“Randy thought someone was trailing him, reading his email, listening in on phone calls. That’s why he wrote a letter to me.” I nodded slowly, finally understanding the depth of my brother’s desperation. “He was so scared he coded it in Latin.”
“And the post card?” Willow asked, her eyes rimmed with tears. “He hid that behind one of his drawings knowing you’d find it.”
“If Everest hadn’t messed up the drawing, if he hadn’t made it look like a crazy man’s bizarre images, I would have found it sooner.” I took in a ragged breath. “He had me so fooled, Willow. Everest had everyone fooled.”
“Yes, but if Randy hadn’t hidden the sketchbook and you hadn’t found it…” she wiped her eyes with the pads of her thumbs. “I doubt the FBI would have taken a second look, but you did. You believed in him.”
“I had no idea the trouble he was in. If it wasn’t for John—”
Willow arched a brow. “Who?”
“The Chicken Guy,” I explained. “If he hadn’t mailed me Randy’s letter in the first place…”
I didn’t want to entertain the idea that Randy would still be lost to lies and deception. I didn’t have to read Davis’s article to know what happened.
Everest, though initially involved with Randy for the same altruistic reasons, lost sight of the purpose behind Randy’s drive to help Susan.
Everest wanted fame. He wanted his organization to be known for championing the little guy. Everest wanted to be the David to Grossman Chemical’s Goliath, but things went terribly wrong. Especially when Randy sensed something was off with Everest and tried to back out of their plan.
It was Everest who forced Susan to make the calls to Park Davis at the paper and to Grossman Chemicals. He did it to get me off his trail. Everest, seeing Susan’s infatuation, talked her into spying on me and feeding him information. In turn, Susan recruited Michelle. All along, he’d been pulling strings, ahead of me at every turn.
Ahead of everyone.
Susan told me. She’d been allowed to write me a letter that Agent Harris hand delivered when he visited. Her words shed light on the events that led to that fateful night at the plant. She explained how she convinced Randy to go ahead with the fire demonstration, neither of them realizing that Everest had snapped, and doused the area they planned to use with magnesium in an effort to heighten the blaze and call national attention to their efforts.
His sights were set on the world stage, but he panicked when the explosion killed a third shift crew that had just started that night. No one knew they were going to be there.
When I arrived at the plant after hearing the phone message from Randy where he told me not to believe what they told me…I didn’t know at the time he was referring to Grossman Chemicals and their lies about how Susan’s father died.
His letter in Latin explained it all…
Sorrow follows me. In my right hand is lightning, in my left hand death. We are dominion. We are protectors. Understand our message.
Susan was sorrow and she followed after Randy, pursued him to help her. He used the skill of his trade—his right hand—that created the explosive meant to start a small fire. In his left hand was death, the secret he meant to expose. He and Everest were meant to be protectors, to prevent more deaths…the message was clear to me now, but I got lost somehow. I’d failed to understand Randy…his last words to me were not about him at all.
He’d wanted me to take up the cause, to write about the injustice suffered by Susan and her mother, the lies and intimidation by Grossman Chemicals. Randy believed I could help.
I never had the chance. When I followed a hunch to the plant that night…it was the last time I would ever see my brother alive.
But I remembered that night now. In the hours I lay awake since the hurricane, I remembered with startling clarity the events of those last moments of my brother’s life. He’d run back into the blazing building to try and save the workers and managed to push me to safety before the explosion killed him.
Willow put her hand on mine, pulling me out of my dark thoughts.
“Riles,” She looked at me with red, puffy eyes. Crying eyes. “We can still fix this. We can still save your career. I know that offer—”
“I don’t want those things anymore,” I said, and saw the wind go out of her. “I don’t want that life.”
She nodded slowly, her face pulled into a sad smile. I wondered if she already knew I felt this way, but needed me to say it out loud.
“What do you want then, Riley?” she asked, and honestly seemed to not know.
I put my hand over hers. “I guess I want to make my way as Riley, not as a Drake. I want to live, really live, for what I believe. At least, I want to try to.”
