Flight 19

by Grant Finnegan

  After a lukewarm shower, Tim dried himself and wondered what he was going to do for the rest of the day. It was pushing 8.00am, Alameda had barely woken from its slumber, and he could notice from the open bathroom window that his street was devoid of the usual hum of cars and people.

  Until then, Tim hadn’t spent more than half an hour in his workshop since Sandra passed away, and after looking around for a few moments had decided to open the double garage doors and let in the morning air and brightness.

  After a whole hour of cleaning his tools, Tim had begun to grow slightly bored with the idea of spending all day in the workshop. In 2019, he couldn’t think of anything better. But that was then.

  Before calling it a day, Tim decided to go through one more box, which he remembered Ben had always called “his box,” with his tools and bits and pieces stored in it.

  When he dragged it out from underneath the bench, a fine layer of dust came with it.

  Tim lifted the lid. “What the?” Tim said to the walls of his workshop, seeing an odd item sitting on top of Ben’s bits and pieces.

  Why would he leave that there?

  It was a small box of coffee pods with a blank piece of paper wrapped loosely around the outside. Tim lifted it from Ben’s box and placed it on the bench nearby.

  He looked out toward the morning sun and wondered why his son would leave him a box of a dozen coffee pods in his toolbox. And what was the deal with the paper? It had nothing written on it.

  Tim was about to screw it up and throw it in the bin with the coffee pods (probably about four years past their use-by date) when a thought came into his head.

  Ben had loved writing him notes.

  In his version of invisible ink.

  When Ben had come up with this strange homemade invention, he’d only ever shared it with one person: his father. Tim then remembered, smiling to himself, what brought the words to life, which was almost as strange as the invention itself.

  Motor oil.

  Tim reached over and pulled a small canister from the shelf sitting on his workbench.

  He smiled once again. There was roughly a cup of oil left.

  He carefully poured about a spoonful onto the paper, and lightly brushed it across the page as he remembered Ben showing him how.

  When the words appeared, Tim gasped.

  “You can’t be fucking serious,” he swore, wondering why Ben would have gone to so much trouble to say something so innocuous.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Tammy felt a motherly pang in her heart when Lee walked off over the hill, saying she would go for a walk, get some well-overdue exercise, and come back in an hour with some takeout coffees for them both. She would finally be alone with the two people she adored more than anyone else.

  Noah seemed uninterested in the hugs and kisses she laid on him, and uncomfortable with the pressure of making conversation. Tammy was okay with this; he had never been outgoing or the first to start a conversation, and she knew five years apart from her probably hadn’t helped in that area at all. Five years with Annie probably hadn’t been good for him either; her complex and needy personality wasn’t what you’d prescribe for a child dealing with the loss of his mother.

  On the other hand, Tammy could not believe how well Beth had developed and matured.

  Her sense of loss collided with the affront to her pride posed by the idea of spending the rest of her life as some sort of surrogate mother to Beth and Noah—a feeling which she was finding impossible to overcome.

  She had been coming to terms with having the past five years stolen from her and knowing her husband had cheated on her before she disappeared was ironically making it easier. But standing there talking to her beautiful daughter, with her son playing meters away, the notion of them not legally belonging to her made her nauseous.

  She smiled down to Beth before leading her to the bench seat a few feet away. When they sat, Tammy put her arm across the back of the bench behind Beth.

  “I want to be with you,” Beth told Tammy quietly as they watched Noah swing on the small playground.

  “Baby, not a second goes by where I don’t want the same thing.” Tammy lifted her sunglasses as she looked down to her daughter so that she could see the sincerity in her eyes.

  Beth sat back before wiping the tears from her eyes and saying, “But why can’t we just be your kids again?” Tammy looked at Noah, who seemed to be watching her talking to Beth, but without any interest in coming over.

  She pulled a tissue from her handbag and wiped her daughter’s eyes, taking some deep breaths while thinking what to say.

  “Darling—” She leaned over and kissed her daughter.

  “The people who make the laws in America said because I was legally pronounced dead when I disappeared—” She paused for a second, thinking of how fucked-up this situation was. “And because Annie then married your father, they are now your legal parents.”

  Beth jumped up from the bench, stomping her feet in the playground mulch. She turned to Tammy, nearly shouting in frustration. “But Annie is awful to me,” she said, and then, as Tammy’s eyes widened in surprise at Beth’s show of emotion, her daughter then almost whimpered, “She says I remind her of you, and that I’m a dumb little bitch like you were.”

  Tammy stood up and reached out for Beth, grabbing hold of her and not letting go for what seemed like an eternity. The anger tucked away deep inside her emotional security vault was trying everything it could to burst out and drown her in the deepest and most negative feelings of revulsion for Annie and Brandon.

  She stepped backward with Beth still wrapped in her arms. As she sat back on the bench, she positioned her daughter so she stayed standing close to her and they could share the same eye level.

  Tammy held both of Beth’s hands in hers, taking a long, controlled deep breath as she looked at the ground and wondered how much worse the situation could be.

  She could see the pain deep within Beth’s jade-green eyes, and it made her resolve to say what she was about to even stronger.

