Hail Mary

by Lani Lynn Vale

  It’d been hard from the day I was born up until now.

  My mom left me with my grandparents the day I was born. I never knew who my father was. When I was seven, I was run over by a car. When I was twelve, I tried to run away, but instead of actually running away, I instead managed to get myself stuck in a storm drain, nearly drowning when a torrential downpour began. At the age of sixteen, I got pregnant and almost died from an ectopic pregnancy, and in the process, I, of course, lost the baby. At nineteen, I lost my grandmother. At twenty-four, two days before my nursing graduation, my grandfather died.

  Then, at twenty-eight, I’d found out that I had stage four gall bladder cancer.

  Just when I thought I had it beaten, I found out that I now had breast cancer. Oh, and let’s not forget about the psycho standing in my room, doing something with my computer.

  I scratched my chin and started to back up toward the back door, but stopped when he suddenly turned the computer to me.

  “What is that?” I gasped, rushing forward.

  “That is Drake.”

  I knew that. I could see that. Drake was standing outside the house that I’d let him use.

  “What is he doing?” I whispered.

  He pointed to the truck and ignored my question. “Look at this one.”

  Then he switched to the next picture.

  Drake was hauling open the door, and inside the truck, there were floor-to-ceiling crates. The only thing I’d ever seen in crates were guns, so I was hoping that my mind was just filling in the blanks, rather than knowing for a certainty.

  Surely there could be something else inside those boxes.

  “What?”

  “I think he’s allowing his house to be used as a base of some sort.”

  “Base?”

  “Or a storage facility.” He paused. “I don’t fuckin’ know. I do know that whatever he’s doing, he’s doing it at night so no one can see him. I also know that when he sees these people that make these deliveries at a restaurant in town, they don’t acknowledge that they know each other. Seems legitimately shady to me.”

  I agreed.

  “I know that one,” I pointed to the man with the Asian features. “He’s a trainer at the gym where I used to work out.”

  My captor grunted.

  “None of this makes sense,” I muttered to myself. “None of it.”

  “What sense do you need to make of this to know he’s doing something bad?” he practically spat. “The man is a fuckin’ douche.”

  “Whatever he has going on here can be verified rather quickly.” I walked away from him and to the set of keys on the counter but paused in turning for a few seconds when a wave of dizziness washed over me.

  “Cobie?”

  I shook it off and raised the keys in the air.

  “I own that house.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  He nodded. “That was at least easy to find. But, even if tax records for property weren’t public knowledge, Marianne told me before she passed.”

  “Marianne…”

  And then it all clicked, where I’d seen him.

  I’d seen him for the first time in the hospital as I’d left Marianne’s room. The second time I’d seen him had been at her funeral.

  “You.”

  He winced.

  “Took me three freakin’ months to find you,” he said. “And then three months of looking into you and Drake to decide that maybe you weren’t in on it.”

  “Why do you care if I’m in on it or not?”

  He looked down at his hands. “Marianne asked me to take care of you.”

  “What?”

  “She told me to take care of you,” he repeated.

  “Why?” I blurted.

  Not that he’d have to deal with that promise for much longer.

  Stage two breast cancer meant that I would possibly die by the end of next year, according to my doctor, if I didn’t try to treat it.

  And honestly, I was just so damn tired.

  I was tired of fighting.

  Tired of losing.

  I wanted some peace.

  Even if that peace came in the form of death.

  At least in death, I knew that I wouldn’t suffer anymore. I knew that I wouldn’t wake up and realize that I was alive to live another day in pain.

  Since I’d battled cancer before, I knew what would happen.

  I knew that my life would suck for however long the doctor deemed necessary for me to do the chemo and radiation treatments.

  Plus, I would still need to have a double mastectomy if the chemo and radiation did its job and killed all the cancerous cells in my body. And I say that ‘if’ cautiously since there was still a chance that it wouldn’t work, and I would go through all these treatments—all the fighting—only to succumb to the cancer. I just didn’t know if I had it in me or if I even wanted to do it anymore.

  There was nobody left to make me want to fight—to convince me that the pain was worth it.

  Not even knowing that there was something going on with Drake, and this man was trying to let me in on said information, was going to make me change my mind.

  Suddenly, I was just freakin’ tired.

  “What’s your name?” I blurted, suddenly needing to know who this man was.

  “Dante Hail.”

  Dante Hail.

  “What put all those shadows in your eyes, Dante Hail?”

  His entire being stilled.

  His eyes on me. The breath in his chest. The absent tapping of his fingers against the countertop next to the computer.

  Everything.

  “Some time I’ll tell you of my own personal hell,” he said. “But now’s not that time.”

  “I could be dead by next year,” I told him bluntly. “Let’s make sure you tell me before that time comes.”

  He blinked.

  “What do you mean, dead?”

  I fought through the exhaustion. Through the wave of knowledge that stuck with me as I moved toward Dante, and shrugged.

