Nights like this one were the toughest, where memories of other more festive Friday nights lingered like the heavy smoke in the air or the unmistakable smells of fish along the pier.
Heartbreaking recollections of a time spent with the love of his life no longer mattered. But they were there, always there, hovering at the surface, filling up that corner of his mind that no matter how much he drank he couldn’t completely get to go away.
He would’ve liked nothing better than to simply hit a delete key, like on a computer, and erase or somehow wipe away the memories of happier days. That way he wouldn’t have to remember what had been.
He had to remind himself that he was content wallowing in his miserable excuse of an existence. And if he got lucky tonight, more of the drink might, just might, wipe out even that stubborn corner where Cassie lived as if she had never been there at all.
When the hulk of an Irishman named Flynn McCready, who not only tended bar but owned the place as well, stared at him long and hard, Cord knew that look.
“You’re done here, Cord. You’ve reached your limit. You’ll get no more drink tonight from me.”
Cord stood up with a curse and decided on the spot it wasn’t worth a fight. Nothing much was of late. You had to care about something in order to fight for it.
And he’d given up caring for anything a year and a half ago.
Hell, he wanted to be by himself anyway so he shrugged off McCready’s missive.
He’d simply take his business down to Murphy’s before the place closed and buy his own bottle. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.
When he ran into Deputy Sheriff Ethan Cody, the law in these parts, coming in the door as he was going out, Cord swore again at his lousy luck. He glared at the town cop, his Native American features, and wished he’d had the good sense to leave the bar sooner.
Because now he’d get the third degree from Ethan. “Cord, I hope you aren’t heading to your truck.”
“And what if I am?” Cord bellowed back, not in the mood for a hassle.
“Then I’d have to take your keys.”
Cord’s eyes narrowed. “Christ, Ethan. Stop treating me like I’m the town drunk.”
“Then stop acting like it,” Ethan snapped.
Cord’s face fell.
Ethan sighed and pulled the man farther outside, out of earshot of the other patrons, out onto the sidewalk. “Look, I know you’ve had a rough couple of years. But you have to stop this self-destructive shit before you hurt yourself.” Or someone else, he wanted to add. Maybe Nick Harris needed to get tougher with his friend. Hell, maybe as a member of law enforcement, he did as well.
“Hurt myself? What do you know about it anyway? It’s Friday night for chrissakes. I’m entitled to a drink now and again just like the rest of the town. You think McCready’s is standing room only tonight because I’m the only one in town having a drink. Shit. Six days a week I bust my ass out at that farm. When I’m not there I’m doing chores at the B & B. I don’t slack off. I do my share of the work. You don’t believe me, ask Nick. Hell, Silas and Sammy will vouch for me, too. I’m a damn good manager.”
It had been Cord’s boss, Nick Harris, who had called and sent him in to pull Cord out of McCready’s.
“So long as you don’t drive in this condition, or start a fight, you can do what you want. But I find you drunk or disorderly on the street or the beach or any other public place tonight, Cord, and I’m locking your ass up. You got that?”
“Yeah, I got it. I’m not that damned drunk.” But he’d been heading there. If he couldn’t drive how was he supposed to get home?
“Bullshit. You’re impaired. And in no short order you’d be three sheets to the wind. Don’t even think about driving. You need a way home, I’ll get you there.”
“Fine. Let me lock up my truck.”
Ethan watched as Cord staggered off toward the lot at the side of the building and to McCready’s designated parking area. He watched Cord open the door to a silver-birch metallic pickup parked there.
Ethan shook his head and waited.
It was a damned shame a soldier like Cord, who had been wounded in combat and even survived three tours of duty in Iraq, had to come back home only to get shot during a spree shooting inside a church. Six people had died that day, one of them Cord’s bride-to-be, shot dead right there in front of him as he’d watched her slip away.
All of them died because the bride had a very jealous, very crazy, former boyfriend.
