He turned to look at her. “That’s not quite true.”
She frowned up at him. “Since I met him—or rather, since we married—he’d stayed out of trouble,” she corrected. “Although he still loved to live on the edge.”
Kanen considered her face for a long moment. “That might be closer to the truth,” he said. “But, in all the years I knew him, he was always in trouble. In the pub for a friendly drink, he’d always challenged the biggest guy. We ended up in more dustups for a lot of stupid reasons.” A huge grin took over his face. “The Blake I knew, he was always happy to jump in and cause a ruckus, just for the joy of fighting.”
“Right,” she said, “but you know as well as I do that, in the year before we were married, he calmed down quite a bit.”
“Quite a bit, yes. But I wonder what he was like at the gym.”
Silence followed as she pondered that for a moment. And then shook her head. “I can’t imagine it would be any different than what he always was. He was very steady, very stable with me.”
“Of course. That’s what you needed,” Kanen said thoughtfully. “The thing that you really wanted was somebody you could count on. And he was determined to be that.”
“There was a lot more to our relationship than that,” she protested. “That’s a very simplistic way of looking at our marriage.”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “We all have things we give and take in relationships, and, in this case, that was important to you. Your father had run off on you. Your mother used to take off all the time on you, even your brother did. And I remember you telling Blake very clearly that you wanted someone who would stay at your side, someone you didn’t have to worry about deserting you.” Kanen cupped her chin, lifting it ever-so-slightly. “Whether you like remembering that or not, it was definitely one of the rules of your relationship.”
She tucked her chin down and walked several steps forward. He followed at a slightly slower pace. She hunched her shoulders. “Do you think I stifled the real him?”
“No,” Kanen said gently. “I think he was happy to do it because it was important for him to be with you. You were everything to him. And he made a lot of changes for you because he wanted you to be as happy as he was,” Kanen admitted.
He hadn’t spent too much time thinking about it, but, now that he was on the topic, Kanen could see how the relationship with Laysa had changed Blake, how he’d pulled back from so many of his rougher activities. He used to box in the ring just for fun. It was fitness for him. But then he loved nothing better than a good rowdy brawl. At one point, they’d contemplated joining a football team in the States, just for the physicality of it.
Of all the things Kanen had done with Blake, Kanen had never gone to the gym with Blake. Definitely not here in England. Never in the States either. And that was interesting. Because Kanen didn’t know what Blake would be like in that environment. Kanen sighed. Blake was probably much more aggressive in a gym than in a bar fight because he was supposed to fight others there.
Kanen pulled out the gym manager’s card and dialed Mark, while the others walked slowly forward, watching him. When the call was answered, he asked what Blake’s behavior was like at the gym.
That drew Laysa closer to Kanen again, leaning in to hear Mark’s side of the conversation.
“I knew him when we were younger,” Kanen explained. “And Blake was quite a punch-up, dustup kind of guy. Always happy to jump into the fray and pound a few faces to the ground. Did he use the gym as an outlet for all that energy?”
The voice on the other end of the phone chuckled. “Absolutely. I had to get in his face a couple times to stop him from getting into everybody else’s. We try hard to have a no-contest type of a gym, but gym junkies can be like that. Who can pull the most weight? Who can bench press the most? Everybody prides themselves on their upper body, whereas Blake was really, really strong in his lower body. He used to challenge people on lower-body competitions, so he could win. But he wasn’t quite so gracious about upper-body competing because he knew he’d lose.”
Kanen understood completely. “I wondered if that was the case. Did he ever get into any real fights with anyone?”
Mark’s voice was thoughtful as he slowly replied, “A couple complaints were made against him. I had to, you know, like I said, get in his face a bit and have him calm down and back off. People come here to work out. They don’t want to get stressed out by having someone else on their case. Every time I would talk to Blake, he’d calm down for a while, and then somebody would piss him off, and he’d go jump into it again.”
“At any time was it to the point of him losing his membership? Was he ever that much of a disruptive force that you felt he couldn’t come back?”
“Once I warned him that it was his last chance.”
“When was that?”
“Not very long before he passed away, actually,” Mark admitted. “He got into a ruckus with a bunch of the steadies here. Though Blake had been coming for a couple years, these guys had been coming for a decade plus. And they were pretty fed up with his attitude.”
“How bad was it?
“It took all of us to break them up. I reviewed the tapes afterward, and it was obvious Blake had been pushing their buttons. So he got his final warning. If he’d done it again, he would have been out, never to return. He seemed to smarten up then. He apologized, saying he didn’t know what got into him. He was just frustrated at home and needed an outlet.”
