“I wish I could say that was the whole reason why we lost contact with Gina, but it’s not. It was prejudice against Ilya and what he stood for. Papa hated Europeans, but especially Russians and it stemmed from his service in the First World War.” She paused and looked up at her, “What I’m about to tell you, will it be added to the record?” She shook her head, “Never mind. It’s past time for this to get out. My mother told me this on her deathbed-that papa had an affair with a Russian nurse while he was over there and it ended very badly. He told mother the nurse was not a moral woman and led him astray.”
She scoffed, “The excuse men have used since time began.” She shrugged and continued, “Papa came back changed, he was tolerating of whites before the war, afterwards he was downright hostile and mean. Despises any Europeans that made their way into the country after the war.”
A heavy sigh escaped her, “I guess he thought Ilya would be the same and would hurt Gina once he broke things off. I honestly think he thought disowning Gina would ‘make her see reason’ and leave Ilya and come back to us.” Alex leaned forward; making sure the recorder was recording still.
“But she didn’t.”
She shook her head, “No, she didn’t. She left with Ilya that night and wouldn’t return until I told her of Mother’s funeral.” Tears filled her brown eyes, “I lived with Papa at the time and she wouldn’t step foot in the house, not even for the wake. She stayed with our baby sister while she was in town. Sarah told me about Nicholas and the name change and moving.” Tears now spilled down her cheeks, “It broke my heart that I had a nephew I would likely never see. It devastated papa when he found out about Nicholas. But none of us could get him to admit he might be wrong about Ilya and give him a chance.” She wiped her cheeks shaking her head, “He was a stubborn old goat even up to the end.”
Alex leaned forward, “Tamara, records show Gina called you three days before she died. Based off of Detective Hunter’s findings, she has reason to believe Gina’s murder was not a random home invasion gone wrong, but was possibly a hit. Can you think of anyone that might want have it in for her?”
She was quiet for several minutes before speaking in a hoarse whisper, “I can. Gina called me, she was genuinely afraid. Not for herself, but for your parents and Jane’s parents. She asked me to get them out of Nadirem if something happened to her. By the time we got word of what happened...” she trailed off.
“She feared Shawn’s father had finally gone off the deep end. He found out about Shawn and Jo and was going ballistic.” Tamara looked up, “My sister faced bigotry, prejudice and a war-but that man scared her in ways she couldn’t put into words.”
“She had heard over the years about how the Hunters had immigrated to America shortly before their daughter was born. I learned from Ilya over the years, he and his wife came from Egypt; one rumor that was going around about them was he didn’t leave there because he wanted to, but to stay a step ahead of the police. Ilya heard he was wanted for murder.”
Alex went still when she heard this, listening to Tamara continue, “Apparently his then girlfriend was facing an arranged marriage and when they were leaving to elope when her fiancé confronted them and he killed him.”
Tamara shivered and took a healthy gulp of her now luke-warm tea, grimacing as she said, “You have no idea how bad I wish this was a tumbler of whiskey instead of a mug of tea right now.” She scowled down at the mug in her hands, “Damn, heart medication.”
“I really don’t like to talk about the elder Hunters. Ilya had kept in contact with me over the years and he had heard a lot of rumors about the man over the years. Many of them where no good. He heard one time, the death was an accident and Sam left because the man had powerful family that would make sure Sam didn’t get a fair trial. Another that he did it in cold blood and another was that he didn’t do the actual deed but paid someone to do it.”
Suddenly Alex was putting the pieces together; Gina had not been the intended target.
She remembered her mother saying the night of the murder, Jo and her had been called last minute to cover the shifts of two waitresses that had gone home early sick.
They were supposed to be home the night of the robbery.
That had also been the reason they left and didn’t contact anyone until they were eighteen. They were waiting until it was safe…
Alex took the recorder’s memory drive and put it on her laptop’s saving and copying the interview to the P.I.’s file system. She looked up and caught the red light. She texted a message to Jane while she waited, she was sending one to Sim when the world around her exploded. Glass rained down on her and she felt the kiss of a bullet streaking past her, taking skin and clothing with it and leaving a fiery past on her upper arm.
