Beyond Revenge (The Ransom Series) (25 page)

I drop the gun and turn around,
relieved to find Morgan
clutching
our son to her
shoulder even though
there is blood on her neck and
her
entire body
is
shaking.  There’s someone else, though,
and I can’t help pausing in complete shock at the sight of him.

“Jack?”

He’s holding on
to the door frame with one hand and
grasping a gun in the other.  His face is pale.  His breathing is slow and
shallow.  There are holes in two places in his shirt that is soaked with blood.

When I rush to his side, he immediately
collapses his weight against me.  I lower him gently to the floor and pull up
his shirt to look at his injuries. 
Blood is gushing out of two
large
knife wounds
in his abdomen.

“Jesus, Jack.”  I press my hands over
the wounds to try to stop the bleeding, and Jack gasps in pain.

“Leo.”

In that one word I know what’s coming
next, but I don’t want to hear it.

“This isn’t fixable,” Jack continues
weakly.  “I’ve lost too much blood.”

Despite what Jack says, I press harder
against the wounds.  “How did you even get in here from outside?  How did you
manage
to do this
?”

“Good old fashioned adrenaline.”  Jack tries
to laugh, but it comes out as more of a gurgled, painful cough.  Blood is coming
out of his mouth now, and I feel the tightness begin in my throat.  I’m losing
him, right in front of my fucking eyes.

Morgan kneels down next to us, rocking
the calmed baby in one arm and grasping Jack’s hand with the other.
 
“Thank you.”  Tears streak down her face as she says it.  “You
saved Dante’s life.  You saved us.”

Jack manages a meager smile.  “You’re
family.”  He coughs again, and any trace of the smile is gone.  “I should have
ended this a long time ago.”

When he looks back to me, I know exactly
what he’s trying to say.  Stella.  Me.  Morgan.  He was there through all of
it.  He
knew
what Mark did to us, but he didn’t stop
him.

I’ll never be upset or angry
with
him for it, though.  The unfortunate series of events that befell Mark’s
closest victims ultimately led us here, with Morgan by my side and a son in our
arms.  I couldn’t imagine life without either of them.  It seems I had to have
everything taken away from me in order to get something back, and what life
gave me–what Mark ultimately gave me–was more than I could have ever imagined. 
Instead of an endless cycle of misery and destruction for my family, I’ve been
given something new, a finished circle, a complete life.  I have the family and
love I’ve always wanted, and I have it all because of what Mark did and what
Jack never stopped.

Jack grabs my arm, forcing my attention
to him.  “The safe in my office.  You need to get in there.  Get me something
to write with.”

I quickly bolt across the hall to his
office and return with the first pen and pad of paper I can find from his
desk.  He shakily scribbles down something and hands them back to me.  There’s
a series of
random
numbers and a phone number.

“Code to the safe.  Take the money. 
All of it.  Call the phone number.”  He pauses a moment to breathe.  “Richard
Glass is my attorney.  Tell him what happened, and he’ll take care of
everything.  He knows what to do.”

“Jack, I–”

“Don’t, Leo.”  He turns his head to the
side and coughs up more blood before looking back at me
, the hint of a
grin on his face
.  “Just get me off this damn floor, will
you?”

I can’t help the slight upturn of my
lips at his request.  Morgan quickly gets up and moves to the side while I work
my grip underneath Jack’s back and knees and rise to standing with him in my
arms.  He’s heavy for the frail-looking, dying man that he is, but I manage to
get him to his bedroom and settled on his bed without causing him too much
discomfort.

Morgan and I settle in on
each
side of Jack on the bed.  Morgan rubs his arm soothingly, transferring
her comfort to him like she has done so many times before for me.  He smiles at
her and the baby in her arms before returning his gaze to me.

His eyes seem to fade in and out of
focus until there’s nothing there.

Then he’s gone.

His Joy

∞

They often say

light is only
appreciated amidst darkness.

Beauty piercing
through devastation,

the calm after the
storm.

The journey is
part of it.

It makes us who we
are.

It gets us there,

though shattered
along the way.

There is light to
be had.

Joyful, beautiful
things.

He has seen the
darkness.

