by Cecy Robson
That you’re making a mistake, I sign back.
My comment earns me a smile, but I can see his concern, despite the crinkles around his eyes that deepen when he grins. “You’re going to have to trust me,” he says aloud.
I let out a breath. He knows I trust him. How could I not?
I was brought to the Lehigh Valley District Attorney’s office when I was about six years old, after my biological mother had attempted to sell me in exchange for drugs. My mother probably thought it was a brilliant plan. Being born with profound hearing loss, I couldn’t speak, couldn’t communicate, and couldn’t understand. Which meant, I couldn’t tell anyone what was about to take place.
My primal instincts ordered me to run, that I was in danger, so I did―thank God I did. I kicked and fought, dodging the hands trying to grab me, and scurrying out of my window.
To this day, I remember the way the cold metal grating of the fire escape felt against my bare feet, and the way my mouth struggled to form what I thought were words as I banged on my elderly neighbor’s window. Miss Lena, the lady with too many cats and twice as many grandchildren, yanked me into her apartment when she saw me. She called the police, but by the time they arrived, my mother was gone. I never saw her again.
Not that I regret it.
I was placed in foster care, confused and frightened about what was happening and certain I’d eventually return “home”. Instead, I was brought before the young Assistant D.A Miles Fenske. He was supposed to handle my case, dispose of it, and move on. He was never supposed to welcome me into his heart. Yet that’s exactly what he did.
“Melissa,” he says. His words aren’t clear―not as clear as they can be, my hearing aids can only do so much, but I hear enough to sense the emotion in the way he speaks my name. “Why are you so sad?”
I raise my chin. “Declan O’Brien will never be the man you are. He’s not the right D.A. for this position.” I shake my head. “He belongs in the Trial Unit, Arson, Fugitive, anywhere else but where you’ve placed him.”
“I know you don’t like him . . .”
I raise my brows.
“. . . and that your first encounter wasn’t a positive one . . .”
“That’s because he was an asshole,” I mumble.
He chuckles. “I assure you he deeply regrets what he said. But Declan is smart, quick, and kind.”
I don’t agree. Not completely. Is Declan intelligent? Brilliantly so, and absurdly astute in court. With short wavy blond hair and a dashing grin that lights his blue eyes, he’s also gorgeous, and he knows it. But is he kind? I’m not so sure that he is. “He’ll never be the man you are,” I repeat.
“I’m not asking him to be. I simply want the best person for the job, someone who will help the victims who need him most.”
“That’s what you claim. But he doesn’t have experience handling delicate cases where offenders often inflict irreparable trauma.”
“No, but as the head of Victim Services, you do,” he offers with a knowing gleam.
My nails dig into the wooden armrests. “If you’re trying to hook us up, I’m going to be seriously mad at you.”
The edges of his mouth curve. “I’m only asking you to help Declan as he transitions into his new role. This new assignment won’t be easy on him.”
“Because he doesn’t want it. He wants to be the head of Homicide.” I stand with my hands out, pleading. “Daddy, please reassign him. The Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Unit is not where someone who seeks glory belongs.”
My voice trails as I catch a glimmer of his pain. “Daddy?”
At once, his face scrunches, flushing red only to grow alarmingly pale. I race around his desk, clutching his shoulders to keep him upright as he grips his side and beads of sweat gather along his receding hairline.
It’s only because he lifts his bowed head and a healthier shade of pink returns to his cheeks that I’m not screaming for help and dialing 911. “Daddy?”
He offers me a weak smile and pats my arm. “I’m all right,” he says, leaning back in his chair.
“No, you’re not,” I say, my eyes stinging. His light blue dress shirt clings with sweat along his arms and plump midsection. He’s not well. My father is . . . sick. “What aren’t you telling me?”
His hand slowly eases away from his side. For a moment his eyes search my face, as they’ve done a thousand times throughout my life. “The doctors discovered new tumors along my colon,” he finally says. “They’re planning to resection my bowel and dispose of the affected area with the hope of avoiding chemo this time around.”
Very carefully, I straighten, despite that my heart has all but stopped beating. My father was diagnosed with colon cancer years ago and barely survived the aggressive treatment. If it’s returned, now that he’s older, and not as healthy . . .
“When were you going to tell me?” I ask, struggling to keep my voice clear as it shakes, my fear likely worsening my speech impediment.
He sighs. “Friday, over dinner.”
To give me the weekend to absorb it, no doubt. “And your surgery? When is that?”
“A few weeks.” He frowns as if debating what to say. “I’ll be out of commission for a while. In my absence, Declan will lead the office as acting District Attorney.” He looks at me then. “And I ask that you help him, regardless of your feelings toward him.”
Declan
“This isn’t where I fucking belong.” I’m beyond pissed, and started typing my resignation letter at least six times today only to delete it. Yet for as much as I don’t want to head the Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Unit, I’m not a quitter. “Fuck,” I mumble, dragging my hand along my face. “Fuck.”
