Eyes Wide Open (The Blackstone Affair #3)(50)
Author: Raine Miller

I was well aware of her past, and that knowledge bore down impossibly heavy on me now. My girl suffered from depression. She’d even tried to kill herself at one very low and tragic point in her life. There, I said it. Didn’t do me a f**k’s worth of good to acknowledge it either. Yes, it was a long time ago, and she was very together and sensible now . . . but there was no guarantee she wouldn’t revert back to those self-destructive behaviors again, or tell me to sod off and leave my sorry arse for good when it all became too much to deal with.

I sucked in a breath and looked over toward the mirrored closet doors to see my reflection. Who in the motherfucking hell was I kidding? Brynne wasn’t alone. Depression was a harsh mistress, and she and I had been well acquainted for quite some time now.

I resisted the urge to touch her. She needed rest and I needed a cigarette. I checked the bedside table for the time and got up carefully. I threw on some joggers and a shirt, heading outside to sit beside the pool and serve my nicotine habit. I wanted to ring Neil too.

I stared at the dark water while I waited for my call to connect. The same dark water where Tom Bennett had spent his final moments in this life.

I left the door cracked so I could hear if Brynne needed me. She’d started having nightmares again, and because she was pregnant, drugs were not a good option. There was too much risk to the baby’s development. She would have refused to take them anyway. So she suffered. And I worried.

The summer moon reflected in the water’s surface, and I thought about Tom dying in it. I was no homicide detective, but some scenarios were certainly running through my head. Bringing myself to voice them aloud was out of the question. If I did that, then I was damning my girl to a similar fate. I wasn’t going there. No f**king way.

“Hey mate.”

“Holding down the fort okay?” I replied to Neil’s brusque greeting.

“Things are typically chaotic here, so you have nothing to worry over. It’s business as usual, E.”

“True. And I trust you too. Tell those arseholes I said that, please.”

“With pleasure, boss, but you should know that every client has been very understanding. Most of them are human.”

I sucked in a deep lungful of clove and held it to get maximum burn. Neil just waited for me patiently. Nothing ever seemed to rush him. Coolest bloke I’ve ever known. “Events like these bring out one’s priorities rather quickly, you know?”

“Yeah. I bet they do. How is Brynne holding up?”

“She’s . . . doing her best to be strong, but she’s struggling. I haven’t broached the possibilities with her yet, and I’m not sure we’ll ever have that conversation. Looks like it was a massive heart attack while swimming, which it very well could have been, but I want to see the autopsy report.” I sighed. “You know how long those can take. The forensics labs are just as f**ked up in the States as they are at home.”

“Any clues present themselves at his house?”

“Not yet. Being a solicitor for probate, wills and trusts and such, everything was in order as you would imagine, but there’s something just a little too tidy about it. Like maybe he knew his time was marked. And it very well could have been his heart. Brynne knew he took blood-pressure medication and she worried about him. You’d never know to look at him. The guy was very fit.”

“Hmmmm. The only people who would benefited from his death are Senator Oakley’s camp.”

“I know. I hate to know it, but I do. Everything goes to Brynne—the house, the cars, the investments. No surprise there, but I’m wondering if Tom left anything incriminating against Oakley.”

“Like a videotaped deposition?”

“Yeah . . . exactly like that. May know tomorrow. We have a meeting with his business partner in the morning to go over the trust, then the funeral and service. It’s gonna be a long f**king day.”

“When are you coming home?”

“If we can wrap everything up, the red-eye tomorrow night. I want Brynne out of here. Makes me f**king nervous. I’m out of my element.”

“Right. Give her our condolences, please. Ring if you need me. I’m here.”

“Thanks . . . see you in twenty-four.”

I ended the call and lit a second clove, the smoke curling slowing up into the still night air. I smoked and thought, my mind going back to a place I’d not been to for a long time. It terrified me, and with good reason.

Drowning is a horrific way to go out. Well, it is if you’re conscious. This was something I knew from experience. The cold and desperate feeling as water invades your nose and mouth. The impossible attempt to stay calm and hold your dwindling breath. The pain of lungs utterly depleted of oxygen.

I think the Afghans experimented on me to see what all the fuss was about with waterboarding. It wasn’t their preferred method, that’s for sure. Winching me up by the arms and shredding my back was their favorite. That and depriving me of sleep for what seemed like weeks at a time. The mind does crazy shit when there is no rest for the cogs.

I looked up at the stars and thought of her. My mum. She was an angel up there somewhere. I knew this. Spirituality is deeply personal and I needed no other confirmation of what I believed other than what I knew to be real inside my heart. She was up there watching over me somehow and was with me when they were going to cut off my—

Nope. Not going to that f**ked-up horror right now. Later . . .

I got up quickly and stubbed out my second ciggie. I tucked the butts back in the pack and went inside my father-in-law’s nice American modern house. I’d never speak to him again, but ironically, one of the most important conversations I’d ever had, when weighed against all the others in the whole of my life, had been with him. An email with a plea for my help . . . and a photograph.

As I went back in to crawl into bed with Brynne, I prayed. I did. I prayed that Tom Bennett had been unconscious when he left this world.

In a black Chanel suit with her hair pinned up, Brynne looked gorgeous. Terribly sad, but tragically beautiful. Her mother had brought the clothes over for her to wear. They were the same size, apparently, and Brynne was pretty much helpless against arguments at this point. I sensed she was merely coping to get through and hadn’t really allowed herself the freedom of indulging in her grief yet.

I stayed on the fringe and kept out of discussions as much as possible. Brynne was in no shape to bear a family row, and so I held my tongue to keep the peace. Mrs. Exely and I had a wary truce—we pretty much avoided direct contact. I never heard her ask Brynne about how she was feeling with the pregnancy once. Not one time. It was almost like she pretended it wasn’t happening. What mother didn’t care about her daughter being pregnant enough to even ask her about it?