Protecting Melissa (Holiday Cove 4)

I squeezed my eyes shut tightly as though I could brace myself against the news that Matt was laying out for me piece by piece. It was so overwhelmingly horrible that it leaked in through my defenses and dragged me down into a dark pit of despair. How was Melissa ever going to fight against Henry? He had endless money, formidable connections, and a devil may care attitude.

The man who had once loved her enough to marry her and start a family was now her greatest enemy. A ruthless monster who had no limits on how far he’d go to get what he wanted. If he couldn’t kill her then he would find some other way to punish her. Hell, in his twisted mind it would probably be better to bring her back to California and rip her apart in court like a piece of bait on the end of a hook. Once she was all but destroyed professionally and personally, then he’d give her the final deathblow by walking out of the court, his arm around Jackson’s shoulders, and his hand clenched around a judge signed document that granted him custody.

It would kill her.

A cold shiver of fear shot down my spine, chasing away the warm and balmy air, as though I were sitting in a refrigerated truck instead of outside of a café in a tropical, ocean side paradise.

“Tell me something good,” I pleaded. “If you know he’s coerced this doctor, then can’t you take that to court and show them just how twisted the son of a bitch is?”

“It’s not that easy, