In Love and Rescue: When love is the perfect rescue... (27 page)

Robert cried out as the metal made contact with his skull. His body jerked to the side, and he fell into a heap onto Joni’s lifeless body. He’d known that Jarvis was a hothead, but he never expected him to be this dangerous, especially when he’d kept both the DEA and Customs off his back when they discovered one of the teddy bears that had been sent from Eddie’s workshop in Jamaica, to the children’s hospital in Miami, had been laced with Oxy powder. He’d even used a personal contact to pull Eddie out of jail. All of them, they’d worked
to put together this picture perfect image of businessman and philanthropist Edward K. Jarvis just to line their pockets, but never did they expect Eddie to be a violent man. Even when he’d first proposed killing Larke, no one had taken him seriously. But when they realized what she could do to their lifestyle, Robert could safely say that she’d been their only approved kill. However, Eddie was a coldblooded psychopath…and he’d helped him escape from the one place where the psychopath truly needed to be.

“Mr. Dillinger, I heard a commotion…”

Irina gasped and covered her mouth in horror when she saw both him and Joni on the floor.

“Call an ambulance,” he squeezed out.

Irina paused for a split second before disappearing down the hallway, and Robert summoned all of his strength to crawl towards the bathroom. Once inside, he reached up to the countertop and felt around until his fingertips grazed the plastic casing of Joni’s phone. He wrapped his fingers around the body, pulled the phone down to the floor, and searched through her call log until he found the last call that she received. Saying a small prayer, he pressed the call button.

“This is Senator Robert Dillinger,”
he answered. “Is this the FBI?”

*****

The firestorm had come down on the entire facility. Delgano stood on his porch and watched as the police raided the workshop that he and Eddie had taken such care to build and develop. They ushered out fully-dressed men and women wearing headsets, some of them clutching items from their desks under their arms. Behind them, half-naked young men and women emerged in droves, some of them falling over each other as they scrambled out of the warehouse.

It was only a matter of time before they came for him, and he didn’t doubt that they’d already invaded the residence at the address he’d kept on file at the precinct. After seeing Larke on television, he’d hidden out in the less conspicuous concrete home he often retreated to whenever he wanted to get away from the world. It was high enough on the hill that he could see everything going on down below, but with all that was about to go down, Jamaica was the last place he needed to be. Without a doubt, he knew that if the police got their hands on him, they’d immediately turn him over to the US regardless of all he’d done for the bastards.

“Mr. Richards, the car is waiting for you downstairs,” his assistant, Michele, called after him. “Is there anything else you need before your flight?”

He tossed his cigarette butt off the porch and into the bushes below. “No.”

“I take it that you will not be returning to Jamaica?” She probed.

He shrugged his large shoulders. “Not anytime soon. The island is too small for me now. I think it is time that I retire and spend the rest of my days in luxury.”

She bit her bottom lip. “Maybe I could come with you, Mr. Richards?”

A deep laugh rumbled from his throat. “No.”

He then brushed past her and trudged down the stairs. Eddie had arranged a plane to take him to Mexico until things died down, then from there he would travel to Europe to his villa on the Amalfi coast. He even already had staff waiting for his arrival.

He squeezed into the car and slipped a pair of sunglasses over his eyes as though they would block out the scene at the warehouse. Even as they passed the carnival of lights from the police vehicles, he refused to turn towards the commotion. It was all eventually going to end sometime, as both he and Eddie knew, but this wasn’t the way that he was expecting to get out. He didn’t like the feeling of heat on his back and had expected to pack his bags in an anticlimactic kind of way. Then
, he’d leave for Europe and never look back again. Never be on the radar of any federal agency. But, there wasn’t anything he could do about that now.

He smirked when he saw the Gulfstream aircraft that was waiting for him on the airstrip. When the car came to a complete stop, he collected his things and trekked across the path towards the steps.

“Delgano Richards,” a man who’d suddenly appeared in the entryway greeted. “My name is William Wright. I’m an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his breast pocket. “Do you know what I have here?”

Delgano took a step backwards. “Doesn’t matter.”

The man chuckled and two more agents appeared behind him in the doorway. “You’d think it doesn’t matter, but this little piece of paper tells me that I can take you with me.”

Delgano folded his arms. “Jamaica wouldn’t extradite one of its own citizens.”

The three men laughed. “Well for one, that’s wrong. And two, this little piece of paper tells me that you were born in the state of Florida.”

Delgano’s eyebrows narrowed. “What?”

“Yep,” Agent Wright continued, unfurling the paper. “Kyrie Antonio Wesleyan aka Delgano Mylrie Richards, born in Palm Beach County, FL to Marilyn Eliza Coates. And, after talking to a few people Delgano, we understand that after you were born, your father fled to Jamaica to avoid child support charges. Your mother followed him but died shortly after her arrival from an illness related to her pregnancy. So, you see, you’re an American citizen. Which means, you come with us.”

Delgano took a step backwards and touched his hand to his hip, but the two other agents already had their guns brandished. He’d already known that he was an American citizen because the woman
who’d partially raised him had told him the story of how he’d come to be.

His ailing mother had shown up at the doorstep of a woman named Ms. Annette with him wrapped in a blanket in a tin pail. Once Annette realized that his mother was only a few days away from death, she’d taken them both in and cared for his mother until she passed. Annette had been Eddie’s biological mothe
r and although kind at heart, had lived the kind of life that had forced her to use prostitution as a means to an end. Eventually, her profession led her to a relationship with a man who’d promised to take her away from the shantytown life, but who’d actually turned out to be a married sea captain. The nights when he told her he was at sea, he was with his wife in a massive house in St. Andrew.

