Course of the Heart

COURSE OF THE HEART

CAM DAWSON

SOUL MATE PUBLISHING

New York

COURSE OF THE HEART

Copyright©2014

CAM DAWSON

Cover Design by Leah Suttle

This book is a work of fiction.  The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Published in the United States of America by

Soul Mate Publishing

P.O. Box 24

Macedon, New York, 14502

ISBN: 978-1-61935-
670-2

www.SoulMatePublishing.com

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Chapter 1

On the second night of the New Year, an unseasonably warm, humid wind bathed across Drew Richey’s face. As he stood on the pier looking out across the black waters of Mobile Bay, a voice from behind gave him a start. He turned to see his brother approaching through the darkness.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” Winston said. “Wondered where you got off to.”

“I had to get away. Too much family holiday I guess.” He turned back toward the Bay.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. I’m actually looking forward to getting back to L. A. tomorrow.”

Drew could sense Winston’s stare. “Ever feel like everything is closing in on you? Like you’ve got to figure a way out?”

“Daily.” There was no hesitation in his response. A half-smile appeared on Winston’s face. “Father was pretty hard on you tonight at dinner, huh?”

“Yeah, in front of the whole family, no less. So, what else is new?”

“He’s pretty dead set on you joining the family business in the spring.”

Drew took an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to his brother.

“What’s this?”

“A way out.”

“What?”

“It’s a Will.” Drew followed his brother to a wooden bench. They sat under a dock light, with the festive lights of the Richey mansion, one of the grandest estates on the eastern shore, behind them. Winston unfolded the wad of legal-size documents, scanned through them quickly, then looked up.

“Jesus, Janet Williams’s death has been all over the news. What does her Will have to do with you?”

“I’m . . . named in it.”

Winston frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Join the crowd, bro.” Drew stood and jammed his hands into the pockets of his khaki slacks. His long blond hair tossed around in the wind. “I was as surprised as you. The reading was on the thirty-first.”

One look at his brother and Drew knew he had to give him more. “Janet used to hang around with some girls I knew in high school—at least that’s what the narrative in the Will said. I used to take them all out on my boat. God’s honest truth? I don’t even remember her.”

Winston looked closely at a three by five photo that was clipped to the documents. “I remember her. She was always in the background, like she was shy, admiring you from a distance. Until now I didn’t make the connection. My brother, the chick magnet. You took those girls out a lot. I guess she must’ve liked you more than you knew.”

“I even looked her up in the yearbook. Still, nothing. Not a clue. Not surprising I guess. Most of high school was a blur.”

Winston glanced again at the photo, and then looked up. “Tell me about the reading.”

Drew thought for a moment and shook his head. “Talk about tension. There wasn’t much hand-shaking going on at the attorney’s office, I can tell you that. And strangely, no tears. Only months after Janet’s father died and names her as sole beneficiary of the family fortune, leaving her older twin brothers with nothing, I might add, she gets terminal cancer. Her ashes are still warm and the brothers are like buzzards, smelling money and fighting over the scraps, even though they each got sizable chunks of the money from the estate. To some, I guess there’s never enough. It was ugly. They sat at opposite ends of the conference table and pointed fingers at each other. To add to the drama, apparently some rare, expensive family jewelry was unaccounted for. As you can imagine, they weren’t too happy to see me there.”

“I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with you.”

“For reasons unknown, this lady wanted me to take her ashes to the Caribbean.”

“Do you get paid for your trouble?”

“Yeah, you could say that.” Drew scoffed. “To the tune of a half-million dollars.”

“Holy shit! Then, what’s the problem? Fly that urn down there, collect your payday, and then get on with your life. The dead is committed to the sea and honor is served.”

“It’s not that easy, Winston. She wanted me to take the scenic route.”

“You lost me.”

“She wanted me to
sail
with her ashes to the British Virgin Islands.”

Winston stood and turned to Drew. “That’s gonna take time. You thinking about doing it this summer?”

“Can’t wait until the summer. She wanted it done immediately. The attorneys were pretty dead set on following her request to the letter. In fact, it’s a condition of the payoff. Has to be done before April first, her birthday.”

“Talk about an April fool. What about your last semester of school? Father made his expectations pretty clear tonight. Wouldn’t be surprised if your name’s already on that corner office door.”