At that Laysa turned her huge wounded eyes to Kanen.
“He was having trouble with his marriage. His wife wanted to start a family or something, and he didn’t want anything to do with that. She’d lost a baby once, and he’d been relieved. She wanted to try again, but that was the last thing he wanted. He was using the gym as a way to get away, a way to drive some of that temperament back inside again so it wouldn’t spill over into his marriage. I told him that he couldn’t just come here and beat up on other people because he wouldn’t come clean with his wife.”
“Your guilt kept you from opening his locker all this time, didn’t it?”
&n
bsp; “Yeah, I guess. It’s not like I needed the locker. And every time I looked at it, it just kind of made me feel sad. I wish I’d done more.”
“Done more …”
“I have to admit. Every time I think about him, I wonder if he didn’t commit suicide. Maybe things were so bad at home that he took a fast and easy way out.”
Chapter 8
Suicide? Crushed, Laysa took several faltering steps to the side of the road, where a short stone wall stood. She sat on top of it, collapsing, her mind reeling from the suggestion. It had never occurred to her. Why would it? As far as she’d known, they’d been blissfully happy. Blake was a great man. She refused to believe anything differently. So he hadn’t been ready to start a family? That was hardly a character flaw.
But how happy could they have been if Blake would go to the gym, picking fights with other guys to work off some of that angry energy? That didn’t sound like a happy guy to her at all. As a matter of fact, it didn’t sound like a happy marriage either. He’d had a temper, … but that’s why he’d gone to the gym.
If she hadn’t pushed him about having a baby, would he still be alive? She couldn’t let that thought go. It just drilled deeper and deeper into her soul, splintering everything she thought she knew about their life together. She’d never questioned the police. They’d told her it was a car accident, and she’d believed them. She didn’t remember the details now. She didn’t want to know. They told her that he hadn’t suffered, and that had been all she needed. She couldn’t bear to hear how bad it might have been.
She presumed Kanen knew. Because he was the kind who wanted details. She was pretty sure he’d said something about getting the rest of the information, and she’d said not to tell her. She’d wanted to remain in her happy little bubble that said Blake had died instantly and hadn’t suffered.
She lifted her gaze to Kanen’s hard face. He stared at her, a worried look in his eyes. “Is that what you found out from the police? That Blake committed suicide?”
He moved forward and dropped to his knees in front of her. He picked up her hands and held them close to his chest. “No. Suicide was never mentioned, was never contemplated. The evidence at the scene confirmed it was an accident.” He paused, then added, “Just like the police said at the first and what I relayed to you.”
She closed her eyes as a wave of relief washed through her. “I don’t think I could stand it if he had committed suicide to avoid me,” she whispered. “Even without him attempting suicide, here I thought we were happy, and instead he went to the gym to beat the crap out of people so he didn’t come home and beat me up.” She raised her gaze in bewilderment. “I never saw it in him.”
“Good,” Kanen said with a little more force than necessary. “Think about that. He did everything he could to let all that aggression out a long way away from you, so you didn’t see it.”
“But then what else didn’t I see?” she asked quietly. She knew the other men were listening in. There was really no way to keep this private. But then they already knew so much about her that it didn’t matter now. “Maybe he did know this guy? Maybe Blake was involved in the blackmail?” She stared at Kanen, her heart sad, her mind confused. “How do I know anymore, when everything I thought I knew wasn’t real?”
“Everything you thought you knew about him hasn’t changed,” Kanen said. “Just because he goes to the gym to let off a little steam, that doesn’t change who he was.”
She had trouble believing that. They were in this absolutely beautiful little town in Spain. It was so unique and so quaint, and she’d never been happier than when she had stepped out into this area. Just to see the countryside, to see how different it was, wishing with all her heart Blake was with her.
And now she was out here with everything about Blake crumbling at her feet. Was she making too much of it? It just seemed like such an inherently big issue, a huge part of his personality, to have not understood that about him. Sure, people would say she was female, and he was male. They’d say all kinds of things, if they got a chance. But the real issue was the fact that she felt like he’d been hiding who he really was. And she didn’t know what to do with that information.
Kanen stood, reached out a hand and said, “Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”
She shook her head. “I don’t feel like it.”
“Too bad.” He snatched her hand and gently pulled her to her feet. “We’ll head over there to that little family restaurant. I’m hungry.”
“About time somebody mentioned food,” Nelson said. The men seemed eager to have a change of topic. “That looks like a great place to sit down and have a bite.”
