by KB Winters
“Wait. Chase, wait!”
I froze in place, my finger on the power switch. “What’s wrong?” I followed her stare and my heart screeched to a sudden stop. “Is that…?”
She nodded and I lifted my finger off of the power switch. “What are they saying? I can’t understand.”
The TV had flipped over to the news and beside the news anchors head, was a picture of Henry O’Keefe. The volume was still muted, so I turned it up. I turned around to see that Melissa was sitting ramrod straight on the edge of the couch and I took a seat beside her, leaning forward to hear what the anchor was saying in rapid fire Spanish.
“There was an FBI raid…today. O’Keefe was…”
I stilled as the anchor said, “Henry O’Keefe, real estate mogul, husband, and father of one has been shot and killed during a raid carried out by the FBI.”
“What? What did they say?” Melissa was frantic, her eyes darting between the TV and me. “Chase!”
I blinked slowly, holding my eyes closed for a moment.
“Chase?”
I turned away from the TV and met her eyes. I reached for her hands and clasped them in my own. “Melissa…he’s gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean?”
“He’s dead.”
Chapter Ten
Melissa
The details of Henry’s death spilled from Chase’s lips in slow motion as he relayed each line the TV news anchor was saying. I heard everything he said but most of it didn’t absorb. All I could hear was the echoing words in my mind.
He’s dead.
Henry’s dead. Over and over again.
My emotions were a frazzled blitz and none of them could be trusted to gauge how I was truly feeling. I could barely breathe as I listened to him speak. I felt like I’d been swimming and suddenly got sucked under, and was now fighting for the tide to release me again. I kicked and flailed, trying to reach the surface again, to breath, but all it did was pull me deeper underwater.
“Melissa? Melissa!” Chase’s voice finally broke through the chaos inside my head and I snapped to attention. “Talk to me. Say something. Are you going into shock?”
I started shaking, uncontrollably. My limbs felt numb and heavy. Then my stomach flipped and clenched and I stumbled from the couch, making it a few feet, before I collapsed to the floor and heaved up the remnants from my dinner all over the living room floor. I panted and tried to swallow the disgusting bile in the back of my throat.
Chase stooped beside me and I swatted at him, wishing he wasn’t there to see me as I shattered to pieces. “Melissa, stop fighting me. Let me help you.” He rubbed his hand along my back and tried to help me up, but I flopped to the ground as a sob broke loose from some primal place deep inside me. I cried harder than I could ever remember crying before. My vision was blurred by the tears streaking down my face. My throat closed up in between body wracking sobs. My chest burned as my lungs screamed for air. Before I could regain control, I started to hyperventilate.
“Melissa, breath. Focus on me. Breath in, slow, slow. There, yes, like that,” Chase coached me, his hand still running up and down my back and the ridged muscles that seized of their own accord.
“I—think—I’m—going to—” The thought became reality and I dry heaved again.
“It’s okay. I’ll get it. Breathe.”
I whimpered and rocked back and forth on the floor, curling in on myself. “Henry’s dead? He’s dead.”
“Shhh. Baby, come here.” Chase scooped me from the floor and wrapped me in his arms. “It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.”
His words bounced off me. They couldn’t sink in.
He stroked my hair until my breathing returned to semi-normal, and I sagged against him, finally having spent all my energy. I leaned back against the couch and stared blankly ahead. My eyes dropped to the place I’d thrown up and a hot rush of embarrassment spread through me. “Oh my gosh…I have to…” I started to push up from the floor but Chase stopped me.
“No, no. Stay here. I’m going to get you some water.” He walked away and flicked the TV off as he passed by. Not that I could have understood what they were saying anyway. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know.
I scrubbed at my eyes, wishing I could banish the images of Henry’s face staring back at me from the screen moments before. They’d used the picture from his real estate license. I remembered the day with crystal clarity. He’d been so proud. We’d gone out to a big dinner that we couldn’t afford and he’d presented me with a picture of a mansion in the Pacific Palisades. He’d told me that someday we’d own that house. I remembered telling him there were occupants in the house. He’d laughed and said that someday we’d make them such a crazy offer they couldn’t turn it down.
To his credit, he’d been right. A couple of years later, he paid cash, well above the market rate for the house, and we’d moved in two weeks later.
I wasn’t sure how I would ever be able to go back again. Especially now that Henry was gone.
“Here,” Chase said, entering the room again. I glanced up and he offered me two tablets, a glass of water, and a linen napkin.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice groggy and thick.
Chase sat down next to me on the floor and tucked me against his side. “Melissa, I’m sorry. I know I can’t even begin to imagine what you’re going through so I’m not going to try. Just remember that I’m here and I’ll help you in any way I can.”
I nodded and sipped from the water glass. The water was lukewarm but cleared away the stringent taste of my mouth. I tried not to look at it. At least on hard wood it would be easy to clean up.
I blew out a long slow breath. I glanced down at my hand and remembered the two pills. “What are these for?”
“Just aspirin. I figured you’d get a headache. The last time I cried like that I had a whopper for two days afterward.”
His candor surprised me and I snuggled in closer to him. “What were you crying about?”
