Yacht Girl

by Alison Claire Grey

  How romantic.

  The secrets separated her from Meg even more than distance did. The deception ate Dee up, so she numbed it the best way she knew how— namely pills. After all, there was one for everything. A pill to wake her up, a pill to help her sleep, others that helped her forget.

  They were the Band-Aid on her disaster of a life.

  “God it’s hot,” Dee had said after stepping off the elevator on the top floor of the parking garage outside of the Panama City airport and into the sunny Florida afternoon. Meg had come to pick her up, Jessa in tow.

  “Yeah, summer keeps showing up earlier and earlier it seems,” Meg replied as they walked toward her Jeep Cherokee. The sight of it made Dee queasy, remembering what had once been in the back of it.

  Meg buckled Jessa in the backseat.

  “She’s almost too big for that now,” Dee said as she climbed into the passenger side seat.

  “I big girl!” Jessa squealed. “Big girl like Auntie Dee-Dee!”

  “I know,” Meg sighed. “I wish she’d slow down.”

  Meg was such an incredible mother, which came as no surprise to Dee. Meg had been mothering her sister their entire lives.

  As they pulled out of the garage and onto the main road, Meg asked for a favor.

  “I need to stop in the hardware store to get some stuff for the motel. Do you mind sitting in the Jeep with Jessa while I go in? I might be a bit.”

  Dee shook her head, sliding her sunglasses on. “Of course. Happy to help.”

  The Jeep’s air conditioning hadn’t been working for months so the girls cracked the windows.

  “I need a new car,” Meg ruminated as they pulled into the parking lot of Home Depot. “Always something.”

  “I could help you with that,” Dee said. “We could get you one this week.”

  “We’ll see,” Meg said as she put the car in park. “I hate car payments.”

  Dee watched her sister stroll toward the entrance of Home Depot, grabbing an orange cart on her way in.

  Dee turned to look at her niece who had fallen asleep. She was such a beautiful child. Long lashes, big wavy hair like her mother. Her eyes were closed now, but they were the most beautiful color, an emerald green that Dee assumed Jessa must have gotten from her father, whoever the hell he was.

  Dee loved her so much. She would have done anything for Jessa. She’d never had maternal urges, but Jessa made her rethink them, just a little bit.

  She’d been sitting there for about twenty minutes when she saw him. He was broad and tall and looked just like Jed, the man Rooster used to have watch her back in the day when she’d been prisoner in her own home.

  Her heart started pounding. She frantically searched for her purse. The panic attacks came frequently, but she had her pills. Where were they? Where were her fucking pills?

  She could have sworn he was walking toward the Jeep. Or was he? She couldn’t tell, but she was terrified.

  Her pills were in her suitcase, shit. Her head started swirling, and she was sweating. She felt closed in, like the Jeep was closing in on her. She needed to get out. Now.

  Dee ran out of the Jeep and toward the grassy median on the other side of the parking lot. The man had turned and it looked like he was following her.

  She started to sob, uncontrollably. She couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. It hadn’t been this bad in so long. She knew she shouldn’t be here, she shouldn’t have come.

  Time passed. She didn’t know how long, but it passed and she felt woozy. The man had left, she thought. Was it Jed? She didn’t know. Couldn’t know.

  Dee was so tired of being afraid.

  “What the fuck, Dee?”

  She had passed out in the middle of the grass. It was her sister’s voice that woke her.

  “Meg…” Dee started to speak, but her sister cut her off.

  “You left my child alone in a Jeep with the windows open,” Meg yelled. “I was in the store an hour. I came out to my car and you’re gone and my baby is screaming, terrified to be left alone in a car in the middle of a parking lot. Do you have any idea what kind of danger you put her in?”

  Dee looked up and saw Meg was holding Jessa on her hip. She was still crying, her large emerald eyes red and scared.

  Knowing that she’d caused that made Dee ill.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” Dee said, her heart pounding again. “I need to go.”

  “Yeah you do,” Meg said. “You clearly need a lot of things. And I’m sick of having to give them to you. I can’t anymore. This is the last straw, Dee. Every time you come home you put our lives in danger. I can’t handle it. I can’t handle you. I want you out of my life!”

  Meg was yelling again and Jessa started to cry.

  Dee’s shoulders slumped.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

  PRESENT DAY

  Fifty-Two

  Meg had entered Room 223, never more afraid in her life of what she was about to see.

  She found her sister sitting on the floor, practically inside the closet of the room, which was inexplicably open, her knees to her chest, her spindly arms wrapped around them as she rocked herself back and forth, staring at something on the bed.

  That something, was a very dead body.

  But it wasn’t Rooster McCoy.

  She could see how Dee had thought it could be. The guy had an uncanny resemblance to him, they had the same facial features, but this man had incredibly curly hair, Meg could tell this even with the blood that had congealed and crusted across the guy’s forehead.

  But it wasn’t him. How could it have been? Rooster McCoy had been incredibly dead the night they’d left him in the sinks.

  “Dee,” Meg said her sister’s name firmly. Dee was the same kind of catatonic she’d been the night they’d buried this guy’s doppelgänger. “Dee, get out of the closet. We need to call the police. They’re going to have to comb this room for evidence.”