We all have.

Now we reach for
the light.

Embrace it.

And never let go.

∞

There will be no obituary
.  N
o wake
of
remembrance
.  Not
even a private ceremony to lay him to rest.  Jack will simply be buried,
quietly and anonymously at the direction of his attorney, without anyone there
to say goodbye.  He was a good man and doesn’t deserve th
at
kind of send off from this world, but
those were
his wishes.  He knew there was no one else to say goodbye
,
because that’s how he lived, alone and without any attachments
other than in his work.

At least he spent his final moments
with family
.  With
us.

I’ll never be able to repay Jack for
what he did for us, not just because he’s no longer here, but because there is
no way to appropriately compensate him for everything he did to help us.  There
are some acts of kindness too generous to reimburse.  For a man who kept to
himself all his life, Jack was the most giving man I ever met.

Few knew of the good he did, but I will
never forget.

Jack left us all his cash, which was a
lot.  We opened the large safe in his office to find hundreds of thousands of
dollars in neat stacks, more than enough to get us far away to start another
new chapter
of
our lives.

The rest of Jack’s assets, we were told
by Jack’s attorney later that day, would be liquidated and donated to charities
for child abuse prevention and treatment, a revelation that may have hit Leo
harder than Jack’s death itself.

I had to pry it out of him, but Leo
said he wished he could have spoken to Jack one more time.  Five minutes is all
Leo
would have needed to make
Jack
understand that he didn’t blame him for not intervening, that in
the end
,
everything that happened to Stella and him
and me led to something beautiful.  He wanted Jack to know that he wouldn’t
have changed any of it.  I told Leo I was confident Jack knew that since the
moment he first saw us together.  I could see it in his eyes even as he was
bleeding out and fading away from us on his bed.  He was happy for us and where
we ended up.

Richard Glass wasn’t at all the sharply
dressed attorney with shiny shoes and a slicked
-
back haircut
that I expected him to be.  He was older, wearing a plaid shirt and jeans that
made him look somewhat like a lumberjack with his black beard and scraggily
hair.  He may not have looked the part of his profession, but he was the
epitome of someone who Jack would entrust with his finances and final wishes.

Richard told us plans were already well
underway to purchase our new home, and he was
eager
to
get us on the road to get there
.  He refused
any help
we offered to deal with everything at Jack’s house
,
not because he wanted to get rid of us, but because he had his way of doing
things and preferred to do them himself.  As Jack said, Richard would take care
of it, and he did.  Every single bit of it.

Thanks to Jack rushing the order for
our fake papers the day we arrived at his house, Richard was able to bring the
new IDs for me and Leo and a forged birth certificate for Dante, and we were
able to get on the road less than twenty-four hours after Jack’s death.  We
thanked Richard for everything he did for us
,
and he
told us to call if we ever needed anything.  I had a feeling we’d probably
never see or speak to him again, but it was good to know that there was one
person out there who we could call if we needed to.

Leo and I loaded up the Jeep with
Dante, our limited belongings, the cash left to us by Jack, and some
supplies
and provisions that Richard insisted we take from the house. 
Other than a couple of
switchblades
, we left all other
weapons behind along with everything that went with those weapons in our former
life.  This road trip was about stepping in a
different
direction, taking a new path and leaving behind as much of our
pasts with Mark as we could.

It took a few days and what seemed like
endless amounts of driving, making as few stops as possible and taking turns driving
and sleeping, but we finally made it.  We left the desert behind
,
and now we’re here in a completely new environment, hiding away
from the world beneath the tree cover in the middle of nowhere.

Hello, Maine.

I gave in.  The morning after Leo
suggested Maine back at Jack’s house, I realized that he was right.  Despite my
reservations about being back in the woods, it
’
s a good
place for us to hide
.  Though
our picture going viral
on social media mean
s
we could be recogniz
ed
anywhere, the chances
are
low
er
in the remote parts of a state like Maine.

“I’m amazed this GPS still has
reception,” Leo says as he pulls onto yet another dirt road.  “We’re getting
close.”

This state is huge.  We’ve been driving
straight up into it for hours, and we’re just now getting close to our
destination.  We haven’t seen
significant
signs of
civilization for miles, which only puts me more at ease.