It went through the glass, breaking the windshield, sending glass flying outside the car. She threw her phone down and put the car into drive. She got twenty feet when they accelerated, running into the back of the car. The force spun her around on the still damp road, she tried to re-gain control of the vehicle but another hit, sent her careening off the road; she had the feeling of being upside down, then pain exploded in her head as she bounced against the door, then darkness.
The explosion filled the night air as a lone man stood half-in half-out of his car, surveying his handy work. A smirk twisted his mouth, there was no way she would’ve survived the crash. Shame about her kid though; bitch should have backed off when she had the chance. He got back in the car and sped off into the night, he had a call to make.
A phone call in the middle of the night is never good. Combine with a sense of dread and troubling dreams; it makes it fell like a bad dream come true. Jane rolled away from Peter and turned to the nightstand, flicking the lamp on as s she answered her phone. “Hello,” she said groggily.
“Is this Jane Hunter?” her grogginess faded instantly at the sound of a man’s voice. She was up and rushing to her dresser. “Yes this is she; who is this?”
“This is Dr. Archer at Mercy-Grace Hospital, your cousin Alexandra Williams was just brought in; you and her brother was listed as her emergency contacts. Her brother was contacted and so are you.”
Jane was throwing a shirt and jeans on as he talked; she saw in her dresser mirror Pete was throwing his clothes back on and grabbing his keys and phone. She was shoving her running shoes on when she heard a crash downstairs and the sound of feet on the stairs a second before she saw Sim standing in the doorway, “I just got a call from Cole; he’s driving back now. Let’s go I’ll explain on the way.” Jane hung up the phone and raced down the stairs after Sim, she heard Pete shut the door after him as she went to open the driver door, only to have her hands shaking so bad she couldn’t get the keys in the lock. Pete took them from her and opened the door, gesturing to her and Sim, “I’ll drive, neither of you are in any shape to drive.”
Neither woman argued, they simply got in and he was starting the engine and backing out of the driveway before they had their seatbelts on. Jane turned in her seat from the passenger seat to look at Sim, who was looking out the door with a blank expression.
“What happened, Sim?” She shook herself and looked back at her, “They found the Challenger crashed, the road was still pretty wet from this evening’s rain, they think she swerved to miss something in the road and she hydro-planed and went airborne and flipped over a couple of times before it crashed. It caught fire and exploded.”
Jane went pale at the word explosion. Sim rushed to continue, “They found her a few feet from the wreckage, she wasn’t in the car when it caught fire. They think she either was thrown from the car or pulled herself from the crash before the explosion. She was unconscious on arrival, so they couldn’t get a statement.”
She fell silent after that, all of them having their mind on getting to the hospital as fast as they could. Jane looked over at Pete and without her saying a word, he sped up and they raced on to Mercy-Grace.
Alex had a major concussion, a broken wrist and leg
, multiple cuts and scratches from the crash and ejection from the car. Her being ejected from the car was what ended up saving her life. The car exploded, raining debris down her, causing many of the abrasions and cuts that peppered her skin, and cracked ribs. Despite it all her injuries, she would live and make a recovery. She would need surgery on her broken wrist and physical therapy. Until then they were keeping her in a medical-induced coma.
***
Jane was jerked awake as she felt Pete move behind her. With a groan he pushed up behind him and moved of the too-short couch. He stretched, audible-cracks sounding as he did. He looks back at her, “I’m going to see if the doctor is in yet.” She glanced over at the wall clock across the room; seven-thirty. They were waiting to hear when she would be let into Alex’s ICU room. She had been in surgery then recovery since they got there night before. She nodded and stood, stretching as she did, “I’ll go with you. You reckon the cafeteria’s opened yet? I’m going to go get us some coffee.”
