“Twila just ran past me and quickly told me who you were,” she greeted with a wave. “My name is Cora and this is my husband, Eldridge. I am Taina’s grandmother. Please, have a seat.”
Eldridge stomped his foot and shook his head. “No, do not sit.” Then he pointed to the television. “Look, young lady. You are dead.”
Larke’s eyes traveled to the television set and sure enough, her picture was on the screen. Only, the image of her that was being broadcast was the one that was currently still on display at the courthouse. Behind it was a video of a past interview she’d conducted on the courthouse steps about her opinion of the jury’s verdict after the Jarvis trial was over. On the other side of the screen, smoke billowed out of the window of the bungalow resort where she’d been staying. The headline at the top read:
BODY CONFIRMED TO BE THAT OF FEDERAL PROSECUTOR.
“What is this?” She asked mainly to herself, walking closer to the television. Eldridge turned up the volume.
After going missing about a week ago, reports have confirmed that the charred body that was recovered from the bungalow pictured here is that of Assistant US Attorney Larke Holiday Tapley. Several sources have reported that she’d taken a leave of absence and flew to Jamaica for a few weeks to escape the tension surrounding the conviction of Edward Jarvis on first degree murder charges. There are no reports yet on what started the fire, but officials on the island speculate that it was faulty wiring from a gas stove in the unit where Miss Tapley was staying. There is also no word yet about whether the police suspect foul play. More details will be revealed as they surface.
“What is this?” She repeated a bit louder.
Eldridge placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You are dead they say, but you are here.”
She looked up at him, but the television again commanded her attention when her family appeared on the screen. Her father was standing at a podium and speaking into a series of microphones, his eyes red around the rim. Next to him, her mother and Wren held onto each other for support, and Jay stood off to the side with his hands dug into his pockets, a mixture of anger and sadness on his face.
Larke sank to her knees on the floor.
“We would like to thank everyone for their kind words and prayers during this difficult time,” her father was saying. “Larke was our everything. It is tragic that something so unfortunate would take her from us, but we know that she’s well taken care of where she’s gone.”
He looked to the sky.
“We love you, sweetie.”
He then walked away from the microphones to wrap his arms around his wife and daughter. He reached for Jay who shook his head, and jogged through a crowd of people, out of view. Larke touched her fingers to the television screen and Twila reappeared with the folder in her hands. She looked at Larke on the floor in front of the TV.
“What’s going on?” She asked. Then, she made out what was on the screen. “Is that you?”
Larke was still in a trance after not only having witnessed her own supposed demise, but the tragic looks on her family member’s faces as they were notified of the loss. Her heart pained to know that they had to suffer over something that wasn’t remotely true. Then, with the way Jay had stormed off, she could only imagine what was going through his head. He was in his senior year of high school and had been getting some of the highest grades he’d ever gotten during his entire high school tenure. He was also making headlines on the varsity team and they were a favorite for going to the Championships this year, so she didn’t want to think about how this news was possibly going to affect him.
“What’s really going on here?” Twila asked, kneeling next to Larke on the floor. “Are you two really working with a private investigative agency?”
Larke slowly shook her head. “No, Twila, but we really are investigating your sister’s death. My name is Larke Tapley and this is Desmond Harding. We have reason to believe that your sister was intentionally killed to cover up a larger operation involving Edward Jarvis and Delgano Richards.”
Twila’s heart skipped a beat. “The police officer that paid for my sister’s services? I let my sister’s murderer finance her funeral?”
Desmond walked over to them. “There’s no way that you could have known, Twila.”
His reassurance fell upon deaf ears.
Twila stood and shoved the folder into his chest. “Here is what I have,” she said, her voice strained. “I also included some of Taina’s things that I found, but I haven’t had the stomach to go through them yet. If you need anything more, I’ll do whatever I can to get it to you. Just please, help me close this chapter in my life. I can barely eat or sleep knowing that I wasn’t there at my sister’s bedside when she died. Then to think that man came into my living room offering his condolences knowing that he had a hand in—”
“Your living room?” Desmond interrupted. “He was here?”
“He was here,” Twila emphatically replied, pointing to the floor.
Desmond’s eyes darted around the room. Moving swiftly, he dropped the backpack on the floor and fished out a small, black electronic device.