  The Siesta had never seen a murder, not in all the decades it had been open.

  This was quite something.

  Dee slowly stood up, her legs wobbly and her hands shaking.

  “It’s not Rooster,” Meg said, holding her hand out to help her sister steady herself. “It does kind of look like him, but it’s not him.”

  “How do you know?” Dee croaked. “How do you know?”

  Meg raised an eyebrow. “You know how I know. So let’s stop talking about it. This guy was still killed and we need to get the police on it. Now.”

  It had been quite the news story of course.

  But the girls were even more shocked when they found out why the dead body had reminded them so much of Rooster.

  “Ranger McCoy?” Meg had repeated when the detectives pulled her over to interview her later that morning. “Are you serious?”

  “So you know him?” the detective asked, scribbling something down in his notebook.

  “No, I don’t know him. Just, he’s a McCoy, right?” Meg stuttered, wanting to change the subject. “My sister, she used to date his brother.”

  She might as well say it, they’d find out anyway.

  News reporters swarmed the place and Meg was interviewed three times by the local affiliates, though she could hardly answer any questions.

  Dee had gone home as soon as she’d been done talking to the police. Meg had gotten her an Uber.

  As usual, she was left to clean up this mess.

  It couldn’t have been a coincidence that Ranger McCoy had picked The Siesta to stay. Meg had an unsettling feeling about the entire thing. They’d never been given much trouble from the McCoys, at least not that she knew of.

  It was something she’d have to discuss with Dee, whether she wanted to or not.

  Fifty-Three

  Meg offered Teresa two-hundred bucks to come in a few hours early to work the rest of the morning shift along with the afternoon one. Teresa had been happy to help, and Meg was grateful. She needed sleep, desperately.

 
And to check on her sister.

  As much as she wanted to stay cold to Dee, it was getting harder to keep her distance the longer her sister was here. And now she could see Dee was clearly in trouble.

  This was the second McCoy brother that had ended up dead in their proximity.

  Meg didn’t believe in coincidences.

  “Coincidences are just God’s way of remaining anonymous,” her father used to say. Meg’s heart ached at the thought of him. She wished desperately that he was here to help them out of this mess.

  Besides, God wouldn’t have sent the McCoy brothers.

  Only the devil would do that.

  When she got home she found Dee curled up on the couch, Jessa’s Florida State comforter wrapped around her. But she wasn’t asleep.

  “Hey,” Meg said as she walked into the living room, tossing the keys to the Camry in the basket on the coffee table.

  “I know,” Dee said. “I have to leave. I get it.”

  “What?” Meg was confused. “Why do you have to leave?”

  Dee sat up and Meg could see that she’d been crying.

  “I’m dangerous. Look what I did! Ranger McCoy was sent here because of me. The McCoys sent him to keep me quiet. As if I have any desire to be anything but quiet. I’ve been sealed shut for over a decade. And now I’ve put you and Jessa in danger again,” Dee spoke fast and incoherently, but Meg got the gist of it.

  “Keep you quiet about what?” Meg asked. “The abuse?”

  “That. The harassment on the set when I worked on the show. Alistair McCoy has a shit ton of heat on him right now. Other women are coming forward; they contacted me, but I ignored their calls because I’m a fucking coward. I can’t fight them anymore.

  “But I guess it wasn’t enough. They couldn’t be sure. About six months ago they had me blacklisted from… what I do.

  “And so I’ve been flailing ever since, until I ran out of money and had to come home. Even though I knew you wouldn’t want me here. Which I understand! I do. I don’t blame you. But now I’m a person with nowhere to go and the McCoys aren’t going to stop until they know I’ll never talk again.”

  Dee was sobbing now and Meg sat down next to her, wrapping her arm around her.

  “Dee,” Meg said. “What do you do? The truth.”

  Dee looked at her sister, her only sister, the person she loved more than anyone and she hesitated. What could she possibly tell her? The truth? That her younger sister had been working as a yacht girl until she’d aged out, and been forced out by the same people who had forced her out of LA thirteen years ago?

  What was there to lose? She had nothing left.

  So Dee and Meg had a long talk. About everything. It was hours of the truth, and Dee felt a weight lifted with every admission. Meg said very little in response and revealed nothing about how she felt.

  Finally, when Dee was done, she looked at her sister. She wasn’t sure what to expect.

  “Dee,” Meg started and then stopped. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Yeah,” Dee said. “I’m sure this changes a lot of things. And I understand. I’m ashamed too. But I’m so sick of lying. To myself, to you, to everyone. But I won’t anymore. Even if you still never speak to me again, just know I will never lie to you ever again.”

  Dee was crying now.

  “And know this too. Meg, I will always love you. Forever. Jessa too. Even if I can’t be in your lives. I will never not love you or not desperately wish I could be again. And not because of Dad’s will or because of anything else. It took me a decade of hell to realize what I had all along. And that’s you.”

  Meg shook her head. She was now crying too.

  “I’m so sorry, Dee,” Meg said, wrapping her arms around her sister. Dee fell into them, never so relieved in her entire life.

