Chasing Luck

by Brinda Berry

  I’m distracted by the noise from the cop’s scanner as we pull out of the lot. Something big is going down here. I hear the words ‘bomb squad’ and know my hunch was right. He puts on his blue lights and drives around the line trying to exit the parking area.

  “We’re both alive,” she states as if she can’t believe it.

  My mind flashes back to that gun in my face.

  “Ace?” Malerie’s sweet voice brings me back to her.

  “Hmm?”

  “I love you.”

  I grin like an idiot in the back of the cop car. “You’d better, sweetheart. Because you are stuck with me.” I wait a beat, take a deep breath, and leave my fears behind. “I love you.”

  25

  Ace

  “The great divide between truth and illusion is seldom clear.”~ Jelly Bean Queen

  “Good stuff,” I say, sniffing Mal’s perfume and nibbling on her ear. “But I like how you smell all the time.” Malerie’s bed bounces when I inch closer and rub her shoulder.

  The house is quiet. Malerie’s dog, Tom, lies across her bedroom threshold as a sentry. It’s a domestic heaven—far away from Chicago—and I feel lucky.

  “Shh… I want to hear this part.” Her head is on my chest and she reaches up to grab the television remote control. “Did you know flax has some cyanide compounds?”

  “You’re obsessed,” I grumble. The Chicago bomb squad discovered cyanide canisters in the room at the arena. Crazy man had planned a release of the poisonous gas into the ventilation that would have effectively killed thousands of concert goers.

  The news reporters make me out to be a security expert and some kind of hero, an uncomfortable status to say the least. I only want to be Malerie’s hero. Since the reporters also dissect the life of the crazy guy, that puts my own fame in perspective. Me and crazy guy share news airtime.

  I smooth one slick strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m going to check the system for the night.”

  “I don’t know why you do that. There’re alarms.” Mal doesn’t look away from the television. “A lot of good a security system does if you have to constantly check it.”

  “Doesn’t hurt.”

  She watches television a lot now and I’m glad. In the past, she wouldn’t watch because she only saw tragedy and now she sees the world and events and people.

  I walk downstairs to the monitoring panels I set up in the spare room. First though, a sandwich. I flick the kitchen lights on and dig through the refrigerator until I find turkey, cheese, and the brown mustard Gertrude makes from scratch.

  I’d marry that woman if I didn’t plan on marrying Malerie someday.

  I give Tom’s head a pat as he waits to see if I’ll share my snack with him. Both dogs rush from the kitchen to the front door. I pause. The sound of a turning key startles me and I slide the sandwich supplies onto the counter beside me, pull back into the shadows, and look around for a weapon. The alarm warning starts to beep.

  “Malerie?” It’s only Billy and I exhale. I lean over to a hidden panel in the kitchen and press the door alarm code in to deactivate it.

  “Hey, Billy. I thought you weren’t coming until tomorrow and—”

  “Hello, Ace. I’m glad you’re here.” Billy stands in the kitchen doorway looking very healthy and nothing like the last time I saw him in the hospital.

  Tom and Jerry trot over to his side. The dogs stand at attention and look past Billy. “Stay,” he commands.

  Tiny warning bells go off in my head. Two guys step into view behind Billy. Both wear black leather jackets, gloves, and guns.

  “Ah fuck, Billy.” I’m frozen to the spot beside the refrigerator door. The alarm’s deactivated, and we’re screwed. I knew I didn’t trust him, and I’m thrown back to my revelation on the plane when Mal and I talked about her dogs. The dogs didn’t attack the shooter because they knew him.

  Billy removes his gloves. “Making yourself at home?” He glances at the counter.

  “Yeah. Late night snack.”

  “Malerie upstairs? Are you tucking her in these days?”

  I’m so angry, my hands vibrate with tension. “I can get you what you need. Leave her alone.”

  “All her money is my money. And you may think it will be yours if you can be patient, but you’re wrong.”

  “I don’t want her money.”