Cord had come very close to being one of those six. But right now, he was headed down a path that was quickly leading nowhere.
After a few minutes, Cord came stumbling back. “I’ve changed my mind, Ethan. It’s a nice night, gonna be a decent-looking sunset, too. I think I’ll take a walk on the beach to clear my head first.”
Ethan took the time to size up the man who stood in front of him on unsteady feet. Cord Bennett had a disheveled look about him that spoke volumes. It might have been due to the fact he wore his shoulder-length hair loose in a fuck-you-style that screamed, “I’m no longer in the military and not governed by anyone’s rules but my own.”
He wasn’t sure why, but it seemed to Ethan as if the man desperately wanted him to believe he’d switched gears and was now the epitome of cordial and cooperative.
“Okay. But hand over your keys.” Ethan gestured with his hand for Cord to give them up.
“Damn it, how the hell am I supposed to get back to the farm?”
“You take that walk, clear your head some and then come by my house, I’ll drive you home.”
“Well for chrissakes. I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Cord, if you don’t get your act together, either you’re gonna end up getting hurt or someone else will.” Ethan pointed a finger at his chest to make his point. “And it will not happen on my watch. You got that. Now you take that walk, enjoy the sunset and look me up when you’re ready to head home. You know where I live.”
Cord reluctantly relinquished his truck keys. He set off in a huff down the street toward the pier, wondering all the while why people couldn’t just leave him the hell alone. It had been a major mistake on his part getting dragged to this measly little town in the first place. Even worse, he’d hung around now for four months. He should’ve taken off on his own, left for greener hills somewhere, anywhere, someplace no one knew him, or knew about his miserable past.
Here, it seemed to him, someone was forever trying to fix him. And he didn’t like it, not one bit.
The bitch of it was he really didn’t have any other place to go. Pelican Pointe was it, the bottom of the barrel, which meant Cord Bennett had hit rock bottom right here along with this crappy little town.
Once he got to the wharf, he followed the wooden steps down to the rocky beach. He spotted a dry boulder jutting out where the waves were at low tide and plopped his butt on the flat surface. He looked out into the setting sun as it dropped over the water—and decided maybe it was time to quit kidding himself.
Ethan was right. He either needed to change his ways or make some changes.
He intended to make a change all right, a big one, a permanent one. The pain would at least finally end.
He stuck his hand in his jeans pocket, removed the shiny black .22-caliber Smith and Wesson he’d taken from the glove box of his truck. Good thing Ethan hadn’t felt the need to pat him down or arrest him for some idiotic reason like public intoxication. He’d already been down that road before, too.
But ending it meant there would be no more drunk and disorderly, no more hurting inside, no more terrible guilt, no more nothing.
There were so many other times over the past year and a half he’d been right here in this same spot. Not sitting on the beach, of course, but it didn’t really matter at the moment whether he was back in his bedroom at the farm or not, only that he’d finally found the courage to make up his mind to do it, once and for all.
Okay, maybe it didn’t take bravery. He’d b
een in combat and knew how it felt to face the enemy. This felt different. He couldn’t get a handle on this. Maybe he’d finally drunk enough whiskey, enough booze to know he didn’t care anymore about the fight.
He looked around to make sure he was alone. Sure enough, this stretch of beach was deserted.
He glanced out at the horizon and the dropping sun. The brilliant purples and pinks of approaching dusk didn’t capture his attention for long.
Instead, he held the .22 in his fist, cocked the hammer, pointed it directly under his chin. But then all of a sudden, he wondered what would happen if the damn .22 couldn’t get the job done? With the way his luck had been running he didn’t want to chance ending up a vegetable if the gun didn’t do the kind of damage he hoped it would do. And what if it misfired? What if it jammed? It had jammed before back in January, New Year’s Day to be exact.
A boat out in the harbor drifting toward him caught his eye. He stared long and hard at the water.
An idea took shape.