They walked down to the nurse’s station and found the doctor wasn’t in yet. Jane went back to the waiting room to grab her phone and saw Simone was awake, “Doc in yet?” Jane shook her head.
“Not yet; Peter and me are going downstairs and get some coffee and maybe see if the cafeteria is open yet.” Simone stood, stretching as she did, “Bring me back some, would ya? I’m gonna call Cole, see if he’s back yet.”
With that Simone went off to find a bathroom and Jane and Peter walked over to the elevators to take them downstairs.
He was coming off the elevators to the ICU as the other elevator dinged, going down. He walked over to the nurse’s station and asked for Alexandra Williams chart. He had been told not to fail again and to make it look like she went into cardiac arrest. He was told he would not like the outcome if he failed again.
After the nurse left he pulled the syringe out of his lab coat and inserted into her IV tube and pressed the plunger down. He walked over to the garbage and disposed of the syringe and walked back out and around the corner where he could hear the code call and tell his boss it was done.
Simone was hanging up the phone when she heard running feet and the loud speaker crackling to life with a nurse’s voice, “Code Blue! We have a Code Blue in Room Four. I repeat we have a Code Blue in Room Four.” Simone ran from her seat by the windows and down the hall to the ICU where Alex was.
Jane and Peter were coming off the elevator when the loud speaker crackled through the empty hall, “Code Blue! We have a Code Blue in Room Four,” the tray of coffee cups slipped through her nerveless fingers. “Alex,” she whispered in a choked voice and ran down the hall, Peter right behind, to see nurses and doctors running in and out of Alex’s room, bringing equipment. She could see Alex convulsing on the bed and the heart monitor was going crazy, a nurse grabbed the paddles from the crash cart and charged them, handing them to the doctor, “Clear!” he yelled.
Jane felt Peter’s arms wrap around her as Alex arched under the paddles. The heart monitor didn’t change, “No response, charge it again. Clear!” Jane could almost feel the electricity running threw her as they worked on Alex to bring her back.
The fourth time the doctor held the paddles, shaking his head, “No change. She’s been down too long.” He looked briefly at a sobbing Jane being held between Peter and an equally sobbing Simone. Simone wasn’t any better, but was holding Jane up. He looked at the clock on the wall, “Time of Death, eight o’clock am.”
Jane felt all the air leave the room and her whole world shift. She heard someone sobbing, keening, and as she went to her knees, she realized it was her. She faintly heard Simone talking to her, but couldn’t make out the words. The room began to spin and her chest began to hurt, making it hard to breath. Her last thought was Peter calling for a nurse, before collapsing back into Simone’s arms.
Jane’s first conscious thought was where was that damn beeping sound coming from. She raised her hand to hit the alarm clock on her nightstand only to find no night stand. Her eyes opened to see a unfamiliar place. She looked over and saw the beeping coming from a monitor, to her surprise she discovered it was attached to her.
A sound came from the other side of the room and she saw Peter asleep in a chair, but was now awake. He rubbed his face; despite just waking up he looked like he hadn’t slept much. He stilled when he saw her sitting up. He crossed the room in long strides, sitting on the edge of the bed he pulled her into an embrace, “You scared me there when you passed out. You’ve been out for nearly twenty-four hours. The doctor said you’re fine and can leave once you’re awake and he looks you over.” She started to ask what was wrong when she remembered-the car crash, Alex coding in the ICU and…tears ran down her face as it hit her. Alex was dead.
She buried her face in Peter’s chest, “Oh god it wasn’t an awful dream,” she sobbed. He pulled her further into him, laying them back down on the bed. He held her as she cried, shock setting in as she realized the woman that was her sister in every way, was gone.
“It’s my fault, Peter. If she hadn’t gone there, she wouldn’t have been on the wet road; she wouldn’t have hydro-planed on the road and crashed. She’s dead because of me!” she sobbed. She could never look her family in the eye again.