Unable to accept the fact that he’d lied, Annette had journeyed to the house with
both he and Eddie in tow, and banged on the wrought-iron gate until the man’s wife came out of the house. He remembered how the wife looked, also a beautiful woman, but with a swollen face and very sad expression. Annette and the woman had talked for a little bit until the man’s car came cruising up the driveway, and when he spotted Annette, he leapt from his car and ordered his wife inside. When the wife finally obeyed, he grabbed Annette by the hair and Delgano remembered thinking that this was the man he’d heard Annette talking about in her stories. The man that she’d called Satan.

Still with a full grasp of Annette’s hair, he’d jammed his fist into her throat and she collapsed to the floor gasping for air. An enraged Eddie, only seven at the time, had charged towards the man who’d used a single hand to shove him backwards and to the floor. Eddie had scrape
d his back across the concrete and although Delgano had only been five years old, Eddie was the only brother he knew, so he’d pulled him until he was laying on the softer grass next to the driveway. The man had then picked Annette up, tossed her into the back of his truck, and drove away.

That was the last that they saw of her.

Both he and Eddie waited in the bushes until nightfall, but when the man returned, it had only been him. Delgano didn’t fully understand then what he knew now, but even for such a young boy, Eddie understood. And it had changed him.

“You always have the option of doing this the easy way,” Agent Wright warned. “I didn’t come down here for a bloodbath, but so help me God…”

Delgano’s eyes darted between
the three men before he held up his hands in surrender. It wasn’t in his nature to give up, but there was one major issue poking him in the back of his brain. The only other person who knew that he wasn’t a natural Jamaican citizen, and who could prove it, was Eddie.

Agent William cautiously approached Delgano before tossing him to the ground and cuffing hi
s hands behind his back. Once he was secured, the other two agents put away their guns and they all boarded the jet. Delgano tried to block out his thoughts as he refused to believe what his mind was telling him, but the logic was virtually impenetrable. If the FBI had that information, there was only one person that could have given it to them.

Chapter Twelve

Back in Wren’s room, Larke sat at the edge of the bed while Wren laid on her stomach in the center of the mattress.

“I don’t think I would have thought I’d make it either,” she told Larke. “I mean, you getting out of there is like something from a movie.”

Larke stared at the crown moulding that bordered the ceiling. “Trust me Wren, I’ve thought about all of that. But now that I’m looking back at it, Desm
ond made all of the difference.”

She smiled as she thought about Desmond and how it had felt to kiss him while standing in the middle of the basement
, as though the kiss was a punctuation mark to an extremely long sentence. Even as she sat there on Wren’s bed, she wanted to swoon. She wanted to place the back of her hand to her forehead and collapse extravagantly onto the mattress as though she was in a 1940s black and white film.

As she felt another flush
of energy rush from her chest to her cheeks, she closed her eyes and rode the wave for a few seconds before it waned. The minute that he was done meeting with Doug downstairs, she was going to go to him. Already, she missed the tartness of his lips and her skin missed the roughness of his palms. How much good had she done in the world to have been lucky enough to marry a man like Desmond?

“You’re not listening to a word I’m saying are you?” Wren asked, pulling Larke from her thoughts. Startled, Larke stared at her sister for a few seconds to process what she was saying.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Wren said with a laugh.

Larke gently shoved her in the shoulder. “I’m sorry, I was thinking about something.”

“About Desmond?”

“Yes.”

“And what were you thinking about?”

Larke eased further onto the bed, placed her back against the headboard
, and drew one knee up to her chest. “What will happen when all of this is over,” she answered. “Us rebuilding our marriage. If I’ll get my memory back. If getting my memory back will mean that things might change between us.”

Wren shrugged and flipped onto her back, grimacing at the ache in her ribs. “
I don’t think that anything will change. Just like any other married couple, you guys had your differences, but I was always confident that you’d be able to work them out.”

Frowning, Larke looked at her. “What are you talking about?”

“The separation. You guys didn’t talk about that downstairs?”

“No. What separation?”

“Never mind—”

“Wren. You’re lucky I can’t wrestle it out of you.”

Wren pushed up on her elbows and grimaced in pain once more, and anger heated Larke’s blood. Jarvis could come after her all he wanted, that was one thing, but to hurt her family was another. The previous fear that she’d felt towards him had been completely engulfed by rage. She no longer wanted him behind bars because, as it seemed, he could just break out whenever he felt the urge. She wanted him gone.

“It kills me to know I wasn’t there for you,” Larke admitted.

“I know it does, sis,” Wren answered. “But I’m okay, really. Even before Phillip showed up, I was kicking some major ass.”

They both laughed and Larke maneuvered until her sister’s head was in her lap. She looked
down into her face as she played with her beautifully coiled hair, and marveled at how she’d even forgotten that her little Wrennie sported a face full of freckles.

“But don’t change the subject,” Larke warned. “Why were Des and I separated?”

Another memory snapped throughout her head, coming in fast and hot like a thunderclap headache. It was the image of a letter in what she’d inherently known was Desmond’s handwriting. It said something about them not working out, that they couldn’t be together anymore. As the memory processed, the pain in her heart followed.

“Did he leave me?” She asked.

Just then, one of the agents stepped into the room and cleared his throat.

“Miss Tapley, if you don’t mind, D
r. Lindholm is here to see Wren,” he announced.

Larke gave Wren’s wrist a gentle sque
eze before rising from the bed, and the agent stepped inside to let Dr. Lindholm enter the room. The doctor was wearing a dark brown suit that peeked from beneath his white coat, and sported a head full of bright blonde hair. He sent a quick nod towards Larke before tending to Wren who was now sitting at the edge of the bed, her legs strewn over the side.