by Aimee Laine
“You shot your husband?” That male voice didn’t match the one Tripp heard before he parted ways with some part of his own body.
“He’s not my boyfriend or husband, and no I didn’t shoot him.” Her voice took on a factual yet irritated tone.
No. A man did. Maybe. Tripp wanted to sit up, but his body failed in his attempt.
“How did you know he was here?” That same male voice asked.
“I heard a gunshot, saw the lights on in this car but didn’t see anyone. So I came out to see. There are only two houses on his stretch of road with people living in them right now.”
“Sir? Can you hear me?” A different male voice asked.
Tripp grunted his acknowledgement, but he couldn’t think through the knives and hammers whacking at his side.
“We’ll be at County, Miss. I’ll need to get more of your statement—”
A calm overtook him, blanketing him in darkness.
• • •
“Lex.” The whisper woke her.
She turned toward the sound.
“Lex, can you hear me?” More whispers, right at her ear.
“Em?” Lexi pushed up on her elbows. “Wha—”
“Shh. Listen. We need to go to County. Your Tripp’s been shot.”
Lexi circled her shoulder, stiff as if it had remained motionless for days. A spot at her bicep and against her rib cage throbbed to the rhythm of her own heartbeat. “Why—”
“I don’t know.”
“My arm is killing me.” A breeze passed over Lexi’s face. She blinked sleep-infused lids. “What time is it?”
“Just about midnight. Do you want to go to the hospital?”
“No.” She shifted to sit, pausing a moment. “Yes.” Her legs wobbled as she stood.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I think.” Lexi took Emma’s hand. “I thought I was having a heart attack.”
Emma’s eyes narrowed.
Lexi rubbed her bicep, triceps and the side of her chest. The ache she remembered when on the staircase had disappeared, but the residual throb remained.
“Let’s go then,” Lexi said.
• • •
A white room greeted Tripp along with a fog he hoped came with a heavy dose of painkillers.
“Mr. Fox? Are you awake?” A sweet southern twang made him want to smile.
Pressure on his arm had his stomach roiling. He blinked his eyes open to find a woman, a nurse—unless his eyes misjudged the puppy-dog pattern on her V-neck scrubs. She worked, wrapping his arm in fresh gauze.
“You took a nasty spill, Mr. Fox. Two gunshot wounds. One barely missed your brachial artery, and the second nicked a few ribs on your right side. Surgery was a breeze, only left a little scar, but your fall against your car did the damage to your head. You’ll have a nice bump there for a while.” She switched sides, adjusted a monitor dial. “Doc said the MRI revealed no hemorrhaging, so a bump is all it is. Now then, since you’re awake, let’s get you sitting up a bit.”
“Cell phone?” He squinted up at the woman who leaned over him.
“Didn’t find one in your belongings, though you have a few visitors in the lobby. Trying to call one of them?”
The back of his head tapped out a beat one pace off from his arm and shoulder. He adjusted his body by little bits as the bed raised behind him, a dizziness overtaking his head the more he sat upright.
“You okay there?” His nurse stopped the bed’s motion. “Want me to ask those beautiful ladies to join you?”
“Who are they?” He imagined she meant Jill, but a night of fun on a boat would have superseded a trip to the emergency room.
“A blonde and her exact opposite. Said they live a couple houses down and found you, called the police and everything. They’ve been here since you went into surgery and have waited all night in that lobby. Gotta say the chairs aren’t comfortable, so to spend—” She turned her watch toward her. “—nearly eight hours in them had to hurt. You must be one lucky guy.”
Lexi. Tripp smiled.
• • •
“Ladies?”
The nurse’s voice woke Lexi from her half-asleep state, though how she and Emma got a moment’s rest, Lexi didn’t know. They’d propped themselves up against each other like dominos, their balance precarious in the plastic chairs.
Lexi’s eyes fluttered open. “Is he okay?”
“He’s just waking up. I told him I’d let you in for a quick visit.”