She knew what they were trying to do. It was just hard to let them do it. She wanted to curl up in a hot bath and dive deeper into this issue, and they didn’t want anything to do with it. Was that just another elementary difference between males and females? She couldn’t believe how hard this one issue hit her. It was difficult to imagine how different she and Blake really were. It never occurred to her to go to a gym so she could get into a physical fight to expend energy before going home to her spouse.
What did she do when she got stressed?
She’d cry. She’d hit that point where she couldn’t do anything about something, and she’d burst into tears. It was so unacceptable to Blake, probably as bad as his fighting was to her.
She always felt so much better afterward, and Blake always felt so much worse. He didn’t understand how the crying was a release, how it was beneficial for her. Was that the same thing as the fighting for him? Was it a release? Was that how he felt when he was done? Did he not hurt afterward? She never hurt from crying. Her face might get puffy and hot, but she always felt so much better that it was an easy thing to deal with. She didn’t ever remember him coming home with black eyes or a broken nose.
Then she frowned. That wasn’t quite true. Several times he’d had some bruising. He just brushed it off. And she let him because she didn’t want to know. If he said it was all good, then she was fine that it was all good. So why was it not all good now?
Because now it felt like a betrayal. And she knew she had to get her mind wrapped around that. If nothing else, she would pay better attention to her next relationship, would listen to the actual words—not ignoring the truths staring her in the face, not reading between the lines or thinking she could change the guy—and would open up more herself. She sighed, emotionally reeling that she hadn’t learned to do that with Blake, the love of her life. Her soul mate. Her husband. Her friend. And possibly a man she barely knew inside.
She shook her head at those thoughts to keep her tears at bay, bringing her back to this idyllic Spanish town.
She was tugged forward down the street to the small restaurant with tables and chairs outside, surrounded by a little iron gate. She took the seat in the corner with both Nelson and Taylor beside her. Kanen walked into the restaurant, returning to the table shortly.
Within minutes an older woman bustled out, an apron wrapped around her waist, delivering something that looked like coffee, only in a shrunken cup. It smelled like coffee, coffee on steroids, and Laysa wondered if it was a special kind of espresso. Menus were delivered too, before the woman left them.
Laysa picked one up, looked at the list of offerings and chuckled. “I don’t understand Spanish. Does anybody else speak and read the language?”
Nelson nodded. The waitress returned soon afterward, and a rapid-fire exchange followed between Nelson and the waitress. When they were done, she collected the menus and disappeared inside.
Laysa stared at Nelson in surprise. “Wow. You did that easily.”
He shrugged. “I was born and raised in Texas. Half of the population there speaks Spanish. The other half speaks English. Most of my friends spoke Spanish growing up. It was a pretty easy language to pick up when you were a kid.”
She nodded and asked, “Are we having lunch or dinner?”
“It’s after eleven o’clock,” Taylor said.
“And all we had was a little food on the plane. So I don’t care what we call it as long as we get to eat.”
She laughed. “So, in other words, you guys are seriously starving, and I—who never eats breakfast in the first place—didn’t even notice. Is that the idea?”
Nelson nodded and gave her a big grin. “You have no idea how happy I am that you finally decided we would eat.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t. Kanen did, and you could have said something at any time.”
“And what? Slow the momentum of whatever it was we were doing case-wise? Oh, no,” Nelson said. “I’m good. It comes from our navy training. Work comes first. We eat when we can. We sleep when we can. But now that we’re at the restaurant, my stomach is screaming for joy.”
She motioned at the menu and said, “Order me something small then.”
At that, the men discussed whether they wanted pasta or pizza or something completely different. She wanted vegetables, something that she wasn’t sure the guys were all that fond of. It seemed like a heavy meat-and-pasta dish would be the main order of the day.
When Kanen stood and returned the second time, he carried a basket of fresh breads. He set it down with a pot of what looked like whipped fresh butter. She realized she was hungrier than she’d thought. She reached for the first bun, and, after that, the basket emptied almost instantly.
She stared at the men as they almost breathed down the food, as if they hadn’t eaten in days. “I guess I really should have said something about food earlier, shouldn’t I?”
They all shrugged. “We could have waited a while longer,” Taylor said in a boastful voice. “We’re all good at starving when we need to. But, when there’s food, you can be sure we’ll make up for it.”
She chuckled. It was such a joy to watch them as they ate. Blake had eaten well, but he hadn’t eaten like this. And he’d gone to the gym and worked out. “So do you guys work out like Blake did?”
“To a certain extent, yes,” Kanen said. “But never without control. We’re there for fitness, not for muscles. We’re there to make sure we’re always in peak form before we get a call, so we’re ready no matter what it is we must deal with.”