  “I have breast cancer,” I admitted. “It’s fairly advanced, and without treatment, the doctor doesn’t think I’ll make it through the year.”

  He stared at me for a long time, his gaze so damn intense that it almost made me squirm.

  “Dying is the coward’s way out.”

  I laughed at that. “Maybe.”

  He opened his mouth to argue. “Why wouldn’t you do the treatment?”

  I dropped the keys next to his hand and stared up into his eyes.

  “Why would I?” I asked, pausing to study his eyes as I said what I had to say next. “Whatever put those shadows in your eyes lets me know that you probably have a good idea what it feels like to have nothing left.”

  His hand came up to my cheek, and only his index finger ran along the line of my cheekbone. “Used to think I had nothing,” he answered. “Found out about a year and a half ago that I did.”

  I smiled sadly. “I’m glad that you do.”

  He pushed the keys away from his hand and took a step back.

  “Come on,” he urged, reaching forward and almost brushing my face with his shirt.

  Then he yanked the jump drive out of the computer.

  I blinked.

  “You just took the jump drive out of the computer without ejecting it first,” I told him. “That’s a good way to corrupt the data you have there.”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes I like to live dangerously.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “I guess if that’s what you think dangerous is, then maybe we shouldn’t be going any further into this investigation without someone who knows what they’re doing.”

  His lips twitched.

  “Honey, I was in the Air Force. You’re not going to find anyone who knows what they’re doing more than I do.”

  I laughed. “If you say so.”

  He t
ook a hold of my arm and pulled me along in his wake.

  “Where are we going now?”

  He let go of my arm long enough to twist the lock on the back side of my door, and then pushed me out into the warm autumn air.

  “We’re going to get a few answers.”

  Then he was pulling me along with him.

  “Where is that?”

  He grunted something, and I had to tug on his hand to get him to repeat himself. “What?”

  “Kilgore.”

  Chapter 7

  I don’t always pass slow drivers, but when I do I check to see if they look as stupid as they drive.

  -Dante’s secret thoughts

  Dante

  If what she said was true, then this woman wasn’t anything to be worried about, but I was skeptical.

  I’d witnessed that scene out front.

  Drake had his hands on her, and she hadn’t protested the move.

  I wanted to trust her. Really, I did.

  But I didn’t trust anyone. Not anymore.

  Not after I trusted the one person that I always thought I could trust, and she ripped my life to shreds by uttering one tiny little lie.

  And learning that she had cancer? I wasn’t so sure what to think.

  Who wouldn’t try to fight if there was a chance? This woman was young. Just barely thirty. I’d looked at her driver’s license while she’d been in the gas station using the restroom at the last rest stop.

  She still had a long life full of events to look forward to—like marriage and kids. Those would be the best years of her life, and she was just going to give it up?

  That seemed off to me.

  However, without actually seeing her doctor, I could only go by what she was telling me, and that wasn’t much.

  However, Rafe, my contact with whatever secret organization he belonged to, was less than ten minutes away and would hopefully be able to fix that. Soon.

  This woman, Cobie Cavanagh, was an enigma.

  There was something about her that was making me insanely curious, and I didn’t fuckin’ like that.

  I liked being distant from other people. I liked knowing that I wasn’t affected by getting too close to them.

  So what if she didn’t want to do her cancer treatments. So what if she had cancer.

  I shouldn’t fuckin’ care.

  But I did.

  It was driving me goddamn insane, thinking that she was going to purposefully not treat this disease that would eventually kill her.

  The idea of her not being here on this earth next year was fucking hurting.

  It shouldn’t hurt.

  In fact, if I was living my life right, nothing should hurt anymore.

  Mary was fucking ruining me.

  And that was that.

  She was making me care when the last thing on this planet I wanted to do was have feelings for another human being. Some person who could up and die on me, leaving me with yet another open and bleeding wound that I had no hope of repairing.

  “Do you know where we’re going?”

  I nodded, not bothering to look over at this Cobie chick with her soulful brown eyes and the cutest goddamn freckles I’d ever seen.

  Her hair was brown and barely brushing her chin.

  I wanted to touch it, which was the last thing on this earth that I needed to do.

  What I needed to do was collect myself, build my wall higher, and continue not to feel.

  What I was going to do was touch her goddamn hair.

  I couldn’t help myself.

  I reached up and grabbed one of the strands.

  It felt like silk between my fingers.

  “You had a bug in your hair,” I lied, pulling my hand back like it’d been burned.

  Her eyes went wide, and she immediately started to sift her fingers through her hair where I’d just touched.

  “Oh my God!” she gasped. “Really? Did you get it?”

  “Ladybug,” I continued to lie.

  I tried to think of something that wouldn’t gross her out, but she seemed to pale even further, causing my brows to rise.

  “Gross,” she whispered, then did a full, head to toe, entire body shiver.