He set his jaw and stared ahead for a long moment before dropping his eyes down to me. The pain behind them made my heart jump. “I lost a good friend. A fellow SEAL. I cried like a baby when I got the news. It took me a long fuckin’ time to get over that. In some ways, I guess I’m still not over it. It’s been years but I can remember it all like it was yesterday. He was like a brother to me.”
“I’m sorry, Chase.”
He nodded. “If you don’t want the pills, I’ll take them back. I just figured—”
“I don’t think I should…with the baby…”
“Shit!” He smacked himself in the face with the palm of his hand. “Damn it, I’m such an idiot. I didn’t even think about that.”
I smiled sadly. “Hey, don’t beat yourself up, okay? You’re new to all this.”
He shook his head. “I should have known that though.”
I tugged on his arm and he dropped it back around my shoulders. “It’s okay, Chase. Really.”
A heavy silence fell between us as we each wandered off into our own thoughts. My mind opened like a scrapbook of memories, each clip like a scene from a moment in time. The day that Henry and I met, when we got engaged, moving into the mansion, finding out about Jackson, and then Jackson’s birth. Each one flashed like a bright snapshot. Then they turned darker, a creeping edge of grey coming into focus. The first time Henry threw something across the room in a tirade, the three am screaming matches in the kitchen, the first time he hit me and shoved me to the ground.
They stopped on one moment, the moment he found me in the pantry after I’d overheard him planning the hit to take my life.
That was the last time I saw him. Our last conversation. The way I would remember him.
As a cold hearted, power hungry monster.
The two images warred together and my emotions swung from horror, shock, grief, and relief. I didn’t know how to think. How to feel. It was so unexpected and so out of nowhere—it was hard to process. My heart broke and bled for
Jackson. But then a second later, all I could think was Thank God, the nightmare’s over.
I shook my head, wanting all of the conflicting voices to go silent.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Chase asked.
“I don’t know what to say. It’s like someone ripped my heart out and put it in a blender. If I say I’m relieved, that I can finally go home and not be afraid anymore, that would make me a horrible monster. But at the same time, it’s hard to mourn someone who wanted to kill me or take my child away.”
“I understand. I don’t imagine there is one way to feel about this. It reminds me, at least in some small way, about how it feels to take a life as a soldier. In some ways, you’re relieved that you and the rest of your fellow soldiers are safe from danger. Sometimes it’s even this celebrated thing, like when a well-known terrorist is taken out. But there’s always a part of you that thinks about the fact that whoever you killed has a family somewhere. They are someone’s son, brother, husband, maybe even a father, and you know your actions just broke someone else’s heart.” Chase paused and shook his head, gathering his own thoughts. “Eventually it all becomes too much to take.”
“Is that why you got out then?”
“Yes and no. I never really recovered after losing Stephen, that was the friend I mentioned. Without him, it wasn’t the same. I stayed in another year but I knew I couldn’t keep going.”
I rubbed my hand up his arm. Wishing to bring him some sliver of comfort. “Thanks for sharing that with me.”
He smiled at me. “Of course. You will have to be sworn to secrecy though. Knowing that sometimes SEALs cry is classified intel.”
“Your secret is safe with me.” I glanced down at myself. “Well, us, technically.”
Chase drew in a breath at the reminder. “No one else I would trust more.”
Somewhere a few feet away a vibration sounded. Chase dove to get the phone and I pushed off the floor and went to the kitchen to get something to clean up my mess. I wasn’t about to make Chase do it. That would be humiliating.
From the kitchen, I could hear Chase answer the phone. When I walked back into the living room with a rag and a bottle of cleaner, Chase clicked the call onto speaker mode. “Yes, we just saw it on the news here.”
“You did?” Matt asked, clearly surprised. “Where are you?”
“I guess there’s no reason to keep it a secret now,” Chase said, glancing at me for confirmation. I shrugged and lowered to the floor to clean the spot. “We’re on a little island near Manzanilla.”
“Oh, clever. Well, the news is all over the place here. I mean blasted all over the internet, the news, and I’m sure every newspaper tomorrow morning will have this story splashed across the front.”
Chase raked a hand through his grown out hair. He needed a haircut about as badly as Jackson did. “We didn’t really get the complete story…can you tell us?” He looked at me. “Wait, Matt, hold up.”
“What?” I asked, finishing the cleanup.
“Is this okay? Do you want to hear this right now? I can take it outside.”
I shook my head. “I want to hear.”
“Okay. Matt, go ahead, man.”
“And Jackson is…?”
“Sleeping,” I answered. “It’s fine. But thank you for asking.”
I went to the couch and set the dirty rag on the small end table. I could finish cleaning later. Chase crossed the room and sat down beside me.
“As you both know, the FBI was on Henry’s ass for some questions regarding his permit acquisition process in Stallion Bay. The mayor there was against the resort’s development and led the majority of the town in fighting Henry’s company from getting access to build. However, a few months before they would be forced to move on to another town, the mayor died, supposedly of a heart attack. But it wasn’t. New reports show that he was drugged and that the heart attack was a result of that medication being fed to him over time. Henry wasn’t the one who gave the mayor the drug but had connections to the man who did.