My brother Curran crosses his arms over his chest, not caring how it creases the shirt of his Philly PD uniform. But then Curran doesn’t care about shit like that. “It’s still a promotion, Deck,” he says. “You got this D.A. spot straight out of law school and have made more of a name for yourself than most douche-bag attorneys ever will.” He holds out a hand. “No offense to the douche-bag attorneys of the world.”
“That’s my point. After all I’ve accomplished, I should be the one leading the Homicide unit.”
I shove away from my desk and pace. When Miles gave me these new digs, I thought it was just the start of all the good things coming my way. When he assigned me a county car and a personal secretary, it only reinforced that my hard work had paid off. I was on my way …until I wasn’t.
“I spent months dismantling a mafia empire, Curran.”
“I know,” he says. “I was there.”
“I brought down a major crime boss―and his second in command, and his third.”
“Yup. Saw that, too,” he agrees.
“I received international attention―the trial of the century, the media called it―and for what? To be shoved someplace I don’t belong.”
“Why don’t you think you belong there?”
Out of all my five brothers, Curran is probably one of the biggest ball busters. But he’s not messing with me now. He’s being serious.
“Do you want to hear about babies and women being hurt? Day in and day out?” I ask. “These are the cases I’m going to be dealing with.”
“Someone has to do it, Deck. It’s the right thing.”
“I’m not saying it isn’t. I’m only saying I may not be the man for the job. This shit’s disgusting, what these low-life assholes are capable of.”
“Is this about Finnie?” He huffs when I straighten and don’t answer. “Christ,” he mutters.
As easy as that, my brother nails it on the head. For all he sometimes pisses me off, my brother isn’t stupid. “Finnie didn’t deserve what happened to him,” I say, feeling my anger burn down to my gut.
“Of course he didn’t,” Curran snaps. “No one does. But as his brother, you owe it to him to put monsters like the guy who hurt him away.”
I sit back in my chair and rub my jaw. “I don’t know if I can.”
/>
Our youngest brother was sexually assaulted by a neighbor when he was ten. It screwed with his mind. What he doesn’t realize is we’ve all suffered, too―not like he has―of course, not like he has. That doesn’t mean we don’t hurt for him or haven’t spent sleepless nights worried about him.
Nothing bad was supposed to happen to Finnie. He was the baby. The one who counted on us. The one we were all supposed to keep safe.
With this new assignment―hearing stories like Finnie’s on a regular basis?—God damn it. “I don’t think I can do this,” I say yet again.
“Deck, you have to, man.”
A knock on the door interrupts us. I know who it is before I even ask. “Come in,” I say, assuming my attorney pose because for now, I have to. For now, I’m a professional. Even though all the Philly boy in me wants to do is rage.
My boss, Miles Fenske walks in, followed by his daughter Melissa. Miles smiles warmly, nodding my way.
Mel? What can I say? She’s the one person who’s never been taken by my charm. Today’s no different. Unlike the other females who work here, from interns to attorneys, she doesn’t meet me with a grin, doesn’t flash me a little leg, doesn’t pretend to flirt. Brown hair, brown eyes, creamy skin, with a steel-hard exterior, she walks in with her hips swinging, her bright red dress hugging her hourglass figure, her full lips pressed into a firm line, and her unyielding stare meeting mine.
She doesn’t like me. Not that I blame her. Too bad this is the one woman I can’t seem to get out of my damn mind . . .
Read on for an excerpt from
Inseverable
A Carolina Beach Novel
by Cecy Robson
Prologue
Callahan
Three days.
That’s all I have left until this shit ends.
Three days shouldn’t feel like forever, not compared to the eight years I’ve bled to the Army. Thing is, good men have been killed in less time. In as quick as a blink, a squeeze of a trigger, or a small breath right before a grenade blows is all the time it takes to shove someone right out of life and well into death.
That’s what makes three days as long as it is. Three days is plenty of time to die.
My eyes tear when the wind picks up and shoots grime through the small hole of my lookout point. This blown out piece of cinderblock is only big enough to allow me a view of the street below, but not so small I don’t get smacked in the face with more filth. The tarp flaps above me as I spit out another layer of the dirt-sand mix spackling my teeth. Christ Almighty, I need a swig of the water resting near my elbow. But my thirst, like everything else has to wait.
I have a job to do.
I adjust my hips against the cracked cement of my bed, bathroom, and home all rolled into one, thankful that the agonizing ache stretching over the lower half of my body has settled into a now familiar numbness.
Out of all the points I’d scouted, and all the accumulated years spent in this position, I should be used to it. And in a strange way, it should almost be home. Yet nothing ever has been home.
But in three days, maybe something finally will be . . .
I shove my thoughts away and breathe as my fellow Rangers stalk along the street. It’s then I see them, a mother and daughter walking straight toward my team. Less than one city block separates them from the men counting on me to keep them alive.
The hell? How did they get past the other sniper unreported? Rogers is new on watch. But the quick paces these two are taking should have clued him in that something’s up. I train my scope on their faces; their expressions are blank, unreadable. ‘Cept that’s not what keeps my attention.
The little girl can’t be more than five. So why the fuck isn’t her mother holding her hand? I lift my radio and bark a warning, dropping it beside me as I lock my scope dead center on the woman’s head.