  Tammy looked to make sure Noah had not snuck up to stand within earshot. She couldn’t trust her son with such a big secret, but Beth was different.

  “Honey, you must never tell anyone what I am about to say,” she whispered to Beth, not taking her eyes from her.

  She waited for Beth to nod or give her some confirmation.

  “I promise, Momma,” she said.

  Tammy nodded; joy coursed through her body.

  “You and me and Noah,” she said, looking over to Noah in the distance before turning back to Beth, “I promise you, we will be together again soon.”

  Beth smiled from ear to ear, and before she nearly knocked Tammy backward on the bench with her enthusiastic embrace, Tammy said one more word.

  “Forever.”

  Melanie had made contact with Ross after disembarking from her Emirates flight from Sydney to LAX. At a smidgen under 14 hours, the journey is long enough to give many travelers a healthy dose of jet lag.

  Ross had suggested they wait until the night after next to give her time to recover. It was the gentlemanly thing to do.

  Melanie had given him a surprising little scoff of laughter before telling him that when you fly Emirates first class, there’s no such thing as jet lag. Unless you’re an idiot, she added.

  Ross was starting to like her more by the minute; she had the sort of spunk he found alluring in a woman.

  She’d booked one of the bungalows at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Ross’ recommendation. He’d told her that being away from the rest of the hotel complex, and only a step away from the main hotel pool, the bungalows were the relaxing place to be.

  As they were all fully booked until midday the next day, she would have to spend the first night in a hotel suite, but it wasn’t a problem. A little over $290 million at your disposal would see most people feeling very relaxed, and Melanie was no exception.

  She’d end up staying in one of the bungalows anyway.<
br />
  Just not the one she’d booked.

  Ross rang off his call to Melanie and, after putting his cell on the coffee table, turned to Tony, who was lazing on the couch watching some 80s movie with Sylvester Stallone in it.

  “Adrian!” Tony yelled, in a near-perfect rendition of Sly. That narrowed it down a bit—either Rocky one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, or eight.

  “I like that woman,” Ross said happily to his friend, though Tony seemed to be more interested in Sly Stallone mangling the English language in his unique way.

  Ross stood up, walked to the window, and peered outside; he was still enjoying the feeling coursing through his veins after the conversation with Melanie. Though he’d had a few long-term relationships in his life, and one short-lived marriage, something about Melanie Lewinson had especially piqued his interest.

  Ross couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this way about someone, and welcomed the distraction from recent events. As he was about to tell Tony he was going to go the hotel gym to get some exercise, he noticed a familiar face on the other side of the pool, at the bar on his own, with nothing for company but the drink in front of him.

  Michael E. Darcy.

  Ross decided tomorrow he would try and find out just how serious Darcy was about buying the A380 from Pacific International, and about getting it back in the air with himself at the controls.

  Since Ross had dinner with him a little over a week ago, the guy’s name had been in the news regularly.

  Ross and Tony had shared plenty of surprised looks during the couple of reports they had seen on CNN about him.

  In what was turning into regular fodder for news and current affairs, the media seemed to revel in stories where they would focus on a particular passenger or crew member and show how much the flight had fucked up their lives.

  Since they had all returned from God knew where, CNN and other news outfits had been running these sorts of stories nearly every week. There was no shortage of them, with there having been 210 people on-board the fateful flight.

  Darcy’s wife had removed enough zeros from his bank accounts to hurt anyone, even a billionaire. Especially a billionaire, and one who had spent most of his adult life working himself to the bone in the pursuit of that wealth. Even karma wouldn’t have gone as hard as Darcy’s wife had. In fact, she’d removed the poor guy almost from all known existence.

  She’d sold off all but one of his companies, keeping only the one she’d planned to take over a couple of years before Flight 19 disappeared.

  And what cut him the most, when it all came out, was that she had wasted no time changing the company’s name to her maiden name, and ensuring every single thing with the previous name was shredded, burned, or put into landfill.

  Because all of the passengers of Flight 19 had been declared dead across over a dozen countries and jurisdictions, Michael E. Darcy had no bank accounts at all to access when he left Vandenberg.

  His wife had closed them all within a week of his will being executed.

  Even the offshore bank accounts had been closed down. Darcy’s wife had employed the right kind of private investigators, who located them quickly. All the money went straight to her.

  But even she suspected there might have been other funds they couldn’t find. And she’d been spot on there, too, as Darcy had spent a small fortune over a few years setting up a multilayered system of deception only a few experts across the globe would ever have been able to untangle. But most of those were the ones who paid to set them up in the first place.

  The bottom line was that Darcy’s little stash of a few hundred million dollars was his to keep, and if he played it right, no one would ever know.

  Ross recalled the story on CNN as he continued to watch Darcy through the window, and wondered what would be running through the guy’s head right now. He wondered if he had forgiven his ex-wife and the former colleagues who seemed intent on ruining him.

  Ross turned from the window and to thoughts of the woman he would be having dinner with. He smiled, thinking that at least one good thing might be coming to him from the flight.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  The Ocean View Balcony created the perfect romantic setting.