She searched my eyes with her own copper-colored ones and nodded slowly. “I believe you will, honey, I believe you will.”
Jake showed up the morning after my mother left. He had on his jeans and T-shirt and held his black hat as he looked down at me with that amazing smile of his. His crooked grin took my breath away.
He told me that Paul Lyle, the La Foudre coroner who fled in the wake of Dauby’s death, returned and agreed to testify alongside Susan.
“He had a lot to say,” Jake said as he sat on the edge of my bed and held my hand. “He said that Grossman’s head of security threatened him and his wife if he didn’t change the cause of death for Susan’s father.”
I tried to sit up, but my shoulder, torn by Jake in his attempt to keep me from flying off into oblivion, sent shards of pain through my chest, and I froze.
“And Grossman Chemicals?” I said after a few minutes.
Jake stood, pulled an ice pack from the hospital table and placed it gingerly on my shoulder. He smoothed my hair with his hand, his expression concerned.
“Ah, they cut ties with the guy. They’re screaming that they had no idea all this was going on.”
“Bet they’ll make a nice gesture,” I said and smiled. “My mother said she heard rumblings of a huge settlement for the families of the men who died in the explosion.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” I said sadly. “There’ll still be fallout for my family over Randy’s involvement, but my mother will smooth it out with the press. She always does.”
Jake nodded, his lips pulled into a thin line, thinking.
I tugged on his T-shirt sleeve with my thumb and forefinger. “Did you ever find out who set Dauby’s house on fire?”
“No. Either Everest, or Susan. Doesn’t really matter, now.”
“Everest caused so much heartache out here.” I bit my lip. “So much pain.”
Jake nodded, his dark eyes holding mine. “You wanted the truth…was it what you hoped it would be?”
I thought for a second, a tear sliding down my cheek as I considered his question.
I found out that Randy was a man who fought for those who weren’t strong enough to do it themselves, who acted out of honor, who believed in truth right up until the moment he left this earth.
“Yeah,” I said and smiled through my tears. “I don’t regret a second.”
35
Four weeks later
A speckled cloud of stars dusted the deep purple sky flickering light across the night like fireflies on the bayou. A soft breeze picked up the scent of jasmine and wafted it gently across the water, and made me think of warmth and the loveliness of this strange and powerful place.
I stretched out across the canoe, my head against one side and my feet over the other just skimming the water. Jake sat next to me, his arm around me as we let our heads fall back to look up at the softly swaying cypress branches.
The pale moon hung low in the October sky, its yellow face open, clear, and shining down on us.
Jake snuggled closer, buried his nose in my hair and sighed happily.
“You settled in, yet?”
I smiled in the dark. “Yeah, Verona is a great landlady.”
“You know she almost t
ore down that little cottage on her property last year, but a storm blew in and stalled her.”
“Seems like that happens a lot out here in La Foudre…storms changing plans.” I tilted my head, rested it on his. “I started writing today.”
Jake shifted next to me, his eyes holding mine with expectation. “What did you write?”
“I wrote about love and breathless, heady adventure with a good man. A man who loves God.”
Jake nodded next to me. “Randy would be proud.”
“Yeah.” I wiped a solitary tear from my eye. “He’d be proud of me.”
The bayou waters rocked us slowly, the cicada song buzzing in the dark reeds, and we listened to them in silence.
“Heard from Willow tonight.”
Jake chuckled. “Does your mother still hope you’ll move back to California?”
“Nope,” I said, and turned to kiss his temple. “She called to congratulate us.”
Jake took my left hand in his, held it up to the sky. The diamond on my finger sparkled with the moonlight as he blew out his breath in a slow whistle.
“Ready for this adventure, Riley Love?” Jake whispered and kissed my hand.
I turned to him, my heart soaring with the promise of a new life, a life spent with this wonderful man, and I lifted a silent prayer to my Father.
For loving me, bringing me through the storm, and blessing me beyond anything I imagined possible.
“I’m ready.”
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