Escape, Dead End

by David Antocci

  Damn it.

  Abby would have to wait until she got to shore to call Donny and let him know everything was OK. She no longer had his burner number, but she remembered the name of the hotel, so that wouldn’t be a problem.

  Forty minutes later, what had been a searing pain in her leg when she first hit the water had eased to a dull stabbing, if there was such a thing. Her body shivered as she pushed onward. She had been swimming toward what appeared to be the closest point, a lonely light mounted on the end of a dock though she began to doubt she would ever make it there.

  Her arms and legs burned from the exertion and were doing their best to lock up. It was only through sheer will that she had managed to keep moving at all. She knew if she didn’t reach the shore soon, hypothermia would set in and she would drown. Abby estimated she only had a few hundred yards left, maybe the length of two or three football fields, but the distance felt like a marathon.

  I just have to rest a moment.

  Abby rolled onto her back and did her best to wrap her arms around herself in a fruitless attempt to keep warm. As she lay shivering in the water, she closed her eyes and thought of what it would be like to see Eric again.

  ***

  As only a child can, Ava had passed out hours ago and managed to get a fair night’s sleep.

  Donny, on the other hand, was unable to do the same, not that he even tried.

  Sitting up in the chair next to the door, he caught himself dozing off a couple of times, but otherwise spent the hours holding vigil for Abby and cursing his role as the babysitter.

  I should be there with her. I should be helping her.

  He looked through the window, then down at his phone. Finding nothing satisfactory with either view, he repeated the process no less than a hundred times over the past few hours.

  The sky had begun to lighten, encroaching upon Abby’s deadline.

  Come on, Abby, come on...

  To distract himself, he finally put on some coffee in the hotel supplied pot and flipped on the TV, quietly so as not to disturb the little angel who was still fast asleep in the bed just a few feet to his right. He surfed for a few minutes, finding his way to the morning news as the smell of coffee began to fill the room.

  The young, pretty news anchor had a remarkably serious face as she spoke into the camera. He turned it up a bit so he could hear.

  “Tragedy on the lake last night...”

  Donny’s jaw dropped as the picture on the television changed to the front of Bryce’s house, barely visible in the twilight, countless police cruisers around it.

  The voiceover continued. “Authorities claim this was a domestic dispute that began in the middle of the night between a man and a woman believed to be his ex-wife though at this time their relationship is still unclear. The fight took a dangerous turn when neighbors heard shots fired around 2:00 a.m. and quickly called police. Authorities were unable to get to the scene before the dispute took to the water. The details are still coming in, but a little more than an hour later...”

  As the picture on the television changed, Donny couldn’t figure out what he was looking at right away, but the story quickly made it clear.

  “... the boat that the man and woman had been on crashed into the small cargo ship you see here.”

  Choppy video showed two police boats and a helicopter following a smaller boat at high speed until suddenly the three pursuit vessels peeled off moments before the boat slammed into the side of the cargo ship and burst into flames.

  “Authorities have said an official statement will come later this morning, but an investigator speaking off the record has said at this time that both parties are presumed dead. The speedboat was nothing more than a floating field of debris after the collision, and there have been no survivors found thus far.”

  Donny shut off the television as his heart sank to his toes. He felt as though he were going to be sick.

  He looked at the little girl beginning to stir in bed. A little girl he was now somehow responsible for.

  His mind began to race, thinking about keeping Ava safe. The heads of the family had been cut down, but the soldiers remained. They knew who Abby was, and he knew they had pieced together that he had helped her. They were surely out for blood.

  But they’re hundreds of miles away and don’t know how to find us, right?

  Yet Donny had no way to know if Bryce had told anyone they were here. For all he knew, half the family was on its way to this location right now, locked and loaded. He had to get out to protect Ava.

  He also felt it was safe to assume they knew about Abby’s sister, though he wasn’t entirely sure if anyone in the family had helped Bryce abduct the little girl. Still, better to be safe and tell her to get the hell out.

  Ava opened her eyes and read the concern on his face. “What’s the matter?”

  He did his best to offer a comforting grin. He wasn’t about to tell Ava what he had just learned. “Nothing. Just tired. I’m going to step outside to make a call, alright?”

  Ava stretched and rolled over. “OK.”

  Once outside, Donny paced, trying to decide what to do first. He looked at the phone and hit the speed-dial as Abby instructed last night.

  A few thousand miles away, Robert looked down at his phone. He didn’t recognize the number, but few people had his private line. Judging by the area code and the conversation he had yesterday, he ventured a guess at who was on the other line.

  Her cheerily answered the line, “Abby, my dear. Please tell me that you’re done with this nonsense and are coming home.”

  “This isn’t Abby,” Donny said sadly, recognizing the voice on the other side. “This is a friend.”

  Robert’s expression quickly changed from his normal jovial state to concerned, then morose, as Donny relayed the events of the last twelve hours.

  “Abby said to call you,” Donny continued. “Ava isn’t safe. I need to get her out of here. I don’t think her sister Sarah is safe either. Abby said there was a plan in place for them.”

