I placed myself between Mari and the crazy woman, needing to do anything to protect the person I loved. We’d just found each other. I couldn’t lose her.
Her small delicate hands, which earlier that morning clutched my face and gave me a sweet kiss goodbye now gripped the back of my shirt. “No, Oliver.”
Melissa laughed, her eyes darting back and forth from each of us. “You can’t stop me. I have everything I want now.” She held up her once-empty hand, a black checkbook in it like she was holding the holy Grail.
“It’s the money you want?” Pierce asked, his eyes puzzled. He’d never been in a position to understand how desperate someone would get when money was tight. Pierce had never wondered where his next meal would come from once in his life.
I bit my tongue as Melissa’s eyes widened when they fell on him. She backed up to the balcony, taking one step and then another until she was outside.
“Take the checkbook,” Pierce said. “Have all the money you want.”
Melissa laughed. “I don’t need your permission. I have everything right here.” She waved the checkbook around in the air the breeze catching it and ripping it from her hands.
Mari gasped, clutching my shirt tighter as I pushed her further behind me, trying to get her away, but the gun went off again. This time Melissa was already outside, so the bullet went wild into the air. She climbed up on the balcony railing, her eyes on the errant checkbook.
Pierce took a step closer, charging toward the balcony. “No!” he yelled at the same time Melissa took a step off the railing and sailed through the sky with her arm outstretched as if she was trying to catch the checks before they hit the ground.
I didn’t hear the thud but felt it, and Mari went still behind me. Shit. I turned, doing my best to block her as she tried to make her way to the balcony where Pierce leaned over the railing, surveying the ground and shaking his head.
I fumbled, getting Mari out into the hallway. “Fucking Pelican Bay.” It never took long being in this town before I remembered why I didn’t visit often. This place made New York look like fucking Mayberry.
We made our way to the kitchen, Mari clutching at my shirt as small tears traced down her face. “Do you think she lived?”
I nodded and placed a quick kiss on her forehead wanting to wrap my arms around her to make sure she never saw any more injustices in her life. There was no explanation for why Melissa found herself in Pierce’s home again. What kind of desperation does a woman have to be under to take such risks for a checkbook? One she couldn’t use without Pierce’s signature.
But desperate people rarely thought through their plans. That’s the desperate part. Even if she had retrieved the checkbook, and none of us found her, the checks wouldn’t be valid. It was a stupid waste of a life since she’d now spend at least a few years behind bars. And for what?
We made it to the kitchen, and I held Mari in my arms. I put my hands around her face to keep her steady as I did my best to kiss away each of her tears until the steady sound of sirens filled our ears. Pierce let himself outside to check on Melissa with the phone pressed against my ear.
“I hope she’s okay,” she said clutching my shirt.
No way was I letting her outside to check. I pushed my head to the side and peeked out the large window in Pierce’s living room to see him and an array of black Escalades filling his circular driveway. Men wearing black polos jumped from the back and made their way into the home as an ambulance parked and two EMTs pulled out a stretcher.
“I’m sure Melissa is fine.”
How was I lucky enough to find Mari? A woman who was lied to and then attacked but still found compassion in her heart for her attacker. She’d told me about her previous life in the states, but I couldn’t picture the woman I held now as she described herself from the past. Mari was no longer that woman. She was the most beautiful soul I’d ever met.
28
Mari
“Are you sure the house is safe?” I asked still clutching myself to Oliver’s side. I had no plans to let him out of my sight, and he didn’t appear concerned with letting me go either. We answered questions from a slew of men in matching black shirts who looked like they were straight off the Navy base, two uniformed police officers, and the town’s detective, Anderson.
“Yes, we’ve swept it ourselves. She was here alone,” Ridge Jefferson, the leader of Pelican Bay Security and the man Pierce mentioned more than once said even as his eyes surveyed the area around us.
“Have you heard a report from the hospital yet?” Oliver asked. He knew what I worried about but didn’t have the guts to find out myself.
What if they said Melissa died? What she did was stupid, but she didn’t deserve to end her life over it. Although would a two-story fall be enough to kill someone? She wasn’t speaking as they put her on the stretcher, but her arms were flailing.
There was once a point in my life when I did not understand why people were reduced to crimes—things like stealing and drugs—but it was because I never lived paycheck to paycheck. When you’re not sure where your next meal will come from or how to pay your rent, and there’s no one there to help you out of the dark space, your options seem limited.
If Melissa was looking for money for her boyfriend’s court fees—which it looked more and more like it—who knew what pressure he was putting on her. I had once been trapped in a similar vicious cycle.
True, I never took a gun and tried to steal from anyone, but my choices were bad enough to ruin lives, and I didn’t stop for a second to think of the consequences. I didn’t fault another woman for doing what she thought she needed to do. The only thing I could wish at that point was that she would get help.
“Sounds like she has a minor fracture in her leg and maybe a few bruised ribs. She’ll be fine, and after they discharge her from the hospital, Anderson will put her in police custody. She’s already admitted to everything.”
“That will make things easier,” Oliver replied squeezing me a fraction tighter.
