In Love and Rescue: When love is the perfect rescue... (16 page)

Twila noticed Larke carefully
walking around the building and scrutinized the residents around her. Desmond was nowhere to be found which meant that Larke was probably looking for him.

S
he hurried over to one of the officers guarding the entrance closest to where Larke was standing.

“Excuse me officer, I saw everything,” she frantically began, flailing her arms. “The blast came from my apartment. Somebody threw something in through the door. All I saw were flashing lights and then some smoke. I thought that I was going to die. Please help.”

He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Alright now, you’re safe. Tell me what you saw.”

She quickly glanced back at Larke who’d caught on.

“Oh my Lord Almighty,” she hysterically went on. “It was terrible. It was a bomb. They threw a bomb into my grandparents’ apartment. It was terrorists, Mr. Officer. Terrorists.”

She then exaggeratedly collapsed onto the grass and as the police officer bent to tend to her, Larke slipped underneath the tape, up the back steps, and directly into a cloud of smoke that nearly knocked her off of her feet.

The entire back entrance to Twila’s apartment was covered in soot and small flames were still billowing at the base of the doorway. A series of thuds resounded in the apartment building next to it and since everyone else had been evacuated, Larke knew that it had to be Desmond.

She dipped into an
alcove near the stairway and tried to figure out how to get to the apartment without being spotted by the emergency personnel casing the building from the ground level. Then, she noticed that the bottom of the wooden railing had about twelve inches of solid wood before it opened up to the balusters.

Easing down to the floor, she laid her stomach and squirmed along the baseboards until she arrived
at the unit where she’d heard the noises. The door was already slightly ajar, so she used her fingers to tip it open before slithering inside.

When she was fully in the living area, she dusted off her clothing and continued to examine the empty unit. Nothing seemed out of place even with the noises that she’d heard, so she cautiously made her way down a dark hallway in the middle of the room. She
finally spotted Desmond through a slightly opened bedroom door, but he was hunched over and on one knee, his right arm awkwardly gripping his left shoulder.

“You don’t know what you have gotten yourself into,” a scathing male voice boomed. “All this can be rectified if you just tell us where we can find Larke Tapley.”

Desmond’s voice was dry and throaty. “What do you want with her?”

“That’s none of your business,” a second male voice snapped. “You should have never put yourself in the middle of this. Now look where it has gotten you.”

He glanced up and spotted her standing in the doorway, then turned back to the voices as though he hadn’t seen her. For the first time, Larke noticed that there was blood seeping between the fingers gripping his shoulder and down the side of his sleeve.

“She hasn’t done anything wrong,” Desmond continued. “All she did was her job and now you want to what, hurt her?”

One of the men laughed. “Hurt her? She needs to be taught a lesson. That little girl will be wishing for death by the time Jarvis is done with her.”

Desmond tried to get to his feet
, but one of the men swung a gun and hit him in the lower back, forcing him back to the floor. He briefly met Larke’s eyes again, then his gaze lingered a few milliseconds on the backpack before it returned to the floor. Larke quietly eased out into the main room, unzipped the pack, and combed through it until came across what she thankfully recognized as a stun grenade. She then made a mental note to email one of her old law professors to thank her for her decision to go over a rioting case, ad nauseam, where several protestors had been hurt by the usually non-lethal weapon.

Moving back to the doorway, Desmond sensed her return and his head popped up
. When he noticed the grenade in her hand, he sent her a slight nod and tapped his fingers rhythmically on the floor to indicate that he was about to start a countdown. On the count of two, Larke kicked in the door, startling the two men. When Desmond’s third finger landed, he burst forward like a sprinter at the starting line and Larke tossed the grenade into the room. They then quickly backed out into the hallway and had already made it to the front door by the time the loud bang resonated throughout the unit, and the two men cried out as they were blinded and deafened. No longer concerned about the police or firefighters below, they darted down the stairs to the bottom floor in record time and ran towards a second parking lot about fifty yards away from the building.

Larke hopped into the front seat of a late model Jeep Wrangler while Desmond climbed in the passenger side. He grimaced as he flexed his arm to pull out the lower console, tug
down the wires, and then touch them together until the engine roared to life.

Larke spun the wheel and raced out of the parking lot. In the rearview mirror, she spotted Twila waving goodbye while the police officer standing next to her looked less pleased as he yelled commands into the radio at his mouth.

She navigated the narrow streets of St. Thomas on Desmond’s instructions until they’d made it back over to the east end, stopping at the bottom of a hill three miles southeast of the villa.

“Do you think you can you make it?” She asked him, trying not to focus on the increased size of the bloodstain on his shirt.

“I can make it,” he forced out.

They had no time to debate the issue, so s
he wrapped an arm around his body and they trudged through the brush, thickets, and dense greenery until they arrived at the house. Larke helped Desmond inside and directly back towards the bathroom suite to sit along the edge of the tub.

“Are there any medical supplies in here?” She asked rummaging through the backpack. Desmond leaned against the coolness of the tiled tub wall.

“Only a small first aid kit. If you go to the bedroom and look under the bed, there’s a box filled with medical supplies. You’ll need tweezers, something to stop the blood, an antiseptic—”

Before he could finish, she was already off.
Dropping to her knees, she tugged a heavy clear plastic bin out from underneath the bed. Then, she popped it open, grabbed an armful of supplies, ran back to the bathroom, and spilled them onto the floor.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” He asked, his breaths coming in heavier than usual.

“Of course not,” she nonchalantly replied, washing her hands in the sink and then pulling on a pair of latex gloves. Desmond muttered a curse under his breath and squeezed his shoulder tighter as she tore open a package that held a needle and syringe.