  “Yes, there is.” Robert drifted away for a moment trying to process the news. He shook it off for the time being; there would be time to grieve later. “Let me make a couple of phone calls. I will contact Sarah.” Robert thought a moment about what he and Abby had discussed. “Are you still in Sandy Point?”

  “Yes, in a ho...”

  “It doesn’t matter where,” Robert said, cutting cut him off. “There’s a small municipal airport about thirty minutes west in a town called Pearse. It’s right on the lake. Can you get there?”

  “Yes, sir. Should we leave now?”

  “If you’re safe where you are, sit tight but keep this line open and be ready to move when I call.”

  ***

  Donny stared blankly out the window of the private jet as they crossed the Canadian border for the second time that morning.

  Robert worked quickly to make sure one of his planes picked up Ava and Donny within the hour. After his conversation with Abby last night, he had dispatched his jet to Chicago with a hunch that a get away vehicle would be needed. After a quick jump to Montreal, where they picked up Sarah and her few belongings, they were on their way back over the border en route to Los Angeles. Robert was there working on the preparations for the next season of Trial Island, and while he and Abby had discussed the scenario, they hadn’t realistically entertained any details. He and Sarah would have to come up with a plan.

  Donny wasn’t even going to get on the plane, but Robert convinced him that Abby left her daughter in his care and he had a responsibility to keep her safe. Not only that, but he was in danger, too, and knowing all that he had done for Abby over the years, Robert insisted that Donny accept his assistance. He tried to say he could take care of himself, but Ava pleaded with him. Since he really had nowhere else to turn, he figured he would at least make sure they got to L.A. safely.

  He rubbed his eyes and downed the rest of his coffee. It had been a long morning, with lots of questions fro
m Ava, none of which he fully answered. For now, she was sitting on the other side of the plane next to her Aunt Sarah, mercifully distracted by the television. Both he and Sarah spent the morning in a state of shock and disbelief. They hadn’t even begun to grieve yet, and certainly weren’t going to do so in front of Ava.

  As the plane began an obvious descent, Donny looked at his watch. He hadn’t been expecting to touch down for another few hours. He asked the flight attendant if she knew why they were landing. She said she didn’t know, but would ask the pilot.

  Ava came over to sit next to him and to watch out the window.

  His heart went out to the little girl. She had been through so much, and now losing her mother was almost too much to bear. He put his arm around her and pulled her close, mostly so she wouldn’t see the tears welling up in his eyes. He made the mistake of looking across the plane and locking eyes with Sarah, at which point both of their eyes spilled over.

  He quickly turned away to dry his with the back of his sleeve.

  The pilot, an interesting character named Captain Frank who had greeted them when they got on the plane in a Hawaiian shirt and straw cowboy hat, came over the intercom system. “Make sure you’re all buckled up back there. We’ll be touching down in a few minutes to pick up one more passenger, and then we’ll be on our way to the west coast. Just sit tight.”

  One more passenger? What the hell is going on?

  As they neared the ground, Donny recognized the airport as the same one they had taken off from that morning.

  As the plane taxied to a stop at the end of the small municipal runway, Ava beamed a huge smile and jumped up and down pointing out the window.

  Donny turned to see a petite figure dressed in black walking up to the plane with a slight limp. A huge grin took over his face, and he raced to the front of the plane.

  28

  ABBY LAUGHED at the interviewer’s comment as the director called a break. She touched the young girl on the shoulder as they stood. “This hasn’t been nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Thank you.”

  The girl was speechless as Abby turned and walked away to chat with Robert.

  Just yesterday, Liz Bennington had been a low-level intern at Robert’s cable news outlet, and today she was conducting what could only be described as the interview of a lifetime. The established and celebrated news personalities she had spent the last six months fetching coffee for would have killed for this opportunity to sit down with Abby.

  When she got a phone call from Robert, she was only told that she was the best choice for a special segment he was personally working on and to drop everything and prepare to be away for a couple of days. When the billionaire owner of your news outlet drops something like that in your lap, you do exactly what he asks. Though she was unsure at the time how her internship and her blog—albeit a popular one—qualified her to work with someone of his stature. But she wasn’t about to point that out to him either.

  Liz was then whisked away to some beautiful village in Italy and brought to a gorgeous villa, which had been taken over by the camera and lighting equipment. She tried to get information from the crew, hair, and make-up people about what exactly was going on, but none of them had a clue either. Of course, things made a little more sense once Abby entered the room. Liz had dedicated the last few years of her life to maintaining the most popular blog on the web about Trial Island, and specifically Abby: her disappearance, subsequent death, and all of the conspiracy theories surrounding it.

  As Abby sat down, Liz smiled at her as though seeing an old friend. Abby had lost a little weight, showed a few more wrinkles around the eyes, and had shorter hair than her last known photo before she had been shot by the hitman in Canada, but it was definitely Abby.

  Liz knew why she was chosen—it was because she could jump into this interview with zero preparation. It was an interview she had conducted a thousand times over in her head.