  “Ladybugs aren’t gross,” I told her, taking the next turn a little too fast, causing her to lean slightly into the passenger side door.

  “Yes, they are,” she disagreed with me. “They’re really, super-duper gross.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Now she had me curious.

  I hated being curious.

  It made me ask questions, which inevitably made me get closer to the person despite my not wanting to get closer. But sometimes my curiosity won out, and this was one of those times.

  “There was this one time when my grandfather, grandmother, and I were camping.”

  I nodded, urging her to continue without saying it verbally.

  “Anyway, we were in the RV, and I was going to the bathroom.”

  My brows rose.

  “I was… you know… and I decided to do a courtesy flush.”

  I blinked, and she blushed.

  “Never mind.”

  “You have to finish it now.”

  I didn’t know where she was going with this, but she had my interest piqued.

  She shrugged, then continued as if what she was saying wasn’t the least bit embarrassing. Only her blush betrayed her and made her freckles stand out even more starkly on her face.

  “I flushed, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been in an RV before, but it’s gravity fed. You push a lever on the base of the toilet, and the hole opens, letting the stuff fall through.”

  I nodded in understanding. I knew exactly what she was talking about.

  Lily and I had an RV… I viciously shut those thoughts down.

  I couldn’t think about my wife right now.

  Not when I was trying to appear normal and sane.

  “Anyway, so I flushed, and I don’t know if the ladybugs had somehow gotten into the tank or what, but the moment that I opened the hole, a swarm of them came out from the tank below and went everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean all over my lady bits. When I stood up, they just kept coming. They swarmed the room, I had to slap them off my junk. It was god awful.”

  I couldn’t help it.

  I laughed.

  It sounded rusty like the sound was being pulled out of a rarely used squeaking door, but it was a laugh, nonetheless.

  It actually felt kind of good.

  I could just see her, screeching and hollering, as she tried to get ladybugs off of her pussy.

  “I’m still traumatized,” she said. “One even bit me on one of my petals.”

  “Your petals.” I grinned.

  She nodded. “My petals.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “That sucks, honestly,” I said. “But I guess it could’ve been worse.”

  “How?” she challenged.

  My brows dipped low. “It could’ve been a wasp nest in there. Just imagine being stung on your ‘petals’ by one of those.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Dear God. That’s sick! You’re sick. I could’ve died! Now I’ll never be able to go to the bathroom in an RV again!”

  I just shook my head and returned my attention back to the road, not saying another word for the rest of the drive to our destination.

  “You think I’m crazy,” she said as we pulled up to the gates of Free long minutes later. “I know you do. But it’s a fear, and most fears don’t tend to be rational.”

  Some fears were rational.

  But before I could argue with her, the gate swung open, and a man walked out of the office that the driveway led up to.

  He had a wrench in his hand, and his eyes were narrowed on us, calculating everything in a single sweep.

  Former military.

  Had to be.

  I pulled to a stop in the middle of t
he lot, seeing with my own eyes that the guy was wondering why I was there.

  I was driving a company tow truck, and it was quite obvious that I had no reason for being where I was.

  “Can I help you?”

  Maybe calling would’ve been the better way to go.

  Yet, it’d been a split-second decision, and I’d gotten the info from my brother on the way there.

  Baylor had his own problems when it came to his wife, and they had led to his own trip to this same place to ask his own questions.

  Baylor had told me he’d asked them about Marianne, yet they wouldn’t give him anything, citing that whatever problems his wife, Lark, had, they looked like middle-school problems compared to Marianne’s. And I believed them. Now.

  But I needed more information.

  Marianne hadn’t only gotten a promise about Cobie out of me. She’d also charged me with protecting Mary, and at this point in my life, I’d charge through the gates of hell to make sure she was safe.

  She was all I had left, and I was going to make sure that she had everything she needed, that she was safe and happy and healthy.

  Anything she needed, she was going to get.

  I’d make sure of it.

  “My name is Dante.” I got out of the truck and held out my hand.

  The man took it, shook it, and dropped it without giving his name.

  I felt a grin tug at the corner of my lips.

  “I’m here to see someone,” I said. “Sam Mackenzie.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed.

  “What do you want to see him for?”

  I admired his hesitancy.

  “The mother of my daughter, Marianne Garwood, died six months ago. She told me that her daughter would always be in danger from her ex-husband and that if I ever felt that things were getting out of hand, to find y’all.”

  Cobie inhaled behind me.

  I’d left that part out. Oops.

  The man’s eyes narrowed on the woman who was standing practically all the way behind me, and then flicked back to me.

  “I’m Sam,” he said, his shoulders slumping slightly. “Get in the car and drive around to the big gray building. Follow the drive until you get to it. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  I nodded, then gestured for Cobie, who’d followed my lead, to get into the truck.

  “You didn’t tell me you had her daughter.”

  “My daughter, too,” I muttered. “And you didn’t ask.”