“Yeah, well, I guess he’ll just have to wait.”

Winston shook his head. “Drew, when have you ever known Father to wait for anything? He’s been bragging to the board of directors about his second son joining the company as VP of Operations practically since your first semester at Auburn. And now you’re going to tell him he has to wait?”

“I’m not going to tell him anything.”

“Have you lost your mind, little bro?” Winston snorted. “You have any idea what you’re saying? You think Father will just roll over and be humiliated? It would be bad enough to have egg on his face about you putting off your degree. But if you don’t show up for your first paycheck . . .”

Drew glanced down at the pier, then up toward the mansion on the hill, and shook his head slowly. “Doesn’t matter, I just can’t do this anymore. The last thing I see me doing the rest of my life is working for the Richey Group. I’ve been looking for a way to get out, and this is my ticket.”

His brother stood and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I get it. Believe me, I get it. It’s bad enough for me being three thousand miles from Father, working at the west coast office, I can’t imagine you having to deal with him face to face every day in Mobile.”

“I can’t do it, Winston. I . . . I simply don’t belong. Honest to God, I don’t know
where
I belong. I
do
know it isn’t here.”

Drew met his brother’s gaze for a long while. Winston was the first to look away.

“Okay, I’ll do what I can to smooth things over,” Winston said. “But little brother, you have to know that there’s no predicting what Father will do. First and foremost, I’d say he will cut you off, and definitely stop the Note payments on
Sail Out.
”

“You think this is easy for me? But, I’ll take my chances. When I make the delivery to that priest in Tortola, I’ll have enough money to catch the boat Note up and plenty left over to make it on my own, at least until I can figure out what I want to do.”

His brother grinned and slapped him on the back. “You always were the lady killer of the family, and now I know why. You certainly have the biggest balls.”

Drew attempted a smile, but he couldn’t hold onto it.

“When are you leaving?”

Drew pushed a button, illuminating the face of his watch. “In about eight hours.”

“I thought I heard mom say your sailboat was at the marina, getting ready for when you return in the summer.”

“It is. This morning I checked on it. The work’s all done. They scraped and repainted the hull, replaced a few fittings and did a thorough cleaning. She’s seaworthy and ready to go. I just told them to hold it there for another day.”

“But what about supplies?”

“Done. I loaded up with provisions earlier today. The Williams estate provided a little seed money to get me started. Evidently there’s money set aside for me along the way in the Keys and the Bahamas. Incentive, I guess, to keep me focused on the task.”

“There’s going to be quite a few ladies on the eastern shore with broken hearts.”

“Very funny.”

But it wasn’t funny, at least not to Drew. For a moment he thought he saw tears in his brother’s eyes, before Winston quickly turned away. Richey men simply didn’t cry, not according to Father. That had been hammered into their heads all their lives. Drew caught his brother’s shoulder, turned him around and embraced him.

“Thanks, big brother. For everything.”

Without a word, Winston nodded and walked away.

For once, Samantha was glad to hear Brad snore. Tonight it signified not only the end of his waking moments, but the beginning of the end to the hell she had been living through in the last months. She lay still beside him, her cheekbone still throbbing from his late night tyrant. He used to take it out on her sexually. The alcohol had mostly taken that option away. The hitting came more often now, and mostly without warning. He didn’t seem to need a reason.

She reviewed the plan a final time in her mind, a plan that she had been cooking since he’d first hit her. Slowly, she slipped out of bed, freezing momentarily as he shifted and rolled away from her. In a matter of seconds, the snoring returned. She slipped from the bedroom, silently opening the door to the hall closet, where she had hidden a fat backpack. In it was everything she needed to start her new life. A new ID, money, hair dye, clothes.

She pulled on the black jumpsuit and slipped on the running shoes she had stuffed behind a box in the back of the closet. She had rehearsed the escape many times, always avoiding the creaking floorboards and squeaky door hinges. On this night she prayed it would go down without incident, as it had so many times in practice. Within minutes, she was at the other side of the house where a loose screen and lubricated window awaited—one of the few without an alarm sensor and on a side of the house where the motion detector had a burned out bulb. In the morning, he would curse himself for not getting it replaced. Silently, she listened. The snoring was loud enough to be heard through the house.