  The day had been warm, and the heat seemed in no hurry to leave the air. The three candles resting between them in the middle of the small table shimmered as the occasional whisper of wind meandered over the railing from the Pacific Ocean.

  The waiter had delivered the two guests their pre-dinner drinks, and although they were quite comfortable in each other’s company, each of them, for separate reasons, had looked forward to the first mouthful.

  The Hotel Casa del Mar on Ocean Boulevard, Santa Monica, was Kylie’s idea for the evening’s dinner. Dave had driven past the 97-year-old hotel many times but had never ventured through its front doors. Now, he was glad he had.

  “It’s a beautiful night,” he said, looking over to Kylie and smiling from ear to ear, as any man who was out to dinner with a beautiful woman would.

  She wore a loose-fitting, black, sleeveless see-through shirt, with army-green Mavi jeans that fit tightly.

  He could not help allowing his eyes to venture down to the sand-colored open-toe espadrille wedges she wore and admiring her perfectly manicured toenails poking out the small hole at the front. Dave had not yet seen her with her shoulder-length hair worn in a ponytail the way she had it now, and he thought she looked stunning.

  Kylie knew Dave was looking her over. She could see the spark in his eyes, along with his almost perpetual grin, and she liked it. He looked smart, though casual, in his outfit of dark-blue chinos and lemon-colored short-sleeved shirt, finished off with suede camel shoes.

  It was comforting for her to know that Dave had also been through the hardest thing most people would ever experience—losing your life partner suddenly.

  Their other connection was quite evident: their respective children were in a relationship, and it seemed to be going well.

  Dave was also starting to experience stronger feelings about Kylie; he couldn’t help it. She was an attractive, delightful woman, and he enjoyed her company.

  But those feelings would be called into question that very evening, as he found out things about her that he wished he’d never known.

  Across town, at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the warm Los Angeles evening gave the atmosphere at the poolside bar an almost holiday vibe. The fairy lights in the shrubs and small trees winked across the glass-like surface of the undisturbed pool.

  Whoever was in charge of the tea lights for the poolside bar area must have owned the company supplying them, for they were on every single table and spread across the bar. The relaxing tunes of one of 2024’s modern-day crooners, Justin Bieber, floated through the air in the background as if he were singing the melody from inside the bar’s air-conditioning system.

  Mills & Boon would be proud. Very romantic.

  Melanie Lewinson had arrived a few minutes early and taken a table near the edge of the bar area, close to the pool. She wondered if she had ever made a better decision than to get out of her native city to be in that exact place, at that exact time, on that exact night.

  She wasn’t one to be a gushy romantic, though she sometimes wondered if her cynicism had more to do with the losers she had chosen to love than with her thoughts on love itself.

  She smiled, not so much from the distant memory of previous relationships as from realizing that just about every man in the bar area had checked her out from head to toe at least once.

  Ross walked in a few seconds later, and this time it was Melanie checking out a member of the opposite sex. Phew— She let out a little gasp to herself, thinking that though she remembered his good looks from Vandenberg, some R&R at the Beverly Hills Hotel had done good things to his overall demeanor.

  Even from a distance, she could see his smile, his white teeth, and the dimples on either side of his smooth, shaved face. He looked a little as if the person who h
ad put 40,000 tea lights in the pool area (slight exaggeration) had somehow managed to stick two behind his bright, blue eyes.

  Jesus Christ, Melanie thought. She wondered how long it would take for before the new lingerie she was wearing underneath her figure-hugging ended up on someone’s bedroom floor.

  As Ross made his way over through the bar area, her eyes ventured down and all over the man walking toward her.

  Wow, she knew she loved a man in a good suit, but Ross made her feel as if she were an extra on an Armani commercial. His dark-blue, perfectly cut suit accentuated his muscular shoulders and fat-free torso.

  He had complemented the suit and a crisp white shirt with a tie of what looked like aqua-blue silk. When her eyes reached his feet, she gazed on a dark-tan pair of Berlutis—her favorite shoe for men. As Ross neared her, he reached to his tie and adjusted it slightly, revealing stainless-steel cufflinks that reflected the candles on the passing tables.

  Melanie already knew that putting on the new underwear she’d bought from Victoria’s Secret on Rodeo Drive only a few hours earlier was the second-best decision she’d made today. She was a sucker for a good-looking, well-dressed man, and by God, Ross was that man tonight.

  “Hello there.” As Ross reached Melanie’s bar table, she slipped off her stool and greeted him with a million-watt smile.

  Ross’s heart almost skipped ten beats in a row as he looked deep into her almond-shaped, jade-green eyes. Her subtle perfume engulfed his senses and melted him.

  Even with a stylish pair of black high heels on, Melanie was still considerably shorter than him. Ross was okay with this.

  He took a quick glance from head to toe at the now former corporate lawyer, and this time it was his turn to let out a small gasp. Melanie wore a tight, figure-hugging dress that was partially see-through. It ended below the knee and came right up to her neckline; sleeveless, it exposed her trim, taut shoulders and fit, slender arms.