“Des, I’m doing to need you to move your hand,” she ordered, anxiously tearing through his shirt with a
pair of scissors.

“Larke –”

“Desmond,” she interrupted. “Move your hand so I can get to the wound.”

“Hear me out, Larke…”

She bit the inside corner of her mouth. “Are you kidding me? You’re afraid of needles?”

He diverted his eyes.

“Des, you have gone without sleep for days, you used to be a member of the Special Forces, you’ve managed to arrange intricate escape missions reminiscent of an Academy Award winning film, and you could probably shoot the wing off of a bumblebee in the middle of a sunflower over two hundred yards away. Are you really trying to tell me that you’re afraid of a tiny needle?”

He shifted uneasily and then groaned as searing pain shot through his body. “Seriously, hear me out Lar—
”

Before he had a chance to fini
sh, Larke grabbed his wrist, tugged his hand to the side, and plunged the needle into his shoulder. Desmond’s fist curled around the edge of the tub and his jaw clenched as he grimaced in pain. When all of the fluid had been drained from the syringe, she discarded the tube, took a step back, and waited for the medication to take effect. A few seconds later, his eyes opened and he stared at her, beads of perspiration sprinkled across his forehead.

“Better?”

“Better,” he groaned.

He watched intently as she stopped the blood, cleaned the area, then sutured and dressed the wound in gauze.

“Here, take these,” she instructed, handing him two tablets and a cup of water. He downed the pills and handed the cup back to her, his gaze still following her as she moved around the room.

“Let me guess, farm training?” He asked, gesturing to his wrapped shoulder.
This “wound dressing” talent was completely new to him since there’d never been a need to suture any wounds during their marriage. There was no guarantee that the need wouldn’t have eventually arisen if he’d stayed, however.

“Something like that,” she replied, putting away the rest of the supplies. “My first patient was my German shepherd, Colton. The wooded area behind our house was a prime location for hunters and Colton was a wander
er, so he got grazed by a bullet once when I was twelve. My Dad and I took him inside, patched him up, and nursed him back to good health. He kept a slight limp until the day he died, though.”

Desmond nervously glanced at his arm.

“Don’t worry, you’ll regain your full range of motion,” she teasingly reassured. “You’re the first human that I’ve ever worked on and I must say, animals are much better patients.”

He grinned and continued to watch her as she cleared the room and tossed away the supplies. When she was done, she
helped him slip into another shirt, retrieved the backpack from the kitchen counter, and they relocated to the dining table near the kitchen. Inside Twila’s folder, they found the note that she’d mentioned stapled to the flap.

“Potassium chloride, sodium thiopental and pancuronium bromide,” Desmond read aloud.

Larke’s ears perked up. “Lethal injection drugs?”

He nodded. “It says here that
her death was due to cardiac arrest, but I think the nurse was trying to tip Twila off. She was probably trying to tell her that these three drugs were administered to cause her sister’s death.”

He dropped the paper and squee
zed his forehead. “Larke, they murdered this girl. Gano and Jarvis killed this innocent teenage girl with a boyfriend and family. In cold blood.”

Larke shook her head. “Maybe it’s a good thing Twila didn’t know what th
ose words meant. I mean, we know she has an idea that foul play was involved, but if she knew that they executed her sister, I don’t think she’d be able to cope with that.”

They remained silent for a few more contemplative moments, then Desmond pulled
a phone from the backpack. “I’m going to see if Doug can help us find out if Taina knew anything. They wouldn’t have killed her if they didn’t think she knew something that could implicate them. Her boyfriend told her something in confidence, someone found out, and unfortunately she had to suffer the consequences of it.”

He punched a few numbers on the keypad and
Doug’s voice came through on the line. “I’m glad to hear from you, brother,” he answered.

“Same here,”
Desmond replied. “Do we have anything yet on Taina’s boyfriend? If he knew something that might have made him a target on Jarvis’ radar?”

Doug
made a few clicks with his mouse. “Here is what I have so far. The boyfriend’s name was Keith Richmond. He was twenty-one and up until the four weeks before he was killed, he lived just outside the Overtown district in Miami. He held three jobs before he moved: he worked for a meat-packing plant, a children’s hospital, and a small ceramics distributor.”

The third location caught Desmond’s attention. “What kind of ceramics do they distribute?”

He heard a few more clicks. “Apparently, there is a demand in the upper echelon for customized ceramics and this company is one of the main suppliers of one-of-a-kind originals. They make all sorts of stuff from vases and mugs, to tiles and urns.”

“Do you think that this is a cocaine-in-ceramic-tile kind of operation like we’ve seen before?”

“I don’t think so,” Doug added. “I have a buddy that works for the DEA that said that the US has pretty much cracked down on that scheme. But, I do think Richmond discovered something at one of his workplaces. How he tied it back to Jarvis, I’m not sure.”

“That’s if he did,” Desmond acknowledged. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they offed him just because he thought something was up but had no concrete evidence. But, if we go off of your hunch, it would make sense that he would tell Taina and that’s how she ended up involved in this mess.”

Doug rubbed his chin. “There’s something else too. I found out that Twila and Taina’s mother died due to complications from childbirth, so they were raised by their grandparents since they were only a few days old. I was able to get a copy of their birth certificates and the man listed as their father goes by the name of Lawrence Campbell. There happens to be an FBI agent in the Miami office with the same name. My money tells me that’s him.”

“So now we have
an agent’s daughter in the mix,” Desmond summarized. “As far as Taina, it turns out that they abducted her from the airport, took her to that hospital, and then administered lethal injection drugs to kill her.”