No Way Back

by Andrew Gross

  Then I heard something … not the wail of the wind across the dunes, but a whirring. In the sky. Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack …

  The far-off star I was focused on was getting larger.

  Not some glowing, spiritual light like they say happens when you die. But like a beam, coming toward us at a fast pace above the dunes. With an approaching hum. The winds picking up, sand whirling all over us.

  I didn’t know if I was hallucinating or already dead.

  An engine?

  Dokes shielded his eyes and looked up. “What the fuck?”

  My heart began to rise.

  And then the noise grew louder, until it became almost deafening in my ears. A roar. And the light glared in my eyes, blinding me, wind whipping the sand in all directions. I realized what it was, and stared up at it with my hand over my eyes.

  I heard a voice over a speaker: “This is the Department of Homeland Security. Put the gun down and raise your hands in the air!” The copter hovering over us, like some angel God had sent.

  Suddenly Dokes ran toward me, darting from the beam of light, his gun still trained on me. I could see in his eyes what he was calculating to do. “You may think you’re going to get away, but you’re not. You’re still the only one who knows.”

  “There’s no point, Dokes. It’s over.”

  The voice bellowed from the copter again, “Agent Dokes, put your gun down now!”

  “It’s not over! I’ll claim it’s a matter of national security. They won’t want what happened to come out any more than I do. Say good-bye.” He shot out his arm to shoot. “I’m not done. You are.”

  “No.” The noise of the copter was unbearable, and the whipping sand almost blinded me. “Please …”

  I never heard the shot. I only saw the gun fly out of Dokes’s hand and a spatter of red explode on his shoulder. He staggered back and fell to his knees.

  The copter started coming down.

  Oh God. Oh God. Can I believe this?

  I couldn’t help it—I started to cry. Jubilant tears at first, then they turned into deep, convulsive sobs. Maybe it was just everything I had been through pouring out of me. I realized I no longer had to be afraid. Or be brave. Or prove anything.

  It was over.

  I crawled up the sand and looked at Dokes, illuminated by the searchlight’s beam. His left hand covered his right shoulder. Somehow he still had that smug, unworried expression; he even smiled at me like everything was going to be okay. He would roll. There were people much higher than him who would end up taking the fall. He looked up at the copter as it began to come down.

  I picked up the shovel, the one he intended to use to bury me in an anonymous grave. To eliminate the final trace that I ever existed.

  “This is for my husband,” I said, and swung with all my might, catching him on his back and sending him face first onto the sand. I was sure I heard a few ribs crack in there too. He pushed himself back up to his knees, looking as helpless and dazed as I had felt just moments before.

  “It was just business,” he said. “You shouldn’t have been in that room.”

  I raised the shovel over him one more time. “And this one’s for me.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

  Dokes was put in cuffs and taken away in the copter. The last I saw of him was his glowering glare through the open cargo door as the aircraft whipped up the sand and sped off to I don’t know where.

  I begged them not to make me go along—rambling pretty much incoherently how I had to get back to the motel in town, how Lauritzia was in danger. How she might already be dead. They put me in the custody of two federal agents, and we jumped into Dokes’s vehicle.

  As we rode at eighty on the dark road back into town, I was certain that the elation I was feeling at coming out of this alive would soon turn to anguish as we got there and found her dead. Lasser’s warning echoed over and over in my mind. I’m afraid the friend you mentioned won’t be quite as lucky.

  We got to town and sped up to the motel, which was now ablaze in flashing lights and emergency vehicles. Every cop in Gillian was likely there. I flung the Jeep’s door open and sprinted up the stairs, ahead of the two agents who were trying to keep up with me. A throng of local cops were blocking the hallway. They stopped me before I got within fifty feet of our room.

  “Let me in! I have to get in!” I said to two gray-uniformed cops standing guard at the door. “This is my room!” My heart was beating just as riotously as when Dokes was dragging me out into the dunes.

  One of the agents accompanying me flashed his badge, and they apologetically let us through.

  I steeled myself for the worst: To see Lauritzia sprawled there, her bloody body—that would have sent me over the edge.

  She wasn’t there.

  Instead, I almost tripped over the red-vested body of what appeared to be a waiter from the motel crumpled near the door. His open eyes and blond hair leaking blood made me almost scream. A medical tech was kneeling over him.

  Farther in, I fixed on the facedown body of a heavyset Hispanic man in a white shirt and jacket, the back of his head virtually caved in in a red mash, his arms splayed wide.

  I was certain who it was even without anyone telling me.

  Where was Lauritzia?

  “Lauritzia!” I called out worriedly. I looked around for her belongings. The small traveling case she had brought with her and—I rushed into the bathroom—her toiletries were all gone.

  “Save your breath,” a female detective in a navy windbreaker marked GPD said to me. “There’s no one here.”

  “She has to be here,” I said, barely coherently, gazing at the two bodies and Lauritzia nowhere to be found.

  “This is your room?” a second detective, a man with thinning hair and a heavy mustache, asked me.

  “Yes. Yes it is.” I nodded.

  “Any idea who this is?” He pointed to the guy on the floor with the bullet in his head. “His ID says José Rivera. From where, Karen?”