“Thank you. Can we have just a second to splash some water on our faces?” Lexi shoved Emma as the nurse nodded and disappeared.
Emma rubbed at her eyes. “Wah?”
“Tripp’s awake. We should go see him, give him his cell phone at least.”
Emma yawned. “Mmm. ’K. These chairs are awful. Geez.”
If Lexi had the energy, she would have laughed and agreed. “I’m going to pee.”
“’K. I’ll wait.” Emma dropped her elbow to her knee and her head to her palm.
In the bathroom, Lexi stared at her reflection. Bags under her eyes. Hair mussed. Tripp still hadn’t seen her in any state besides terrible. “Guess that’ll be good enough.” She chuckled to herself, pulling her hair into a tighter ponytail.
• • •
A shuffle of feet stopped at Tripp’s door.
“Tripp!” Jill’s voice carried through the small room. Footsteps hurried across the tile. “Oh, my god. I thought you died.” Her hands rubbed against his cheeks. “They told me you were shot. What happened?”
“I’m okay, Jill, really.” His heart sank that Lexi hadn’t walked in.
Jill stood straight. “You are not. Otherwise you wouldn’t be in this bed.” A firm scowl raced across her face. “We’ll have you transferred to New York tonight. We don’t need this po-dunk town and its back-ass doctors. You need specialists.”
Tripp chuckled. “It’s not bad, and I kinda like it.” He grabbed her wrist with his free and unmarred arm. “I thought you were on a boat.”
“I was, silly, but my Dad called, and they got ahold of me. He sent the helicopter to get me here super quick.” She snapped her fingers.
Of course he did. “How did he know?”
“Shush now. Doesn’t matter. The only thing that means anything is you’re going to be just fine. Right? Just fine?” She dropped to the chair next to his bed.
Tripp gave his attention to the woman at the door.
“Oh, sorry, honey. This is Isabelle. She came with me. Moral support, and all.”
He nodded at Isabelle as she did the same. He must have misinterpreted the nurse’s description.
• • •
Lexi stepped from the bathroom, pulling at the hem of her shirt. “You ready, Em?”
Emma stirred, though Lexi could tell she’d fallen back to sleep. “Hmm?”
Lexi snickered behind her hand. “You really aren’t a night owl, are you? How about I go without you?” Emma’s head bobbled in what Lexi took as agreement.
She walked through the double doors, down the hallway, and checked off each room number as she passed. From the one on the end, marked twenty-one, voices trickled into the hallway. She snuck to the side to peer in, caught Tripp’s eye, but a woman blocked Lexi’s line of sight.
“Oh, honey,” the voice from the beach said.
Jill.
Lexi closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Tripp met her gaze.
She spun, away, sighed and rubbed at the spot on her chest where the star burned again. At the front desk, she dropped the cell phone into an envelope for patient medications. On it she wrote, ‘Tripp Fox’.
After a moment, she added one more line.
See you in another life.
Without a look back, Lexi left.
6
Jill kept Tripp sequestered at her beach house for a day, after which she forced him into her Dad’s private jet for the return to New York. Cabin fever set in two hours later. For seventy-two more hours, Jill enforced a no
talk, no stress, no ill effects moratorium Tripp called torture.
He hated every minute of it.
Being confined to a sling left Tripp limited to computer work, but at least the return to the office gave him an opportunity to talk with Ian.
“How the fuck did this happen?” Ian paced from one end of the room to the other.
“I don’t know.” Tripp shook his head. “I was at my car, getting ready to … well, you know … and heard my name. I turned, got hit in the arm first and then a second time. My head hit the car door, and the next thing I remember, I woke up in the hospital.”
“And Jill showed up just hours later?”
“Eight hours apparently.”
“What about … you know who?” Ian shrugged one shoulder.
“She was there, but she left before I could talk to her. I figure she was just making sure I was okay. Really, what other point would there have been? She pushed me away and rightfully so.” Tripp slammed his good fist against the wall. “I never should have listened to you about going over there.”