The radio crackles and Modreski chimes in, yelling at his team to hold their positions. He asks me what my plan is, knowing if something’s caused the short-hairs on my neck to rise, he and the boys damn well need to listen. But I don’t hear him, with a breath and a squeeze of the trigger, I leave a kid without a mother.
Just beneath the sleeve of her abayah―the dress completely covering her body―I see it, a detonator that would trigger the explosives likely strapped to her chest. A few Rangers I know―Simons and Boreman, rush forward. I start to mutter a curse, pissed at her for making me shoot her in front of her kid. But the curse lodges in my throat when I see the kid isn’t looking at her mother lying next to her dead.
She’s watching my advancing team as she lifts the detonator clasped tight in her hand.
Chapter One
Trinity
“Trin! You coming?” Hale calls.
Even over the steady hum of the ocean, his deep voice cuts through the small opening of our lifeguard station.
“I need five more seconds,” I yell back, my thick southern accent drawing out each of my words.
“That’s what you said nine minutes ago,” he complains.
“But I didn’t mean it last time,” I holler back.
I grin because even though I can’t see or hear him, I know he’s chuckling, no matter how much he’s trying to hold it in. I hurry and finish writing the schedule on the white board and cap the dry erase marker, before tossing it in the small cup holder to join the rest.
No sooner do I reach for my beach bag and throw the sandy thing over my shoulder than the office phone rings.
Most people would run away, ignoring it, after all by now it’s seven thirty and way after closing. But I’ve always been one of those goody-goody responsible types—you know the ones the teachers assign as classroom monitor and who always turned in her library books a day early? What can I say, I’m all about a good time.
I lift the receiver before it finishes ringing. “Magenta Groves Beach Resort, lifeguard station seven, this is Trinity speaking. How may I help you?”
“Trin. Screw the whiteboard and get in the damn car!” Hale yells through the receiver. I whip around as his voice echoes behind me, as well as through the phone. He hops up the steps as he disconnects, laughing like that was the best prank ever.
“Why did you do that?” I ask.
“Because I knew you’d stop to answer the phone, even though the rest of us have been waiting on you.”
I pretend to scowl, but don’t quite manage. Me and scowling don’t go hand and hand. Life’s too short to wrap your mind around everything that’s wrong with it. So I grin, because that’s something I can do and do well.
“You think you’re so smart. Don’t you?” I ask, placing the phone back on the charger.
“You forgot good-looking,” he says. “But I’ll let it slide on account of I’m modest, too.”
I laugh, but don’t argue—at least about the good-looking part. We’ve only been back at Kiawah for a week, but already Hale’s wavy blond hair has bleached significantly and his skin tone deepened to a light bronze. His steps are slow and purposeful as he crosses the small space separating us and stops in front of me.
“Let’s go, Trin,” he says, hauling me along. “You’ve done enough for the day.”
I readjust my bag over my shoulder, and follow him out of the office, the usual bounce to my walk kicking in despite my heavy bag.
“Here. I’ll take that,” Hale offers, reaching for my bag.
I step just out of reach, knowing he has his own stuff to carry. “I’ve got it, big guy,” I tell him.
“You sure?” he slams the door behind us. I stare out to the beach where a young couple is chasing after their little toddler as Hale fumbles with the lock.
“I’m sure,” I reply, my attention staying on the young family. “Hey, Hale, you know how I always mind my own business.”
“Nope,” he says, leading me forward.
“Well, this time I can’t,” I continue, ignoring his comment. “For your own good, I have to tell you that this maybe your last chance to do something abou
t Becca. The summer hasn’t quite started, but it won’t be long before it’s gone.”
“Yeah. I know,” he mumbles.
“And?” I ask, turning back to him.
He tugs on my long ponytail. Unlike Becca, my best friend in the world, I’m neither tall, blonde nor leggy. My hair is as black as midnight in winter, and I’m just barely five feet three. And where her eyes are light and striking mine are a dull brown. But I do have something my bae doesn’t have. Freckles. Y’all feel free to envy me at any time.
“Well?” I press. “You going to do something about that girl or aren’t you?”
He shoves his key into the pocket of his long red lifeguard shorts and glides the sunglasses perched on top of his head back onto his face. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see,” he tells me.
His smirk widens into that grin of his—the one capable of sizzling panties like coals over a fire. I shake my head. “Boy, between that smile of yours and that face it’s a wonder Becca’s not running to you rather than away.”
He flings his arm around my shoulders as our feet dig through the sand. “Now, sugar, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he says, keeping his grin in a way that tells me he’s lying.
“Come on. You can have anyone you want. And if it’s Becca, you need to act fast before those girls slapping each other just to lie their beach blankets near your post lead you astray and down a long dark path of sin, sex, and STDs.”
“Is that so?” he asks.
“I’m just watching out for you,” I say, stepping with him onto the gray weathered steps leading to the lot. “It’s the kind of friend I am. You know, the kind who likes to pretend you’re still a virgin and not the manwhore you’ve become.”