“Then, in another town, Holiday Cove, his mistress Talia was killed in a plane crash. At first, everyone was blaming the pilot, a decorated Navy airman, Aaron Rosen. However, that wasn’t the case either. It looks as though Henry’s men were behind that as well.”
“Damn,” Chase breathed.
I sat in silent shock. Who had I married?
Matt continued, “There were a few other questionable things, less violent, but among them was blackmail scams to get permits, embezzling from his own stock holders, and harassment cases that were all swept under the rug in order to keep his juggernaut company running. None of it could be pinned directly on Henry as it was all circumstantial. Similar to what you, Melissa, were experiencing. A very real threat but without anything that would hold up in court.”
“So, what changed?” Chase asked.
“The FBI set up that navy man Rosen in a sting operation to see if Henry would bully him and maybe they could get him on something that would enable them to get a warrant. Things went downhill from there. Henry found out the guy was wired, apparently they’d tried this trick already, and went berserk. The FBI rushed in to save Rosen and Henry pulled a gun. When he refused to stand down, he was shot.”
“Oh, God!” I covered my mouth, new tears forming in my eyes. It was such a nightmare. So many people had been hurt or killed all because of Henry’s greed and ambitions.
Possibly the most tragic loss was that of Henry’s own humanity. It had been burnt away in the same blaze that swept over everything else around him.
Chapter Eleven
Melissa
My eyes felt too heavy to open. I didn’t want to be awake. I didn’t want to cry—or feel—or anything. When I was awake, all I could do was think about Henry lying dead in a morgue somewhere and by the end of the day, I’d be forced to break my son’s heart with the news that would change his life forever.
I didn’t even remember falling asleep. Chase and I had spoken with Matt for about half an hour and then stayed up talking for a little while after that. I remembered getting into bed beside Jackson and wanting to hug him tight against me and never let go. Instead, I let him sleep, and rolled to my back and stared blankly at the ceiling as tears rolled down my temples until the pillow was so wet I threw it off the side of the bed and rolled to my side.
Apparently I’d nodded off at some point because dawn was breaking outside the window. Jackson was snoring his little baby snore beside me. I brushed a kiss against his forehead and then quietly rose out of bed. I tiptoed into the hall and perked at the smell of coffee. Chase was already awake. I drew in a breath and went out to the kitchen. He was standing at the sink, rinsing his hands, and beside him a fresh carafe of coffee was steaming.
“Morning,” I said softly.
Chase spun around. “Oh, hey. I didn’t wake you, did I?”
I shook my head. “No. I couldn’t sleep anymore.”
Chase looked pained at my answer. “Did you sleep at all?”
I shook my head. “No. Not really.”
He crossed over and took me in his arms, holding me tightly for a moment. He kissed me briefly and then asked, “Do you want anything for breakfast?”
My stomach was in a weird limbo between hunger pangs and nausea. I wasn’t sure which way to lean so I shook my head. “No. Thank you though.” I stepped out of his arms and went to sit at the dining table. I wrapped my arms around myself and watched as he went back to work making himself a simple breakfast.
“Of course.” Chase went back to the counter and poured himself a cup of coffee. He added a splash of cream from the silver tin we kept in the fridge, and then came to join me at the table. He laid his hand on mine and I reveled in the warmth of his skin from holding the mug of coffee. “How are you feeling?”
A humorless chuckle escaped my lips. “I don’t even know. I’m nauseous but that could be for a couple of reasons. I think I’m probably dehydrated from crying my eyes out. And to top it off,
the headache you mentioned is definitely raging.”
He squeezed my hands, apparently unable to find words.
I couldn’t blame him. What was there to say when the unthinkable happens?
“I know it sounds awful, but I think in some way I mourned the loss of Henry, at least as my husband, a long time ago. I spent countless nights crying and breaking down over the loss of my marriage and husband as the man he was when I married him. So, finding out that he’s dead doesn’t seem like a loss…” I paused, cringing over the ugly confession. I drew in a breath. “The part that I’m not ready for is that I have to find a way to tell my son. How do you tell your child that they’re never going to see their father again?”
I shook my head, staring dazed at the veins in the wooden tabletop. “There’s no way to even start that conversation. When we left California I wasn’t sure when Jackson would see Henry again, but I knew it was inevitable. I never planned on keeping him away from him forever. I knew he’d have visitation or rights of some kind…but now…he’ll never see him again. He won’t have…” Tears took over, breaking the rest of my words into indecipherable mumbles.
Chase came around and held me against him as a new wave of tears escaped. Was I ever going to be able to stop crying? It felt like something was broken inside of me and I wasn’t sure it would ever be fixed again.
“I don’t know if I should tell him now or wait till we’re back in California. I just don’t know…”
“I wish I knew what to say, Melissa. I’m way out of my depth here too.” He squatted down in front of me and rubbed his thumbs along the backs of my hands as he stared up into my eyes. “In some ways, getting home might be better. He’d have his friends, family, and the comfort of being in a familiar place. But at the same time, he’s an intuitive little guy. He’s going to know something is wrong.”