  “I put some funds in your account, so that should help the authorities to see you’re just a grifter who was out for poor Malerie’s money. Of course, then you’ll kill her as well. The young are so greedy. Love doesn’t conquer all.”

  My eye twitches. “You won’t get away with it. You’re on video and the feed goes to a hard drive not in the house,” I bluff.

  Billy regards me with interest. “I’m sure you’ll give up the hard drive when Malerie begs us to stop hurting her.”

  The anger I feel turns to fear that trickles ice cold down my body.

  Billy nods as if he sees that the threat has called my bluff. “There’s one last thing I need. That box.”

  “You mean the one JT gave her.”

  “Yes, yes,” he says in an exasperated tone. “The combination to the safe in the basement has to be in the box he gave her. By the time I realized I needed it, she’d taken the gift bag from the closet.”

  Can Billy be right? That JT’s only intention was to give Malerie a safe combination?

  I take a step and his two henchmen step forward until Billy holds up a hand. He turns to the one at his right, a man with gray curly hair who’s built like Andre the Giant.

  “Go fetch Malerie from upstairs.”

  “I said to leave her alone.” I grab the jar of Gertrude’s mustard and sling it across the room, duck and run for the opposite door. Wood splinters in front of me as I make it through the kitchen’s second entrance and into the dining room. I don’t make it across the room before one of Billy’s guys tackles me like a linebacker. We crash into a cabinet of china and the noise is enough to wake anyone asleep within a mile radius.

  Or to alert Malerie watching television upstairs in her room.

  My breath comes in long draws and my chest heaves. It’s possible the guy has cracked my ribs.

  I wince as I pull up to a sitting position. I roll the guy off my legs.

  He’s not moving. “Hey Billy. Something’s up with your man in here.”

  If Billy is walking up those stairs, I have to stop him.

  Fear has a hold of my heart and jabs a bony finger inside. “Billy.” There’s only silence and I force myself to get to my feet. “Billy.”

  I place one hand against the wall and push away, run up the stairs to Malerie’s room. Inside, Billy stands with the box in his hands. His goon grabs me by the shirt and presses his gun to my head.

  “Why Billy? Malerie would’ve given you anything.”

  “Hmm.” He makes a disgusted sound deep in his throat. “I don’t want what Miss Malerie thinks I deserve. She’s not right in the head, you know. Never has been.”

  “What’s wrong with you, man? You’re the one who’s crazy.”

  “Maybe I am. I’ve waited too long. I thought having you take the fall for killing Malerie would solve everything and then she ran into the woods. That entire thing put a strain on my heart. Almost killed me. That was real, you know.”

  Billy looks down at the box and I slide a look over to Malerie’s closet door and the secret compartment from the dumb waiter built inside. She’s never tried it without me.

  Oh, Mal. Please be locked up in the panic room.

  Billy removes the lid from the top box. He flips the inside toward me. “Combination to the vault in the basement.” His smug smile makes me contemplate a suicidal lunge where my fists meet his face.

  “Where is she?” Billy nods at his thug and he shoves me into the wall, slamming my head against it with a vicious thud.

  I stare ahead at the wall. She can call for help inside that room and she’ll be okay as long as she doesn’t come out.
/>   A siren sounds in the distance, but I know it’s coming this way. Good girl.

  Billy’s brow furrows. “Give me the gun.” He holds his hand out.

  A deafening cacophony of sound fills my head and it takes a moment for me to realize what’s caused it. Malerie has set off every alarm in the system at once.

  Billy’s thug takes the gun from my head and tosses it on Malerie’s bed. “You’re on your own,” he says and backs away. I realize he’s running down the hallway and leaving.

  “He doesn’t trust you either,” I yell over the sound of the alarms.

  I glance at the gun on the bed and know Billy is doing the same. I run at Billy and drive my fist into his side. Something heavy slams into my temple. Blood drizzles down into one of my eyes. I blink to clear my vision.

  Someone loops an arm around my neck and pulls me back from Billy. A gun is at my head. It’s the guy from downstairs, not quite out for the count after all.