Peter felt his heart breaking at her heart-wrenching sob; she blamed herself and she didn’t need to. He took her face in his hands and lifted her to meet his eyes, “Jane it was an accident you had no idea it would rain that night and Alex was a safe driver, you couldn’t have known.”
She shook her head, trying to pull away; he shook his head and leaned, making his words clear. “Janie, you had no part in it, she volunteered to go to the reservation. You didn’t make her. This is not your fault.”
She buried her face in his chest and sobbed; Peter could do nothing but hold her and comfort her. Her sobs calmed after a while until she was silent, her breathing ragged against his chest. He gently rubbed her back, calming and wishing he could take her pain away.
She was silent for a time before she had calmed enough to speak, “I need to start planning the f-funeral,” she said in a choked whisper. He sighed, hugging her to him, “No you don’t. Simone said she’d take care of all the arrangements; there’s going to be a memorial service on Friday and then….” He sighed, knowing the next part was going to be tough, “Simone said then they’ll ship Alex home to be buried in the Family Plot in Anderson.” To be buried next to their grandparents, Jane realized.
Aunt Rose had Uncle Cole’s ashes brought to the family home and buried them in the family plot.
Alex would lay to rest by her father’s side.
She knew it was the right thing, Alex loved the old family home and the land it had sat upon for generations. But at the same time, Jane wanted her close to her, to be able to see her and visit her. ‘So does Aunt Rose,’ a voice in the back of her mind said. Guilt once again swamped her; Alex was aunt Ro’s only daughter and was going to be devastated when she got the news. This only firmed Jane’s resolve; she fiddled with the buttons on Peter’s shirt. “Tell Simone to get her black dress, the one with the red flowers and cap sleeves. She’d want her red heels, the one with the open toe, and her-”
“Her pearl earrings, the ones you got her for her last birthday. Leave her rings; they’re to go to your Mom and Aunt Red. Her silver heart-shaped locket, she was leaving to Della. Her sapphire ring she wanted to go to you. I know, Jane.”
She looked up at him surprise on her face, “How did you-” “You told me one time, because you wanted the same. Except you planned to give your pearl necklace to Della and your emerald-and-diamond ring to Luke for when he got married. I know you, Jane.” She looked up from where she laid, studying him; he did know her. He knew her faults, likes and dislikes and her secrets.
He knew when to stand by her and let her fight her own battles and when to step up. She put her hand up to his face, cupping his cheek, “You’re right, you do know me.”
She closed her eyes and sighed, leani
ng against his chest, “So, you know in the upcoming days and weeks I’m not going to be easy to be around, right?” He kissed her forehead, brushing a lock of hair from her eyes, “I’d be worried if it wasn’t easy on you. You could be a total and complete bitch and I’d still be here. I know this isn’t going to be easy; so fall apart, don’t be the strong one.”
Tears blurred her vision, “I don’t know how not to be the strong one.”
He brushed a kiss over her cheek, “I know. You are so strong, Jane. That’s what I’ve always loved about you. But I’m here; let me be the strong one.”
Tears ran down her face as she burrowed closer to his chest, seeking his warmth when she was suddenly so cold. After a while, she wiped her tears and sighed, “Go get the doctor and get me outta here.”
He looked up at him, “I need to get back to the house and be ready to go to the airport and get everyone.”
“We need to be ready. You’re not going through this alone. I’ll be here every step of the way.”
She gave him a teary smile, “I love you.” He leant down from his standing position by the bed, taking her lips in a tender kiss, “I love you too, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Epilogue
Simone walked past the restrooms and toward the back of the funeral home back exit. It had long been used as a smoking section for both employees and grieving families so there was no alarm sounding as she opened the heavy door and slipped outside.
Her family thought she was outside for air, and never had she wanted a cigarette as bad as she did right now. She looked around the area, before she deemed it clear and pressed the headset in her ear and called the pre-paid cell phone.
Letters to Jane (Mississippi Book 1) Page 9