  “I let you down too,” Meg continued. “It was easier for me to stay angry with you than to help you. Jessa is my world. It’s true. Nothing will ever come before her. But you’re my world too. You needed me, and I let you down. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You did what you thought you had to do. And I left you out there in the world… with no one. You needed your sister. I let you down, Dee. I will be sorry forever.”

  The sisters sat like that for a long time, crying sometimes, silent the next. They fell asleep like they had once done as girls, leaned against the other, so close that their dreams intersected, both of them wishing for the same thing, the thing they’d both needed for so long, but had been too stubborn to ask for.

  Each other.

  Fifty-Four

  Donovan Lockwood hoped Ranger McCoy was the last man he ever killed.

  Not that he had any remorse over what he’d done that night at The Siesta. On the contrary, this had been the easiest kill of his life. There were no qualms about it— not a single one. He hadn’t done it for money or for duty, which somehow made it an act of morality in his mind. It was the right thing to do.

  He’d done it to prevent Ranger from killing an innocent woman, someone the McCoys had tormented enough. If it hadn’t been Ranger that died, it would have been Dee Beckett. Without a doubt.

  That was all Donovan could think about as he sat in the first-class lounge of the Jackson-Hartfield International Airport in Atlanta.

  As soon as he’d left The Siesta the night of Ranger McCoy’s murder, he’d headed straight to Atlanta in a car he’d rented with a fake ID and credit card, documentation he’d used in a past life that he’d hoped never to have to see again.

  He’d promised himself years ago that the killing was over, that no more blood would be shed, that he wouldn’t play the role of Death anymore, even if he’d once believed it was his way of serving his country and giving out justice the best way he knew how.

  Dee Beckett was still on his mind as he waited to board his flight back to LA, a black coffee in his hand. Despite what he’d done for her, he felt guilty that he’d worked for the people who had hurt her so deeply, who had hurt so many women for such a long time, all in the name of getting whatever they wanted from them.

  He was ashamed to have ever taken a single dime from them.

  Donovan had spent years working for the McCoys. He’d been hired a decade ago and had seen too much of their corruption, deceit, and evil to allow it to impact even one more person.

  Donovan had been privy to all the dark deeds of the McCoy Media Corporation and their BDE network and studios. He was head of their security and in charge of their travel and transportation detail. All of their bodyguards and drivers worked for him.

  And they told him everything.

  The McCoys had paid him well, almost too well, and now he understood why.

  The money had been to keep him quiet. That’s what it had always been for, with everyone. Keep your mouth shut and cash the checks.

  Which had been fine until he’d known what sorts of misdeeds and secrets he was protecting.

  But once Donovan became aware of the plan to “take care” of Dee Beckett, he couldn’t allow it to go on any longer. He’d never have been able to look himself in the mirror again if he hadn’t done what he did to stop Ranger from silencing her for good.

  There was something about Dee that Donovan was drawn to. He wasn’t attracted to her or in love with her. He could of course admit she was attractive, but it wasn’t that.

  Dee Beckett reminded him of someone else, someone he’d known for only one night, but who he hadn’t been able to forget for a single day since.

  Dee reminded him of Meg. They had similar smiles and the same eyes. It was really very strange. They could have been sisters in another life.

  He’d thought of Meg every day since the night he’d been lucky enough to spend with her.

  In a bizarre way he felt like saving Dee was like saving Meg.

  He didn’t know why. He couldn’t explain it.

  But that was what it came down to. As crazy as it sounded, even to him.

  Of course the flight to LA was delayed. It was almost always t
hat way. Donovan would be stuck another hour in this lounge. He supposed he might as well get comfortable.

  He strolled over to the coffee bar to get a refill of his coffee. He’d need the caffeine. He hadn’t slept in well over twenty-four hours. In his younger days it hadn’t been a problem, but now that he was pushing forty-five, it was a different story.

  A flat-screen was mounted in the corner of the lounge near a table filled with pastries and snacks. Another traveler was turning up the volume on it. The news was on and a reporter was interviewing someone. As soon as Donovan heard it, he recognized the voice of the person being interviewed.

  But it wasn’t possible. Was it?

  He looked up and sure enough, there she was.

  It was Meg, the woman from thirteen years ago.

  And she was standing in front of The Siesta.

  Donovan must have looked unhinged as he threw his coffee cup in the trash, picked up his carry-on and headed quickly through the enormous Atlanta terminal and back to the car rental agency.

  Within thirty minutes of seeing Meg’s face on the screen he was back on the road to Panama City Beach.

  He couldn’t believe it. As soon as he was in the car he turned on the radio to the news station. He’d known the death of Ranger McCoy would bring attention to the scene of the crime, but he’d never expected Meg to be—

  Sisters. Dee Beckett was Meg’s sister.

  That night at the hotel, she’d gotten in a fight with her sister. Yet they’d never exchanged more than their first names. It had been one night of passion and that was supposed to be it. But for Donovan it had never been something he could forget.

  There had been something about her.

  Very little stunned Donovan. He wasn’t a man who could be easily shocked. Not in his line of work.