  Billy picks up the gun on the bed and points it at me. “Too bad we’ll have to frame Malerie for your murder and not the other way around.” He screams to be heard over the pulse of the alarms. “Either way, it works.”

  “Freeze. Put your weapon down.” An officer stands with his gun drawn. Billy narrows his eyes and the gun moves an inch to the right.

  Pop. Billy looks surprised for a beat before he slumps to the floor. The alarm stops and I stare at the dead man at my feet. Blood pools onto the floor.

  I put my hands up to show the cop I’m unarmed. Detective James steps into the room and Malerie pushes around him. She runs into my arms and I wince.

  “Easy. I think my ribs are cracked.”

  “I heard the call on the scanner,” Detective James says. He looks around the room and shakes his head. “I’ve suspected Vandol. We discovered an email to a man connected with the killer who shot JT in the restaurant. I couldn’t get any solid evidence … until now.”

  Malerie shoots me a confused look. “Billy sent someone to shoot JT?”

  She eases her hold and looks at Billy, lying face down on the white carpet and turns to press her face into my shoulder. “I was so scared for you. Almost too scared to stick with the plan about the panic room.”

  “But you trusted me. You did it, baby.” I laugh, a wheezy pained sound.

  “Yeah, I trust you,” she says as she walks with me out the door of her room and past the officers. “Trust you with my life.”

  * * *

  I rake my fingers through my hair. “Mal. I’ve found something.”

  Silence.

  We’ve spent days going through Billy’s things in the house and packing things to be sent to his daughter. I read through the letter in my hand for the second time before going to the kitchen to find Malerie. When I do find her, she’s at the table sifting through a box of photos.

  “It’s a letter from JT,” I say, handing it to her.

  “To Billy?”

  “No, the letter’s addressed to his attorney. It’s about giving you the combination to the vault on your eighteenth birthday. You’re supposed to go through some stuff in the vault and choose what you want and the rest goes to a museum. JT said it’s his legacy to you. There’s some stuff here about it being his life’s work.”

  “Oh.” She shrugs, places it on the table, and hops up to sit beside it.

  “The letter is dated from the day he got shot in the restaurant.” I caress her cheek. “You okay?”

  “I don’t want all his stuff. I’d rather have him back.”

  “I know. But to me … you must’ve have been pretty important for him to give this to you. The man calls it his legacy. He loved you, Mal. It was the best way he could show it.”

  She blinks hard and inhales. “I know you’re right … it’s just … hard.”

  I point at the letter still beside her. “You’re not going to even read it?”

  “You can tell me what it says. I hate all that legal mumbo-jumbo.”

  I huff an exasperated protest. “Baby, there’s an inventory list on page two that lists all these things at a value of $56.5 million.”

  She shrugs and gives me a wide-eyed look.

  The girl truly has no concept of money. Of how many people she could help with that kind of dough. I shake my head. “I know you want to see what JT left for you.”

  “I don’t have a combination. He didn’t give me one.”

  I scan the contents of the letter again. “JT says he changed the combination on your birthday to match something he planned to give you, something that he’d originally bought for your mother many years ago. But he never states exactly what the gift is. This explains why Billy wanted the boxes from JT. Maybe he knew the combination before that day, and then JT changed it. He must’ve been desperate to find that combo.”

  “Those boxes weren’t about the vault. You still don’t believe Teddy’s dad knew what would happen? After all we’ve been through?”

  Malerie picks up the letter and studies it. Suddenly her brow furrows, and she slides off the table. “Wait. That can’t be.”

  “What?”

  “I’m getting the boxes. I’ll be back in a second.”

  She returns quickly and hands both the letter and boxes to me. “Look at the UNIX timestamp.”

  “I’ve almost memorized these ten numbers.”

  “The letter says it’s a ten-digit vault combination.”

  “Let’s go check it out.” I’m across the room when I notice she’s not beside me. “Mal? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” She takes one step. “What’s the truth about all this, Ace? What do I believe?”