  The female detective checked her notes. “Guatemala.”

  “He’s not from Guatemala,” I said. “He’s from Mexico. I think you’ll find his name is Eduardo Cano. He’s an enforcer with the Los Zetas drug cartel. He also has extensive contacts in the United States government.”

  The words “drug cartel” got the detectives’ attention big-time. They probably hadn’t had a crime bigger than drunk driving here for years.

  “We have to find Lauritzia!” I turned to the federal agents with me. “I was traveling with her. She came back here ahead of me. This man has been trying to kill her. He’s killed her whole family.” I realized I was rambling. I ran over to the window to check for her car. It was still there in the lot in the back. That wasn’t a good sign. I looked back around, stunned. How she could have possibly killed Cano? Or this other guy. She had no weapon. There was only Cano’s, and that was lying next to his body on the floor.

  She also had no idea he was here and coming after her.

  “This Lauritzia have a gun?” the female detective asked me.

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Then it makes me wonder just who this one belonged to …” She pointed to the table. There was a handgun lying there. The only other was inches from Cano’s outstretched hand.

  “Seems like there was a third person up here,” the male detective said.

  “A third person?” I asked.

  “Fourth, I suppose, if you count the guy over there …” He motioned to the waiter. “Couple parking their car saw someone climbing up the balcony. They reported it to the manager, but by the time anyone came up, with the police, this was what they found.”

  Who would have climbed up here and killed Cano? Then taken off with her? It hadn’t been forced. She’d even taken her things.

  Who would have even known we were here?

  Then I saw something. Over on the bed. On my pillow. I went over and picked it up.

  A flower. A dried hydrangea from an arrangement in
the room. And I thought back to something she had told me on the trip out. That when she’d had to leave Roxanne’s children back in Greenwich, she’d placed a flower on each of their pillows. That it was supposed to protect them. So that the saints would watch over them.

  And then, like a beam of light shot through a dark tunnel, I realized who that third person was.

  Who had done these things and left with her. And I suddenly realized she wasn’t in any danger.

  No danger at all!

  A second chance? I thought of her butterfly necklace. Were there any two people on this earth who deserved one more?

  “That hers?” the female detective asked, pointing to the flower.

  “No.” I shook my head. “Mine.”

  “Well, everything’s gonna have to stay as it is until we sort things out. And you’re going to have to answer some questions. We have a double homicide here. And the only witness to it seems to be gone.”

  “Of course,” I said, inwardly hiding a smile. In a day or two maybe. Enough time to let them reach where I knew they would be heading. When I was sure no one could ever find them again.

  “But first I want to talk to my lawyer. Harold Bachman.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  It took three more days for me to be fully released. They transferred me back east, to a secure location at Fort Dix in New Jersey. They interrogated me about everything that had happened. From the time I first laid eyes on Curtis Kitchner. To Dokes dragging me out in the dunes.

  This time they called it a debriefing.

  Harold was allowed to be present. When he first stepped into my tiny room, the first time since leaving for Colorado that he’d set eyes on me, the strain of our collective losses seemed to rise to the surface, and he came over and hugged me as deeply and tearfully as if it were his wife standing before him.

  And in my mind as if it were Dave.

  It was hard to let go.

  “This isn’t very lawyerly,” I said, sniffing back the tears. “You’re sure you want to represent me?”

  He pulled away, giving me that studious smile from behind his wire rims. “Well, this is surely a lot more interesting than real estate trusts. And my principal reason not to seems to have changed.”

  Cano.

  We sat down. “Tell me about Lauritzia,” he said. He’d never heard the full story of what happened at the motel, so I told him what I thought had taken place.

  “I’m sure it was her father.”

  “Her father?’ He scrunched his eyebrows.

  “Who else? Someone else was up there. Cano was dead. Her things were gone. They found a second gun.”

  I told him about the flower. He took off his glasses. That seemed to bring a tear to his eye.

  “She’ll be in touch,” I said.

  “No. She won’t.” His face was drawn, but he was trying to be upbeat. It was clear he loved her as a daughter.

  “She will,” I took his hand. “One day.”

  I asked how they had known to find me out there. So far no one had said. Not the agents who had saved me, who were out of Denver. Nor the ones who escorted me back.

  And just as important, how they had come to believe I was innocent.

  “Your friend,” Harold told me. “Esterhaus.”

  “Joe!” My heart almost exploded with joy. “He’s okay?”

  “Apparently more than okay.” He told me how Joe had found Dave’s blood outside my house on the street. Precisely where I said he was shot. It proved the body had been moved. “He gave it to an old FBI crony of his. Apparently, it got as high as the deputy director of Homeland Security. Dokes’s official vehicle had some kind of tracking mechanism in it.”

  “Joe always did have clout,” I said, laughing. “I want to see him.” I couldn’t contain how warm that made me feel inside.

  “Soon as we get you out of here,” Harold said. “Thought that might make you smile. Here …” He opened his briefcase and took out a copy of the New York Times and tossed it onto the interview table. “This might too.”

  The headline read:

  ROGUE HOMELAND SECURITY AGENT IMPLICATES HIGHER-UPS IN CARTEL CONSPIRACY.