Gauging the tides, he watched them come and go, dance in and out, to and fro and estimated how far he would need to walk out into the water away from the pier to let the ocean swallow him up.
He decided it would take a good thirty yards, forty to be on the safe side to make sure he dropped off into deeper water. The more he thought about it, the more he realized it was a much better way and not nearly as messy. The sight of blood didn’t bother him exactly. No doubt if he did it here on this rock, he’d be leaving a mess for someone else to find.
But if he simply walked into the water, people would more than likely assume he’d decided to take a swim, had too much to drink, and simply—drowned—accidentally.
And because he was a strong swimmer, it was a good plan, a very good plan he resolved. He could just drift out, go down into the water at his own pace, and have his pain float away.
“Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t cutting it, Bennett. You’re a better man than this.” “Screw you,” Cord said with a nod of his head.
Expecting to see Ethan Cody standing over him he was shocked to turn and find Scott Phillips sitting to his left on a nearby rock.
The man, or rather his ghost, and his former captain in the Guard, stood there big as life, dressed in khaki shorts and a bright yellow T-shirt with a navy oxford shirt, unbuttoned, and hanging loose over the Tee.
Scott looked relaxed and in his element.
“You don’t get a say in this, Captain, not this time. You have no idea what it’s like to live without the woman you love.”
Scott laughed. “You’re joking, right? Dead here, Bennett, or don’t you remember what happened to me in Iraq? You think I don’t know what you feel, how much you’re hurting. You’re alive, buddy. Be grateful you’re alive. Why can’t I get you to understand that?”
“Because, damn it, I don’t want to be alive. Don’t you get it? I want to be free of the memory of watching her die right in front of me. I should’ve done more that day. If she’d told me that Robby pestered her in the past—I might’ve been able to—do something. I should’ve died that day with Cassie. That son of a bitch had perfect aim six other times that afternoon. Why the hell did he have to miss with me?”
“He didn’t miss, Cord. You took two shots to the chest before one of the guests grabbed the gun out of his hand and wrestled him to the floor. The EMTs thought they’d lost you a couple of times on the way to the ER.”
Yeah, well, they shouldn’t have bothered. Otherwise I wouldn’t have spent the last eighteen miserable fucking months drinking myself into oblivion.
But Cord knew better than to share those thoughts now.
Instead, he glowered out into the ocean, watched the dancing tides again for the best possible place to sink. “Look, I appreciate your trying to save me and all, but…you’ve been a pain in the butt for months now. I’m tired, Captain. I’m tired of living without Cassie. I’m tired of having the dreams. The dreams won’t let me go. I’ve replayed that scene so many times. There’s nothing you or anyone else can do. I’ve made up my mind about this.”
With that, Cord unzipped his jacket, tossed it on the rock then kicked off his work boots, removed his socks and stood up. He started to wade out into the cold, murky water, still wearing his jeans and Tee.
Farther and farther Cord swam out until finally Scott shook his head. “But it isn’t your time, Cord. It simply is not your time to go. When will you understand that?”
On the deck of the fifty-foot research vessel, Moonlight Mile, a renovated fishing trawler, marine biologist Keegan Fanning stood looking out to sea. It was one of those gentle evenings she enjoyed so much just before sunset as the boat bobbed and rocked up and down on the water.
Because the darkening skies splashed with bursts of purple and gold streaks it was times like these she could enjoy the setting sun. She could forget her troubles for a little while, watch the first evening stars pop out, and relish the reason she was out here in the first place.
Tonight, as the winter part of March refused to let go and give way to spring, she was on the hunt to find a sea lion pup. Not four hours earlier, the owner of a passing yacht on its way to Santa Cruz had called in to say the baby mammal was in some kind of distress due to what looked like an open flesh wound.
By four o’clock that afternoon she had boarded the Moonlight Mile, the boat Fanning Marine Rescue used routinely for water saves, and hoped like hell she could find the pup before it succumbed to the elements. She had already made several up and down searches along the coastal waters, but so far, she’d come up empty.
