In Love and Rescue: When love is the perfect rescue... (20 page)

“I knew it,” the man’s voice triumphantly rang out. “I knew those two would suit you perfectly. Ebony and Ivory.”  He motioned around the room. “You like the place?”

Eddie took a quick look around. “It’s nice.”

The man laughed, his green eyes twinkling. “I told you that I’d take care of you.”

Eddie didn’t respond.

“Dr. Lindholm is on his way out to see us,” the man continued, slightly unsettled by Eddie’s silence.
“He’s opening up another practice. This one will be in Louisiana. He said that the people there still have ‘residual trauma’ from Katrina, so it will be a prime location for distribution.”

Eddie stood and walked over to a bar that lined the adjacent wall, pulled out a bottle of seltzer water, and emptied it into one of the few clean glasses that he could find. Next to one of the glasses was
a half empty orange pill bottle, and he shook his head in distaste. He would never understand the weak man’s fascination with substances that could take him from being at the top of his career, to the lowest rung on the societal ladder. Although the older gentleman constantly claimed that he didn’t have an addiction, he was never more than twenty feet away from an opiate. United States Attorney Robert Dillinger, was just another junkie.

“When is he coming?” Eddie asked, taking a long sip of water.

“A couple of days,” Robert answered. “Take a few days to enjoy your newfound freedom. Put your feet up. Have some drinks. Order up some more women. Mi casa es su casa.”

Eddie found that he was unnerved by the phrase “newfound freedom.” As far as he was concerned, his freedom had never been fully revoked
, so it irked him that the old piece of shit thought that he’d done him some sort of favor by letting him shack up in his cabin. All he needed was a few days and he would no longer need to rely upon anyone’s patronage.

“Call me when doc gets here,” he shot back
. He tilted the glass and drained its contents before walking back to the room where the girls had already been ushered out, and the room cleaned.

Sitting at
an antique wooden desk along the west wall, he quickly penned a letter explaining his current situation and for operations to continue in Jamaica until further notice. He addressed it to a Clarence Garvey that lived in Jamaica, and the return address to a Ms. Carol Garvey that lived in Largo, MD.

He
then pressed a buzzer along the wall and the Dillinger’s Congolese nanny, Irina, entered. Robert never went anywhere without her unless his wife specifically requested her services. He claimed that he’d “rescued” her from Central Africa during a publicity trip there and had used the threat of her former life as a way to keep her firmly under his thumb. However, because she was willing to put with being a servant to the pretentious politician and his family for the sake of her own well-being, Eddie respected her.

He placed the letter in an envelope and handed it to her. “Mail this for me?” he requested.
She was the only person in the house that he would ask for anything.

She looked down at the envelope, back up at him, then studied his face before pulling the envelope out of his hand between her index and middle finger. Then, still without a word, she left the room.

He watched her leave before turning to admire the antique desk, one of the simple life pleasures in which he loved to indulge. He loved one-of-a-kind, rare and expensive finds. Cars, furniture, art, it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that it was unique, interesting, and lavish.

An uncontrollable scowl spread across his face as his mind went to Larke once again. She’d tried to take all of this from him, his livelihood and independence, and he wanted her to understand exactly how upset he was about that.

He ran a fingernail over his bottom lip as he stared out the window at Aspen’s snow-capped mountains. The one thing he knew for certain was that if Gano couldn’t get the job done, he would take matters into his own hands. And he was pretty sure that Larke would definitely not want it to resort to that.

Doug walked into his office with a large mug of black coffee in his hand. In the leather recliner across the room, Tandi and Alisha
were fast asleep, the book that Alisha had been reading to their daughter still perched on her lap. He walked over, brushed kisses over both their cheeks, and then flopped down in front of his computer. Wiggling the mouse, he cheered when the screen flipped on and displayed exactly what he’d been looking for: the private contact information for FBI Agent Lawrence Campbell.

Right before Desmond and Larke had boarded their flight, he’d called to go over the next step in their plan. Desmond had already
been aware that the size of their circle of trust had significantly decreased when Doug told him about the notification he’d received from the US Attorney’s office, demanding for Larke’s
homicide
to be handed over to them. The only problem with that was, they’d made the request even before the phony story broke on the news about her dying in the bungalow fire. Someone in the office knew more than they should, and since he and Desmond had already concluded that Jarvis’ connections were most likely in high, influential places, at that point, Doug knew that not even his contacts in the FBI would be able to help them.

However, there was still a hand that they hadn’t played
: Lawrence Campbell. Although there was no indication that Lawrence had ever had contact with his daughters since they were never mentioned in any of the information Doug found on the agent, Taina had at least tried to reach out to him. If Lawrence didn’t know that he had two children out in the world that had grown up without him, it would just have to be their job to tell him.

The only thing
he had left to do was set up a private meeting between Larke, Desmond, and Lawrence, and all Larke and Desmond had to do was show up at the apartment where he’d be setting up the meeting.

“Dougie,
you’re still at it?” Alisha asked, stretching her arms above her head with a yawn. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Sure did,” he answered with a smile. “Could you do me a favor?”

She carefully rose to avoid waking the five-year old sprawled across the cushion, tossed a throw over her small body, and then walked over to Doug’s desk.

“Of course, babe. What do you need?”

