Black River (52 page)

O’Brien smiled. “Before you start calling British embassies, I have a friend who is very well connected to the British government. He’ll be in a good position to get your message to the right people quickly.”

“Thank you.”

“I want to go with you to your bank to make sure you safely get this stuff in a safe deposit box.”

“After that, Sean, where are you going? What’ll you do now?”

He glanced out the window, the sounds of children playing and a puppy barking filled the air. “I need to spend some quality time with Max. She’s overdue.”

“I want to thank you for all you’ve done.”

O’Brien heard a text message come through his phone. He glanced at it. Dave Collins wrote: Urgent. A call is coming to your phone from Alistair Hornsby. You might want to take it…

O’Brien turned to Laura. I have an incoming call I need to take. May I answer it in Jack’s old office?”

“Of course. Do you remember where it is?”

“Yes.” O’Brien’s phone rang on his way to the room. He answered and Alistair Hornsby said, “Mr. O’Brien. Dave brought me up to speed. So I take it you have the diamond and the old contract.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I just retuned them to the last owner, the woman whose husband found them in the river. But I think she would very much like to return them back to England, to the Royal Family. I’m at her home. I can put her on the line.” O’Brien could hear Hornsby release a breath.

“Thank you. But before you do, I wanted to let you know we heard everything that happened when you encountered James Fairmont on that
yacht. You did a remarkable job. Dave told me how you’d battled Fairmont in the river after he’d injected you. And then we were informed on Fairmont’s final moments. We are absolutely stunned. You managed to eliminate one of the best trained agents in the history of the UK.”

“It wasn’t all me.”

“Regardless, it happened because of your efforts. I’m in Prime Minister Hannes’ office. He’d like a word with you.”

O’Brien waited for twenty seconds and then Prime Minister Hannes said, “Mr. O’Brien, I have been thoroughly briefed on what you did. Great Britain is in your debt. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I just spoke by telephone with Her Majesty, the Queen. She, too, extends her deepest gratitude and asked me to convey that to you. Also, she told me that she believes, without a doubt, that you’ve earned the highest honor Her Majesty can bestow on a person.”

“I’m not looking for a reward. If there is one, please give it to Laura Jordan.”

“The honor I am referring to is something that only the Queen of England can perform. Her Majesty wishes to offer you an honorary knighthood. I do hope you will accept it. You have indeed earned it.”

O
n the seventh day, O’Brien began to see changes for the better in Kim. They walked on the beach, Kim laughing as she watched little Max romp in the sea foam, bark at gulls, the breeze across the Atlantic lifting Max’s ears like small bird wings. It had been seven days since O’Brien had brought Kim to a small pink cottage framed with red and blue bougainvillea tucked away in a semi-private cove of white sand and sea oats on Key Largo. They swam in the Atlantic. Baked in the sun. Ate fresh fruits and broiled fish. Took long walks, the sunshine and sea salt healing the cuts and bruises on her body.

O’Brien knew that the restoration of her mind, her spirit was going to take more time. In some latent form, the scars inflicted by Silas Jackson would be with Kim for the rest of her life. During their first vacation week, they didn’t talk about what had happened. It was too early. Too raw. And then after swimming in the gin clear water on the afternoon of the seventh day, a brief shower fell over the sea and lagoon.

She lifted her face to the sky, letting the soft warm drops splash off her face and into her open mouth. She closed her eyes, treading water and lifting her hands, letting the rain hit her palms. In less than a minute, the shower passed, moving further out into the ocean, the sun peeking behind a few clouds.

They swam to the shore, stepped out of the water and sat on a beach towel, Kim’s eyes fixed far away on the horizon.

She turned to look at O’Brien and said, “I’ve tried so hard to wrap my head around what happened. I keep seeing his face, the tattoo on his chest and arm, the sour smell of his bed and body. I kept thinking…why me? Why did a psychopath pick me? He wanted to breed me like selected farm stock. And then I stopped asking myself: why me?” She paused, took a deep breath and, for a full minute, watched Max peacefully sleeping between them on the towel.

O’Brien listened quietly.

Kim said, “Think about this, Sean. What if Gus Louden had never walked in the Tiki Bar with that old photo and the mystery surrounding it?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if he’d never showed up? Never been there. I would have still tried out for the part in the movie. I would have still met Silas Jackson on the film set. And odds are that all of this would have happened with one big exception.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the fact that, without you looking for the woman in the painting, you wouldn’t have found me. You would have never known about Silas Jackson and his lewd habits. He simply could have put a gun to my head one day, drug me off to his hideout, and raped and killed me. But, because of Gus Louden’s appearance and because of the journey you went through—you eventually came to me—preventing a psychopath from raping and killing. In some fixed way, a prearranged safety net was placed under me. Sure, I took a fall. But I walked away. Somehow and some way all of this was inner-connected, and I survived. What if you were
supposed
to find me? I feel very lucky and even blessed.”

