“Ma’am, I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding,” he said. “Your father has been found, but he is dead. We have him at the city morgue ready to be picked up when arrangements can be made.”
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” I didn’t think I heard them correctly.
“There was an accident,” the officer said. “Your father wrapped his car around a telephone pole.”
“There must be some mistake,” I said. “My father doesn’t have a car.”
“Yes, we are aware,” he said. “It looks as if the car was stolen from the Highland Casinos a couple of nights ago. His speed was more than three times the legal limit, and his blood-alcohol level was pretty high. I am sorry that I had to give you this news over the phone. We knew you weren’t at home with everything going on.”
“All right,” I said in a daze. “Thank you for your call.”
Before the officer could say anything else, I turned the phone off, letting it slip from my hand and bounce across the floor. I stood there for a moment as if my brain was trying to catch up with what the officer had just told me. Before I could even control it, I let out a scream and dropped to my knees on the floor. My father was dead. He was really dead after everything I had been through for so many years, trying to keep him alive.
I looked up as Blaine rounded the corner and ran into the living room, bending down and wrapping his arms around me. It was like he already knew what happened, and I couldn’t even get my mouth open enough to tell him the entire story. My heart was breaking in my chest, and I felt like the only thing keeping me in one piece were his arms. That was the only thing that seemed to ever keep me in one piece anymore, and I could tell that he knew that. He squeezed tighter as I sobbed, still unable to talk. Everything was spiraling out of control, and I was powerless to do anything about it. I could feel my heart beating wildly in my chest, and
everything was getting fuzzy. I was starting to have a panic attack, something I’d only had one other time in my life, and that was when my mother left me alone with my father. I had felt helpless then but never anything as bad as this. There was a dread deep down in my stomach that I just couldn’t shake. My breathing picked up, and I felt like I couldn’t take in a deep breath of air.
My life had become so off-kilter, I couldn’t even recognize it anymore. Hell, I didn’t even recognize myself anymore. I gripped onto Blaine’s shoulder, letting the tears flow, trying to get control of myself. Everything was wrong, and none of it was my fault. Well, maybe it was. Maybe if I had forced my father into a treatment program the first time, I wouldn’t be sitting here on the floor, completely losing it. My father was dead, I was on trial for a murder I didn’t commit, and I had lost my job. What else could go wrong?
I lifted my head and looked out at the waves, and as if my thoughts had summoned bad luck, I ducked, seeing a brick flying at the window. It crashed through the glass, creating a cascade of broken shards that reflected the light of the sun peeking through the clouds. I gasped, seeing the brick bounce across the floor and into the dining room. Blaine ducked his head down over mine, and we huddled there in each other’s arms for several minutes until we knew we were safe. Slowly, I looked out of the broken window, but there was no one in sight. Whoever had thrown the brick had taken off as fast as they had arrived.
Blaine stood up and shook the glass from his hair. I did the same. Carefully, I tiptoed over to the couch and looked at the shards strewn everywhere. I walked up to the kitchen where the floor was clear and watched Blaine open up a note taped to the brick. He looked angry, and I hoped that his anger wasn’t aimed at me. I waited patiently for him to show me the note, and when he did, I gasped in shock.
“Die, Snitch,” was written across the paper in black marker.
I thought about the words for several moments, and then I realized that the mob had found me. I couldn’t believe they had tracked me down in Palm Beach, off the beaten path, at a boyfriend’s house no one even knew I had. It was absolutely insane. What was I supposed to do now? I couldn’t hide anywhere from these people. I didn’t have any protection except for Blaine, and now that I had lost my father, I knew I couldn’t lose Blaine, too. He was the only person I had left. My thoughts started racing, thinking of the dream I had, thinking of Blaine, and wondering if he was next. I put my hands up to my head and dropped the letter to the floor, trying to make my mind stop racing so fast.
I blinked my eyes, but everything around me was blurry. All I could see were fuzzy shapes of the things in front of me like a fogged-up window in a car. I reached out, trying to find something to hold onto, but there was nothing there. I knew Blaine was calling to me. I could see him, but everything was coming out in slow motion and muffled. My hands started shaking so badly that I couldn’t control it. My feet felt as if they were rising from the ground, and the floor was spinning underneath my feet. I could see Blaine step forward as I groaned. The light from the room slowly faded away and everything went dark. The last thing I could make out was my body falling, falling like my dream, but instead of waking up, I could feel Blaine’s hands grabbing on to me. And that was it.
Chapter 27
Blaine
“Josie,” I said, tapping her cheek. “Josie, wake up.”
She stirred in my arms and slowly opened her eyes. She looked up at me, blinking for several moments before coming all the way awake. She tried to sit up, but I laid her down on the floor and grabbed a wet washcloth to lay over her forehead.
“What happened?” she asked.
“You passed out,” I said. “I caught you, but you went down pretty hard. I need you to lay here for just a few minutes while I take care of some things.”
I walked over to the living room, the glass crunching under my shoes. I stood there for several moments, just glaring out over the ocean. The anger in my chest was out of control, and I couldn’t believe that the mob had found Josie. They had thrown a damn brick through my front window just to prove their point. On top of all that, Josie’s father was dead, apparently from some sort of car accident. Now, I knew he wasn’t a model citizen, but I didn’t take him for someone who would steal a car, get wasted, and drive around until he crashed into a telephone pole. I felt like there was more to the story than that, and I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for the mob to give me the answer.
I picked up my phone and dialed the security service I used for the office. I asked them to send several men over and keep them on rotation until further notice. Whether we were home or not, the place and everyone in it needed to be protected from these guys. I knew I could trust this company because their background checking policy was so thorough, I probably couldn’t even work for them. Most of the men they hired were former military or worked for the secret service in the past.
I knew that it was going to be hard on Josie, but we needed to go down to the morgue and talk to the person that worked there. There were a lot of missing pieces to this puzzle, and I wanted to know for sure that her father had died from the accident and not from mob involvement. I couldn’t leave Josie there at the house, even with security. I needed to know where she was at all times, and the risk was just too great. Before we left, I called a window company and told them to check in with the men at the front. They would make sure they got in to get their work done. I needed the house to be put back together and the mess to be cleaned up because it was the last safe place that I knew of, unless I packed Josie up and took her out of the country. Unfortunately, that scenario wasn’t possible since she wasn’t allowed to leave the state.
When we got to the morgue, Josie clung closely to me, and we walked up to the front desk. I requested to see the coroner on duty and then waited to be called back. Josie leaned her head against my shoulder as we waited for the coroner to emerge. I could feel that her hands were still shaking, but at least, the color had come back to her cheeks and lips. This poor girl had been through enough, and now, she had to bury her father. It just didn’t seem fair. When the coroner arrived, we followed him back to the main area of refrigerated coolers holding bodies.
“We are here to talk to you about Carl Gray,” I said.
“Carl Gray,” he said, thinking. “Oh, yes, the car accident. I don’t think you will want to view the body. The damage is pretty extensive.”
“We aren’t here to see the body,” I replied, feeling Josie grasp harder to my hand. “I wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do my best.”
“Are you sure this was a simple drunk driving accident?”