  EX-DEA OFFICIAL, SABRINA STEIN, NOW DRUG POLICY CHIEF, RESIGNS PENDING ARREST.

  “You’re right,” I said, beaming. “It does.”

  “Next time I’m gonna choose my defense witnesses a lot more carefully.”

  I thought of Curtis—and Elaine Kitchner, who would now know the truth. I also thought of Dave. The people who knew and loved him. Who would now know he’d died for something.

  They all had.

  The third day I was told I could go home. I was a free woman. The attorney general’s office said there would be no charges pending against me. A government representative came and said they hoped to give me back what I’d lost.

  My freedom. My reputation.

  The only thing they couldn’t give me back were the people I loved.

  Harold had arranged an apartment for me in New York City. I couldn’t go back to the house right now. Not with what had happened there. Not yet. I had no idea how to resume my life.

  “How do you just pick up and go on?” I asked Harold, as I picked up the bag with the few things I had on me at the time of my rescue. “I lost my husband. I lost who I was.” I realized I was petrified to leave. Scared of the attention that I knew was in front of me. The judgment I would face.

  “You have your kids,” I said resignedly, as we went through a secure door leading to the barracks’ entrance. I hesitated before heading outside.

  “And you have your kids too.” Harold pointed in front of me.

  Waiting outside the entrance were Amy and Neil.

  I lost it there. I couldn’t hold back. Everything I’d bottled up inside. About losing Dave. About thinking I was dead. What I’d gone through.

  Neil came up to me, Dave’s face so visible in his, and I latched onto him and just started to sob. I was afraid to let go. Afraid I’d lose them all over again. I hugged Amy too, though she was a bit more hesitant. I knew I’d done wrong and that I’d have to earn her trust back over time.

  The apartment Harold set up for us was on Riverside Drive with a view of the river. I was just so grateful not to have to go back home. Not that day anyway.

  That first afternoon we all sat around, just learning to trust one another again. If that would ever fully happen.

  Neil asked if I wanted to talk about what I’d gone through. And I did. I wanted to tell them everything. The good and the bad. Hruseff. Dave. Dokes. Lasser.

  And Curtis too.

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you, Wendy,” Neil said, hearing everything I’d gone through. How close I’d come to dying several times. How I’d watched their father being killed. How I’d lived on the run. He said, “I was just so angry about Dad, I had to blame someone. I know you tried to tell me. I just blamed you.”

  “It’s okay.” I squeezed his hand. “No more blame. I just want to be your mom again. I need you so much. Both of you. You’re all I have.”

  Neil nodded. I wiped a tear or two off his cheek. I couldn’t describe how good it felt to have them back.

  “But you still went up there,” Amy said. “You went up to that room. Even if you didn’t sleep with him, you cheated. You cheated on Dad. You can’t take that back.”

  “No, I can’t.” I nodded. “And Amy, I’m so sorry for that.”

  “So I can’t just forgive you,” she continued, hurt and some anger in her voice, “because you killed that man in self-defense. You still betrayed Dad. And it got him killed. So what I need to hear from you is why. Why you went up there, Wendy? Why you went up to that room? You had a good life. You had someone who loved you. You had us … That’s all I want you to tell me. Why?”

  I nodded. Over the past two weeks, I’d asked myself the same question a thousand times.

  In the bar, when Curtis was at the piano. Our eyes casually falling on each other’s a couple of times. Afte
r I’d heard him play, when everything inside told me to leave. I could have at any time.

  Why I stayed?

  And a thousand times the answer came back the same.

  “I don’t know.”

  We had tears in both of our eyes. Hers of accusation, mine of shame.

  I knew I’d be trying to answer it for the rest of my life.

  Epilogue

  Four months later …

  We’re all back together again now. We’re kind of a family again. In a way. Neil, Amy, and I. I know Amy can’t completely forgive me. And I don’t expect her to.

  I don’t expect her to until I can forgive myself.

  And both will take time.

  I did a few TV morning shows, but that’s all calmed down now. Neil is back at Bates. Amy never returned to Spain; she’s back at NYU. I go into the city once a week or so, and we have dinner at some new spot she’s discovered in lower Manhattan. We talk a lot—about her classes, the new yoga class I’ve found. I still haven’t answered her question.

  I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to.

  Harold and I see each other from time to time. We have coffee in Greenwich. Once I went with him to a street fair there, and he brought along his kids. We’re kind of tied together, he and I. I think one day he’s actually going to ask me out.

  And you know, I might just say yes.

  I mean, he is kind of cute—in a lawyerly sort of way.

  And in a strange way, like I tried to tell Amy, we’re all we have.

  I’m back in the house, of course. But I have it up for sale. That’s one decision I’ve made.

  From time to time, when I hear someone drive up to the top of the drive, I have this urge to run to the door, sure that it’s Dave coming back from the train. Or from playing golf …

  With his crooked, Woody Harrelson smile.

  But it’s always only the UPS guy dropping off a package. Or the mailman.

  Which is who it was today.

  It always hurts a little to walk up there, to the mailbox. Knowing it was there I saw Dave roll out of the car …