“Or you might have gone faster and avoided whoever had it in for you.”
Tripp glared at his friend. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“How did someone know who you were, find you at your car … at the right moment, and shoot you unless they had insider knowledge.”
“You and I have enemies. People knew that was our last weekend there, and Jill was out.”
“Coincidence?”
“Don’t know.” Tripp walked to the window, in the office he and Ian had shared for over ten years.
Towers formed New York’s landscape like an overgrown lawn of steel and glass. Exhaust fumes and the stench of general pollution added to Tripp’s sense of imprisonment. The wide open space of the ocean had given him more a sense of home.
“So, what are you going to do?” Ian asked. “Back to the scene of the crime to conduct your own investigation?”
“The locals are on it. I’ll leave it to them, and if they need my input, they’ll find me.”
“We got a couple of requests for an assist by the NYPD. We could play those out, see where they go and keep the work really simple.”
The thought of any project for the police didn’t sit well, but time at his desk left Tripp fidgety. He needed to get out, stretch his mental and physical muscles.
At a nudge of his shoulder, he cried out. “Son of a bitch! This fucking sucks.”
Ian laughed. “I’d say you need a vacation, a week at the beach, but man, that’s what got you in this situation in the first place.”
“I gotta get out of here. Away from New York.”
“Wanna go up north? My folks got a place in Maine.”
Tripp shook his head.
Ian’s chuckle grew.
“What?”
“I know exactly where you want to go. Do it.” Ian grabbed the keys from the desk, held them in front of Tripp’s face. “What are you waiting for? Motive? Means? Opportunity? You’re primed with all them. Hell, I could even find us some work and tag along.”
Tripp eyed his friend. “You want to shut the office down, take a sabbatical and see where life leads us?” His smile grew.
“Nothing tying me here, ’cept my brother Michael and he’s going to do whatever he wants anyway.” Ian waved through the air. “Everything here is paid for or leased. Easy peasy to get rid of.” He knocked on the surface of the desk. “What about … you know who?”
“I’ll be safer down south after you tell her I’m leaving than here in New York.”
Ian’s eyes widened. “Me? What the— Me?”
Tripp batted his lashes the way Jill did to him. “But Ian … you’re so much better at schmoozing than me.”
Ian’s middle finger soared into the air, facing Tripp with rigid stillness. “That one’s on you.” He switched to his index as if inspiration struck. “Meant to tell you what I found out about that necklace.” He sat in the leather-backed chair, opened up the laptop.
That was too easy. “Something good, I hope?” Tripp snorted a quiet laugh.
Ian tapped at the keyboard as Tripp stared out at the vast, hazy city below them.
“I don’t know if it’s related to the shooting, but the gem …” Ian’s fingers continued to click.
The swish of the laptop, as it turned, brought Tripp around.
“It looked just like this, didn’t it?”
Tripp stepped toward the image on the screen. The pendant which had hung hidden within the folds of Lexi’s dress matched the photo Ian found.
“It’s a sapphire, and from what I can tell, it’s as real as a baby’s butt is soft.”
A laugh broke Tripp’s woe-is-me brood. “Nice analogy.”
“Anyway,” Ian started again. “From the photo and measurements I took, I traced it back to a Sherrill and Robert Targus. They’re in the middle of a divorce. He’s got twenty insurance claims pending about just that one jewel, which brought it to the attention of the FBI for fraud. It’s called the star sapphire because of those rutile needles within the stone.”
“Interesting.”
“You gave it back, right? ’Cause there is one freaked out man looking for it.”
“I did.”
“Seems he wants the jewel bad enough to risk his own freedom if the feds are involved. Here’s a picture of him.” Ian clicked the keys again and brought up the face of the man Tripp had held in a lock on the beach. “Looks like you recognize this guy. He the one who shot you?” Ian’s raised one eyebrow as he tilted his head.