The GPS announces our arrival at our
destination, but of course it’s
slightly
off.  We see
the turnoff up ahead
,
and Leo takes it.

The driveway is long, and the further
we drive down it, the more I realize how impossible it will be for us to get
out of here during the winters.  We’ll have to stock up on food and supplies
and wait out the storms until the snow is manageable enough for the
Jeep
to drive in again.

When the house finally comes into view,
I can’t help the smile
that widens across
my face and
the tears that cloud my vision.

We’re home.

It’s a small brown house with worn
siding and white shutters around the windows.  It’s square in shape with a
pointed roof and is surrounded by trees and bushes.  It provides all the
seclusion
we could ever want in a home so far off the beaten path that I’m
completely comfortable that no one will come looking for us here.

“It’s perfect,” I say
in
disbelief as we pull up beside it.

I step outside and close my eyes as I
breathe in the fresh air of early fall and take in the sounds of nature around
me.  It’s an invigorating feeling, almost like breathing life into me, cleansing
me of all the bad that has happened in the last year and helping me appreciate
the good.

When I open my eyes, I catch Leo
staring at me with a grin on his face.  I can tell he’s just as excited about
this as I am.

In fact, I’m too excited.  I can’t stop
myself as I run around the Jeep and into Leo’s waiting arms.

“We did it
,” I exclaim, barely
able to contain myself
. 
“
We’re
actually here, together as a family.  They won’t find us.”  I stop as the
realization of my words hits me directly in the chest, causing a pained lump to
form in my throat.  “We’re finally free.”

Leo’s grasp of me only tightens.  I can
hear him struggle to find his voice.  He clears his throat for a third time before
finding the right words.  “I want to give you so much more than this, and I
promise I will
someday
.”

I immediately pull back from Leo and
give him a playfully scolding look.  My brain has words to say, but my body has
something else in mind first.  My hands pull his face to mine
,
and I kiss him, gently but with intensity, letting him feel the
warmth and strength of my love for him.

“You’ve given me more than enough,
Leo.  I have everything I’ll ever need right here in my arms and sitting in
that car seat.”
 
I don’t want him to dwell on these
thoughts any longer than he needs to, and to be honest, I’m too damn excited to
get inside.  My grin at Leo widens as I nod toward the house.
 
“Let’s go.”

It takes a moment for my words to sink in, but
Leo
finally nods and beams a smile back at me.

I grab Dante’s car seat out of the back,
the adorable little thing fast asleep for the arrival at his new home, while
Leo works on opening the key lockbox on the front door.  When he gets the key
out and turns it in the lock, we step inside.

It has a rugged cabin feel to it, but
that’s exactly what this place is.  There’s a woodstove in the small living
room with a worn couch and a wooden
coffee table
made of material
reminiscent of the brown
plank
siding on the outside of the house.  The floors
are beautiful aged but unstained hardwood.  There’s a small round dining table
next to the kitchen that has antique-looking appliances that remind me of the
apartment
that
Leo and I shared back at Mark’s headquarters.

I’m overwhelmed by the feeling of home
in this place.  It’
s
perfect for us.

I set the sleeping baby’s car seat down
on the floor and
slowly
pull Leo into my arms.  He seems
about as speechless as I am as he snakes his arms around my back and
returns my embrace
just as tightly.

We hold each other for some time,
breathing with each other, finding peace in this new place after leaving the
chaos and pain behind.  It’s our new beginning.  It may be a difficult and isolated
journey,
and it won’t be as perfect as we wish it
could be, but it will be ours.  We can embrace it and nurture it and turn it
into something amazing
,
because we’re together and
that’s all we’ll ever need.

Somehow in having everything taken away
from me, I was given something even more
beautiful
. 
This is what life is all about, what I’ve been missing, and despite the trials
and tribulations and difficult decisions that led
me
here,
I managed to survive.  I have Leo with me.  We have Dante.  We have it all.

I was lost well before I was taken.  Standing
here now, I don’t feel that way anymore.  Everything has changed since then.  Leo
saved me.

I am found.