A few hundred yards off Smuggler’s Bay, the boat rose in the tides as her indigo eyes continued to scan the water near the shoreline through her binoculars. Because of the chill in the air she wore a gray wool mackinaw that had once belonged to her beloved grandfather, Porter Fanning, the original founder of the rescue center where she now worked practically twenty-four-seven.
A battered, black and silver Raiders baseball cap tugged down low hid part of a mass of straight red hair she’d tried to bundle at the nape of her neck to keep it out of her way. The attempt had been in vain of course, as the damp wind wreaked havoc on the bulk of it, which no doubt gave her an unkempt, windblown look.
At the moment, she really could have cared less about her rumpled appearance. After all, the baby sea lion wouldn’t care what she looked like once she located him.
Her brow creased when she noted the heavy marine layer forming off the port bow. “Hmm, we have to hurry and find this little guy tonight or we’ll likely get caught out in the weather,” she muttered to her dog, Guinness, a feisty chocolate Lab that adored the water almost as much as she did. “We don’t want to give up on him but…let’s face it, in three hours we should have spotted him by now.”
Guinness gave a bark as if he knew she was weighing the pros and cons of staying out longer and he needed to somehow be the voice of reason.
She might be able to stretch another hour yet before the fog bank rolled in. She had thoroughly searched the bay and still had seen no sign of a distressed anything, let alone an injured sea lion pup. She hated to think the little guy might not make it through the night if she left him out here with a flesh wound.
But she’d learned long ago from that same grandfather it was foolish to thumb her nose at bad weather or tempt fate when it concerned Mother Nature, especially when it happened over the water.
Porter Fanning had been an incredibly gentle soul when it came to dedicating his life to taking care of marine mammals or any other type of animal in distress. A veterinarian, who nurtured and rehabilitated all types of wildlife over the years, who cared for them so much that he’d taken his inheritance from a once-thriving trust fund and started his own non-profit animal rescue organization. That was Porter Fanning.
He had devoted five decades of his life, along with his wife Mary by his side every step of the way, to saving a variety of animals. From pelicans to dolphins to sea turtles, up and down the Cal
ifornia coastline, the name Porter Fanning stood for rescue and a sanctuary for the sick or injured where they would have the chance to thrive before returning to the sea.
Along the way, he’d gained a reputation for fighting greedy land developers and corrupt politicians. For in all that time, he never once turned down the chance to save a starving, stranded, or injured animal.
That is, until a heart attack at the age of seventy-seven put an end to a life that, up to then, had pretty much gained the respect of wildlife lovers on four continents. Porter Fanning didn’t just preach about the preservation and conservation, he backed up what he said with his own dollars.
And then eleven months and five days after Keegan had buried her beloved grandfather, a broken-hearted Mary Fanning had gone to bed two days before Thanksgiving and died peacefully in her sleep.
Mary Fanning had followed Porter into whatever other realm exists.
Keegan liked to think that wherever they were, they were together and happy with all the animals that had come and gone in their lives over the years.
Their deaths though had left Keegan with an empty hole in her heart. She hadn’t just been devastated the past few months but a little lost as well. She’d always been able to rely on them for anything and everything.
And now, she had no one.
It fell to her to keep FMRC up and running. And she was determined to do that. Her grandfather might have started off wealthy but he certainly hadn’t ended up that way, a fact that his attorney, Aaron Hartley, had made clear to Keegan two days after Porter’s funeral. It seemed his passion for animals and making sure the wildlife center, as well as the Moonlight Mile always stayed up-to-date with the latest technology and gadgets, had come with a hefty price tag.
The rescue center had long since zapped Porter’s family fortune.
For the past decade, the center had survived on grants, donations, and bequests, many coming from all over the world, from the people Porter Fanning had inspired.
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