“Don’t know who shot me. Had a little run-in with that one on the beach. Thus the realization of who Lexi is. Shit.” Tripp pounded his fist into the desktop. “If he thinks Lexi has the stone, he could go after her again.”
“You know what they say about friends and enemies. Let’s stick close to the source and take care of it.”
Tripp stood straight. “Yeah, let’s.”
Ian clapped his hands together. “Whoa, baby! The man is back.” He stomped his feet under the desk, but the muffled sounds of the plush carpet did little to spread the excitement.
Tripp lifted his arm by an inch but closed his eyes as a wash of agony radiated down his side. His doctor told him to take at least two weeks before he picked up more than ten pounds, but he’d attributed that to Jill’s influence, not reality. Day four and Tripp wanted to be a hundred percent.
To get the necklace without Lexi knowing, he’d have to rely fully on his gift. Or he should take a different tactic altogether.
“North Carolina, then?” Tripp said.
Ian’s eyes lit up like a child about to open his biggest birthday present. “I’m in.”
• • •
Lexi sat at her desk across from a young, well-dressed couple who told her all about their desire to own a home. Her office, painted a seafoam green, reminded her of the ocean on a super-heated day when the sand mixed within the top layer and turned it a pale but dense color. She’d added childhood photographs taken by her parents, who lived a few hours away and often met her, and Emma, for weekend dinners.
“So,” Lexi began as the couple laid their hands in their laps. “You want to buy a home. It’s a big decision and finding the right one is often a chore, but we’ll make the process fun, a little exciting and very fulfilling in the end.” Lexi snapped her fingers and realized how much of an idiot she sounded. She kept a smile plastered to her face. Did her life amount to such banal excitement?
After her week at the beach, she’d firmed her resolve to stay put and find everyone’s dream house instead of pursue the more dangerous work. She simply didn’t trust people enough to put herself at further risk.
“What do you need us to do?” The husband leaned forward. “We’re prepared to pay, though we have a budget—”
Lexi waved her hands in the air as if he might drive through a stop sign. “No, no. Agents don’t take money. We work on commission—a percentage from the final sale price.”
&n
bsp; “Okay.” He sat back.
Lexi switched her attention to his wife. “Can you tell me what you think you want?”
As they described it, Lexi responded with Mm-hmms and Ahhs, jotting a few notes down and turning on her computer. As they jabbered, her mind wandered to more unique activities, such as midnight walks on the beach.
“So, um, that’s what we’d like,” the wife said.
Lexi returned her attention to them, though they would never know it left in the first place. As soon as the couple walked through her door, she knew the house for them. An image of the duo in its kitchen hit her like the location of the pendant had. Three taps later, she made the photo of the house—the same one she’d pictured in her mind—appear on her screen. She kept it hidden behind a few other application windows so she could draw out their excitement.
“Great. Let me see now.” She clicked on the keyboard, creating a random set of letters and numbers in her text program. A quick delete and with a faked enthusiasm, she said, “Aha!”
Two sets of wide eyes stared back at her.
“I have the perfect place.” Lexi swiveled the screen to them, showed off the sample photos, specifications and talked through financing options. “Would you like to go see it?” In anticipation of a ‘yes’, she’d already set up an appointment via an online contact page.
“We would, yes,” the man said.
“Great. Emma is going to take you to it, and when you get back, we can talk more about it.”
The faster Lexi could shoo them out, the more time she’d get for herself.
The day started as it always had. She met with clients, produced the same results with each one, and took on one new seller. The latter she did sporadically since true success required she touch on the finding people part of her gift—which she avoided, ninety-nine point nine percent of the time.
She never should have looked for Tripp, not the first or second time.
As the couple walked out with Emma, Lexi dropped back into her seat. No sooner had she scooted up to her desk, dropped her head into her hands and sighed, than the chime of the door sent a twinkle of sound through her office. “Geez.” She stood again. We need an ‘out of office’ sign.