  “So,” Liz began, “where have you been?”

  Abby laughed, and they chatted like old friends as Liz walked through the known events surrounding Abby over the past couple years. Abby revealed that she and Eric had spent time living in northern Canada. She teared up recounting the ranch they had lived on and the life they had together. She needed a change of scenery after his death, which is why she was now living in Europe with her daughter, though she declined to disclose where.

  Authorities investigating the fire at Buena Sera quickly linked the restaurant back to the Rosso family. When viewed in light of the raid at the family compound the night before, the fight reported by neighbors and the high-speed boat chase ending in a fiery wreck a short time later, it made all too much sense. The owner of the restaurant was also quickly identified as former mobster Bryce Haydenson. The raid at Rosso’s had not been solved when it fell off the news cycle though most people assumed it was the feds.

  Dive teams scoured the bottom of the lake under the wreck for nearly two weeks searching for bodies, but with Bryce sleeping with the fishes fifty miles southwest of there, none were found. The helicopter team never saw anyone jump from the boat or otherwise leave the craft, though, so the occupants had to be dead.

  Agent Eddie Vines never got to claim the headlines or the glory. When his two-man team reported to their director what happened—that the agents could have diffused the fight before it started if Vines hadn’t given the command to stand down to increase his notoriety—news quickly traveled up the chain of command. The powers that be knew the story would be huge, and this would be another major black mark against the agency. A gag order was placed on Vines and the other two men, their reports sealed as confidential. Any party found to reveal details about what truly happened would be prosecuted, with the full force of the government behind it. Abby’s involvement was never disclosed, though a rumor surfaced, which the feds quickly disproved. Vines lived out the last few months after his retirement on a small pension until dropping dead of a heart attack at a boat dealership.

  There had been rumors and theories that Abby had been behind it all. Those rumors mainly stemmed from the claim of a young girl who was a hostess at Buena Sera. She claimed that Abby came into the restaurant and started the fire in a rage. Though she maintained her story, she, too, disappeared from the news cycle as quickly as she’d come on the scene.

  All the while, Abby hadn’t shown her face in public. After all, she was dead.

  Until now.

  The media was the last piece. Abby intended to live out her life quietly with her daughter. She didn’t want to spend the rest of it looking over her shoulder, waiting for someone to find her, to figure out who she was.

  Robert convinced her to address it head on. “Give them what they want,” he said. It took convincing, but ultimately she agreed that it was best. If she sat down for an interview and put it all out there, the story would be over. There would be nothing left for anyone to chase after. It made sense.

  So here they were in a remote village in northern Italy, laying it all out for everyone to hear.

  As Liz wrapped up the interview, she folded her hands on her lap. “It certainly has been a ride, hasn’t it, Abby?”

  She nodded. “One hell of a ride, that’s for sure.”

  “You know, I’m sure the studios are clamoring for the rights to your life story. I certainly wouldn’t be the first one to say it should be made into a movie, or at the very least, a book.”

  Abby chuckled and gave Liz a smile. “No one would ever believe it’s all true.”

  ***

  Abby never saw the interview. Nor did anyone on her island, but Robert said it was a huge success. Also, the current season of Trial Island was a massive success. The extra media attention from Abby’s story shot the show back to the top of the ratings and having been back for a couple of years, the island was populated with a sizeable cast that made for must-see viewing.

  As she emerged from the well-beaten path that led from the market back to her beachfront villa on her little secluded
island, the scene took her breath away, as it always had.

  Slowly walking along the sand toward her home in the distance, she contemplated how much her life had changed since JJ found her here nearly three years ago. She had left paradise to explore her past, a past for which she had no memory.

  She smiled as she watched her beautiful daughter in the distance hunting for shells along the shore with Ben, an activity of which neither seemed to grow tired. Ben had grown into a fine young man in the time since Abby and Eric had waved goodbye to him at the end of the dock as they motored away. Abby was hopeful that he and Ava would remain close over the years. She knew Eric would approve.

  Abby felt close to Eric when she was here in the paradise that they built with their own two hands. She missed him, of course, but she always remembered a conversation she had with Robert.

  “You loved Eric, right?”

  “Absolutely,” Abby sobbed. “With all of my heart.”

  “And he loved you, of that there is no question, my dear. Look at what he did. He sacrificed his own life to save yours.”

  Abby nodded with tear-filled eyes, recalling the final moments of his life.

  Robert then turned to her and held her face in his hands, as Eric often had. “Do you believe that if Eric were here right now, he would want you to spend your life mourning him over what he did?”

  She shook her head no. He’d want her to be happy.

  “No, he would want you to live your life to the fullest. To celebrate each additional day you’ve been granted. To love and to care for your daughter. To be happy and live without fear. That’s what he would want, Abby.”

  Robert sighed, arm around her as he continued. “I’ve been on this earth a great many years. I’ve amassed an absurd fortune, spent time with every world leader of any consequence, religious leaders of all faiths, leaders of the scientific community—truly the brightest minds in the world. Do you want to know what I learned? The single most important thing?”