“What did he do when he was here?” He asked. “Did he walk around the apartment at all? Was there any point and time that you guys left him alone?”
She thought for a minute. “Yeah, he had another gentleman escort me downstairs to look at funeral packages with my grandmother. He stayed up here to wait for us to get back.”
The machine beeped and Desmond cursed. Larke, snapping out of her trance at the look on his face, stood and walked over to him.
“This place has more bugs than a New York City landfill,” he revealed, pointing to several locations where the apartment had been wired. Suddenly, Larke spotted movement out of the corner of her eye through the living room window. The front door then violently swung open, and a cylindrical object came flying into the room. She quickly pushed Twila out of its path while Desmond grabbed her around the waist, dropped to the floor, and covered her body with his. The object landed with a crash at the far end of the room and immediately engulfed the carpet in flames.
Desmond eased up and quickly glanced over Larke to make sure she was okay before searching the room for Twila and her grandparents. Twila had managed to crawl over to Eldridge near the open patio doors and Cora was already on the patio panting with her hand over her chest. He stuffed the folder into the backpack and pulled out the gun.
“I’m going to set off the building alarm,” he announced. “The people running out should cause enough of a distraction for Twila and her grandparents to make it safely down to the bottom floor until help arrives.” He handed the backpack to Larke. “They won’t risk hurting them or the tenants, causing a scene, and tracing it back to Delgano’s men. They will, however, come after you. So, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, I want you to get them down to the bottom floor.”
Larke secured the pack over her shoulders. “No problem.”
“Good,” he replied. “I’m going to secure the area then come get you downstairs.”
She turned to leave but Desmond grabbed her forearm. “But, please be careful. I couldn’t live with myself if...just please be careful.”
She flashed him the most confident smile that she could muster. “And you come back to me in one piece, Harding.”
He released her arm. “Anything you say, baby.”
With that, she was off in the direction of the patio.
Twila scooped Eldridge up into her grasp and Larke peeled Cora away from her frozen position against the wooden rail. She waited until she heard the building alarm go off before heading down the back steps with the group, Twila right on her heels. The other tenants began to rush from their units and when they noticed the smoke coming from the apartment, their exits became more frenzied.
Larke didn’t exhale until she felt the soft cushion of grass and earth beneath her feet, and heard the approaching sirens in the distance. When she looked up at the unit that they’d just
vacated, a fiery explosion burst through the window. Several people screamed as shards of glass and ash showered them on the lawn, and she helped them move farther away from the building to avoid the falling debris. Another blast resounded, more tenants screamed, and a baby began to wail.
Staring up at the destruction, everything seemed surreal. The entire back corner of the apartment was now covered in flames and a strong tug of guilt pulled at Larke’s chest as she realized that Twila, Cora, and Eldridge no longer had a home because of her. If she hadn’t stepped foot into their lives, none of this would have happened. If she hadn’t even pursued the Jarvis case in the first place, then this entire ordeal could have been avoided. However, even through all of her guilt, she knew that it was her duty to get justice for Twila and Taina. There was a larger purpose to be found in all of this chaos and she knew that no one else in her office would have taken Twila as seriously as both she and Desmond had. Even her assistant Joni Westinghouse, a paralegal and law student, wouldn’t have taken Twila on as her first case.
Joni.
She’d forgotten all about her assistant. Was she the one who’d made the call to Desmond’s agency?
The emergency personnel had finally made their way up the hill, and the police partitioned off the area with yellow caution tape while paramedics hopped out of their ambulances to tend to the residents. Larke flagged one down.
“Are you hurt ma’am?” He asked, quickly checking for any overt signs of injury.
“No, but please check on this couple.” She pointed to Cora and Eldridge. “The blast happened very close to them, so there might be some minor bruises and cuts, and perhaps some smoke inhalation.”
He nodded and called one of his colleagues to help tend to the elderly couple. When they were fully distracted, she started her walk around the perimeter to look for a break in the tape that she might be able to sneak through. Desmond hadn’t appeared with the residents on the floor which meant that he was more than likely still upstairs. If he was still upstairs, then he could be hurt and if he was hurt, she had to go find him.
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.
She 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 she 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 bo
x 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 finish, 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.
In Love and Rescue: When love is the perfect rescue... Page 11