“I met a man, or at least I think I met him…”

“What do you mean…you think you met him?”

“Because I hadd been hit with a syringe filled with some drug designed to induce a coma and subsequent death. I’m fortunate that the needle hit a bone in my shoulder and broke before all the chemicals could get into my blood. But later that night, I had a dream or some kind of vision and an old Confederate officer started talking about the connectivity of what we see and what we often don’t see. Not because we can’t, we simple aren’t looking for it.”

“Sounds like a higher level of consciousness. When Jackson was about to rape me, I felt like time was standing still. There was really no concept of time…only of being. I noticed things I’d never notice before. Smells. Pieces of fabric. Rust spots on the ceiling. The putrid green color of the walls.” She touched his hand. “Sean, this trip to the Keys has been so much of what I needed. I’m very grateful. But when we get back, I’m quitting my job.”

“Why?”

“It’s time to, really. My mother needs me. She’s fighting cancer. I’m going back to Michigan to be her caregiver for as long as she has left.”

“Will you be returning to Ponce Inlet?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Should I come back?”

“Yes. Will you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know if you’re going to accept the knighthood?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Well, you’ll always be my knight. Maybe your armor is a little tarnished, but you’re still my knight.” She leaned in and kissed him softly. “Oh, look Sean, a rainbow. It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen one that spectacular. Look at the arch. It’s going from one end of the horizon at sea to the other. It makes an absolute perfect half circle.”

“It really makes a full circle. We can only see half of it.”

“How could you see if a rainbow is full circle?”

“Probably from a plane. From a higher angle.”

“If it’s a complete circle, there’s no end.”

“Maybe it’s the beginning we should look for.”

Max sat next to Kim, and they all looked at the horizon where the Atlantic met the skyline. The wind stopped and the surface of the sea suddenly became calm, flat. The full reflection of the rainbow appeared over the surface, reflecting from the sky to the sea, the massive image forming a full circle.

O’Brien squeezed Kim’s hand, watching as a flock of seven white pelicans fly into the colors of the rainbow, the heart of a flawless ring.

And, for a brief moment in time, heaven connected with earth.

The End

The following is an excerpt from the next novel to be released in the Sean O’Brien series by Tom Lowe. Here’s a preview of

H
e knew he’d miss his sister. He didn’t want to leave her, but at age fourteen, there wasn’t much he could do. He would return to get her one day—to rescue her. Andy Cope sat in a hard, wooden chair across the counter from the principal’s secretary, a heavy woman with listless eyes and turquoise-framed glasses worn halfway down her nose. Her bottle-blonde hair was pulled back into a tight bun that looked to Andy like a hornet’s nest. She picked up the phone, stuck her thick finger into the rotary dial and made a call that would forever change Andy’s life.

He glanced up at the clock on the wall behind the woman. 11:15. Andy knew the freight train would rumble by the school at 11:30 sharp, always slowing to a crawl at the crossing, sometimes coming to a brief stop in Marianna. Andy hoped that today the train would be making that stop. He could run all the way into Marianna if he had to. He was athletic. Strong for age fourteen. Handsome angular face, his brown hair cut short. Green eyes often guarded, suspicious. A small, white crisscross scar above one of his dark eyebrows. He watched the secondhand move on the clock as the secretary spoke into the phone.

“We have one boy today. His mother and Mr. Gillespie signed the papers. Warden Beck is expecting him by three. Are you coming in a bus or is the truancy officer picking him up?” She paused, listening—looking over her glasses at the boy, her eyes superior. Andy held her stare, unblinking. She said, “That’ll be fine. Thank you. Darlene, how’s Harold? Betty told me he’s fixin’ to get out of the turpentine business.”

The principal, a tall balding man in a cotton seersucker suit, came out of his office, his wingtip shoes hard against the pine-wood floor, the smell of cigarette smoke on his clothes. He looked down at Andy. “Maybe schoolin’ isn’t for you, son. You lack motivation and discipline. They’ll teach it to you at the Florida Home for Boys. You’ll grow up quick down there. It’s for your own good. When you come back here you’ll be changed.”