She gently lowered the backpack to the ground and climbed through the open window. After carefully closing the window and replacing the screen, she strapped on the backpack and tiptoed across the lawn to the street. After quickly stretching, she began her run to freedom out to US Highway 98. The route she had laid out would lead her to the bus stop, three-point-four miles to the south. If her timing were right, she’d have only a few minutes to spare before the midnight bus left for Mobile. Too long of a wait could be dangerous.

Samantha had never thought her relationship would end this way and had tried hard to save it. But it’d been an uphill battle on a one-way street. There was no curing a sickness only she was willing to fight.

The running felt good, effortless due to months of conditioning. She ran into the night as the tears stung the cuts below her eyes, and the emotions flooded her mind. Within fifteen minutes the bus stop was in sight, a mile down the highway. Ahead on the left, the lights of a strip mall flooded the night. Two lamps, a short distance on the right, marked the entrance to a marina. A warm western breeze brought the salty scent of Mobile Bay and a twinge of sadness. She had never lived away from the eastern shore and would miss it dearly.

From behind, far down the highway, came the sound of the revving engine of a pick-up truck. The sound pierced the quiet of the night and caused her to flinch. Her heart felt as though it would explode. The sound was unmistakable. She ventured a quick look and saw bright headlights and fog lamps of a monster truck speeding her way. Brad had the only one in this area. Sprinting, she cut across the grass and made a beeline for the short road that led to the marina.

Had he seen her? She couldn’t be sure, so she continued pushing her pace as the masts from sailboats appeared ahead of her, against the clear moonless sky. The truck sped past. She was only steps from a curve in the marina road that would render her out of sight. For a split second she was confident that she hadn’t been seen. The squeal of tires as he skidded to a halt and then slammed the truck in reverse betrayed that confidence. The truck whined as it backed toward the entrance to the marina road. It turned in and accelerated, confirming her worst fear.

A row of piers lay before her, stretching out into the marina basin. The middle two of six appeared to be longer ones, with larger boats tied up on connecting finger piers. Brad drew nearer. The searchlight from his truck waved over the boats as she ran out on one of the longer piers. Although the truck swept past her again, it stopped abruptly and slammed into reverse. Toward the end of the pier, she jumped onboard a large sailboat. Frantically glancing around for a place to hide, she spotted two trunks on opposite sides of the deck and darted to the closest one.

It was paddle-locked.

She sprinted across the boat to the other, found it unlocked and jumped inside, pulling her bag in behind her and digging her way under several life jackets. From close by, Brad shouted her name as she quietly lowered the top of the locker. Through the stillness of the night he yelled her name again from somewhere behind her. Fear paralyzed her as the clop of boots sounded on the wooden planks of one of the piers. The sound faded then grew louder again and she feared he had moved onto the pier she’d chosen. A shiver passed over her as the footsteps came closer.

She willed her breathing to return to normal, turned her head slightly and found there was a vent before her face. The louvers were bent downward, limiting her vision to the deck of the boat. The boat shifted slightly and she nearly screamed when Brad’s boots appeared before her eyes, the ones she’d gotten him for his birthday last month. He rattled the locker hasp across from her. His laugh pierced the silence.

“You over there, baby?” He walked across the deck and lifted a boot to the top of the locker, causing her to flinch. “I’ll give it to you. You do surprise me sometime. Samantha Jane Bartlett, trying to screw your lover over and run away? Now what am I going to do with you, girl?”

The locker hinges squeaked as the top opened.

“Hey,”—a male voice came from the direction of the parking lot—“what the hell are you doing on my boat?”

The lid dropped and the boots turned away. “Sorry, man.” He shifted to that phony good ‘ol boy voice she loathed. “I was looking for my girl.”

“What makes you think she’s here?” the guy asked, now closer. The boat shifted and a pair of shoes appeared in front of Brad. “Jeez, cowboy, get the hell off my boat. Your boots are ruining my deck.”

The boots shifted again and she heard flesh against flesh and then a scuffle. A loud noise rattled the locker. Brad hit the deck, his wide eyes directly in front of the vent. The man’s boat shoe pushed against the back of Brad’s neck.