  I cross the room, set the box down, and put my hands on the sides of her face. I kiss her beautiful mouth and reign in the overwhelming emotions that make me want to forget about going to the basement. There are a dozen better uses for our time.

  I rest my forehead against hers and whisper my next words with a ferocity that comes from believing. “The truth is what happened to us. And maybe the truth is also JT’s legacy. The truth is I took this job to save you, but you saved me. Our future together—I don’t need to know any other truth.”

  Epilogue

  Ace

  “You gave me your warmth when I was cold as a morgue. You gave me your love when I was dead. You gave me your joy when I could find none. You gave me your all.” ~ Jelly Bean Queen

  The numbers on Malerie’s largest box opened the vault, and she donated the priceless paintings to several museums. JT’s legacy lives on in the world.

  The carriage house is my current residence. It’s a little girly for my taste—shabby chic is what she calls it—but I can stand sacrificing my man card. It’s more than a fair exchange for waking up next to her every morning. The mansion next door sits empty because no one really needs a dozen bedrooms.

  I turned in my notice to my landlady, Mrs. Prata. My notice included a request that she take my cat Evanescence to her place. The cat and Mrs. Prata are much happier. I bring her over to our place for weekly visits.

  “Thank you, dear, for having a birthday party for me.” Mrs. Pratt sits primly with her hands in her lap and waits for Malerie to slice the cake.

  “We love this. It’s fun.” Malerie smirks. “Ace was so excited about having cake.”

  I chuckle. “Whatever you say.” I wink at Mrs. Prata. “We know who really wanted cake today.”

  “He eats all the time,” Malerie says. “I mean he can’t get enough.”

  “Never get enough,” I agree and shrug. “Who wants to get enough of a good thing?” I smile at Malerie and waggle my eyebrows lasciviously.

  Her cheeks blush as dusty pink as the girly curtains and I laugh.

  “I haven’t had any birthday cake since Morrie was alive,” Mrs. Prata says. She twists the gold ring on her left hand. “My Morrie loved cake. I told him everyday he was alive he could have as much to eat and as much sex as he could want.” Mrs. Prata takes a large bite of chocolate cake and looks at me with an
expression of complete sincerity.

  “He lived to be a pretty old fella, didn’t he?” I ask, the corner of my mouth twitching.

  I look over and see Malerie’s blush is spreading.

  “Yes, Achilles, he did.” Mrs. Prata takes another bite of cake.

  I hold up my coffee cup. “To cake and other fine things in life.”

  “To lots of cake,” Malerie says and rolls her eyes.

  I take a large bite of cake, hoping it’s better than the last one Malerie attempted. And score. It melts chocolaty goodness onto my tongue. I’d eat it if it tasted like my boot, but it’s a very nice surprise.

  Malerie’s stepping out of her comfort zone in more than cooking. She’s decided to start college in the fall, majoring in media. I’ll be going back to major in business and marketing, which will come in handy since I’ve taken on management of some her charities as a part-time job.

  We’re both working on an online project with Collin. Turns out I have a lot in common with the guy. We think we can take the Rock Universe podcast to the next level with all the recent publicity. Jelly Bean Queen’s media connections are bringing in more interviews than Malerie and Collin can handle.

  It’s good to see my girl smile about our future.

  I excuse myself and grab a couple of boxes from the dresser in my bedroom. “Mrs. P, I got you something.” I scoot one box over to her side of the kitchen table and take my seat again.

  Mrs. Prata drops her fork and it clatters on the table. “Oh, I didn’t expect that.” Her birdlike features glow like a young girl’s. “I just thought, well, you know what I thought.”

  “From me and Malerie.” Malerie stands behind my chair and I reach around to loop my arm around her waist to pull her forward.

  Malerie gives me a curious look.

  Mrs. Prata opens the flat box and takes out a gold chain with a garnet pendant. “I don’t have anywhere to wear it.”

  I rise and walk around. “Wear it here.”