“I need to get a message to that girl Taina’s father,” Doug explained. “All we’ll need is a few moments of his time. I’m going to make a call from this phone to the agency in Miami. Tell him that your name is Twila Bailey. If that doesn’t ring a bell for him, tell him that your mother’s name is Corina Bailey.”

Doug wrote down an address on a piece of paper then turned it towards her. “
Once he agrees, like I know he will, give him this address and tell him to meet you there after you get off work tomorrow at six pm. Try to make it seem like you’ve been dying to meet him—”

“And that I’ve been looking for my father forever, but this is the first solid lead I’ve had
,” Alisha finished.

“Exactly,” Doug affirmed as he picked up the phone. “Do you think you can do it?”

“Come on, Dougie,” she took the receiver from his hand, “I did improv for seven years, remember? This will be a walk in the park.”

Doug smiled and gave her a playful pat on the bottom. “And that’s why I love you.”

A message popped up on the computer screen and when Doug opened it, he grabbed a handful of his hair. “Scratch that, babe,” he recanted.

“What’s wrong?”

“They’re announcing Larke’s ‘murder’ this afternoon on the news.”

“But isn’t that a good thing?
It’ll leave the case open longer.”

Doug shook his head. “It’s not a good thing if they’re saying that the man who killed her is her estranged husband, Desmond Harding.”

Alisha put a hand over her mouth. “But they have no proof.”

“They can make their own proof.” Doug reclined in his chair. “But don’t worry. We can still do this. All we need to do is
tell Agent Campbell that we have information that Desmond will be in the Miami area tomorrow. Same meeting time. Same meeting place.”

Her hand hovered over the phone. “But won’t he show up with police?”

“He will. But all we’ll need is for him to see Larke alive and well to prove that the entire story is a farce. Hopefully, after that, with the information we have on Taina and Twila, we can get him in our corner.”

*****

Desmond still hadn’t answered Larke’s question about how Doug had managed to get a picture of her that she’d vaguely remembered taking a few Halloweens ago. Had she known Doug and had also forgotten him? If that was the case, exactly how much of her memory was missing?

She’d
planned to interrogate him while they were on the plane, but as the adrenaline rush abated from their run through the woods, she’d fallen into a coma like slumber and didn’t wake until Desmond stroked her cheek and announced that they’d arrived at Miami International.

Getting through the airport hadn’t been as complicated as
she’d assumed it would be since she and Desmond had actually looked nearly identical to their fake passports. However, she’d still been virtually submerged in nervous sweat by the time they reached the luggage carousel. Thankfully, no one at the terminal seemed to notice.

Although s
he’d gone through the Miami airport many times in her life, this time was much different. There was no sense of freedom. Anyone who looked at her while they were on the phone, in her mind, was placing a call to the authorities. Any uniformed person, police or security guard, within ten feet of her was preparing to arrest her. She felt more like an enemy of the state instead of the innocent woman that everyone thought was killed in an unfortunate incident.

“Will you be okay here while I go get us a cab?”
Desmond asked, placing the two decoy bags that held random articles of clothing at her feet.

Her eyes lazily flicked up to his.
“I’ll be fine,” she answered, but the response seemed to echo throughout the entire structure.

He gently squeezed her hand
, kissed her temple, and left. She walked over to a coffee shop that was unusually sparse for an early afternoon, and found a seat.

“Shame, isn’t it?” A woman’s voice next to her broke through her thoughts
. She looked up into the wrinkled corners of smiling, grey eyes.

“I’m sorry?”

The woman jerked her chin towards a flat-screened TV hung on the wall. “That attorney girl. The one that they said was missing. First they said she died in an accident, and now they’re saying that she’s been killed.”

L
arke swung around to face the TV. Robert Dillinger was standing behind a podium addressing a crowd of reporters. The noise around the terminal drowned out the sound, so her eyes went to the closed captioning trailing across the bottom of the screen.

“Larke was a dear friend of mine,” Dillinger was saying. “She was
one of the best attorneys I’d ever come across. The legal knowledge that she possessed was exceptional, which is why it devastated me to find out about her passing. But now this, this is even worse. To think that anyone would intentionally end such an amazing person’s life, it sickens me.”

“They’re saying that she was killed, now?” Larke asked the woman.

“It’s why I don’t watch the news sometimes,” the woman went on. “They never wait until they get the whole story so, in the end, all we get is a bunch of mangled mess.”

Larke searched the terminal for Desmond and found him heading back in her direction. Without waiting for him to reach the coffee shop, she popped up and covered the distance between them in a few hurried steps.

“Des, we have to go,” she warned.

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

“On TV, they’re saying that my death is being ruled as a homicide.”

Desmond looked up towards the coffee shop TV just in time to see his picture pop
up on the screen with the words,
Armed and Dangerous
, underneath it. In a few seconds his image was gone, but the one they replaced it with, was even worse.

“I got the cab. Let’s go,” he directed, spinning her around. Before they exited the terminal doors, he took one last look at a TV screen in the middle of a
waiting area. There, still on the screen, was a picture of him and Larke…on their wedding day.

Outside the terminal, the air was warm and humid despite the fact that the rest of the country was transitioning to winter.

They piled into the yellow four-door sedan and a
s they rode, Larke attempted to relax by focusing on city’s brilliant, multicultural scenery. Their driver, on the other hand, seemed uncomfortable with silence.

“Are you two coming back from your honeymoon?” He asked excitedly.

“Yes,” Desmond quickly replied after noticing that Larke was not in the shape to answer any questions.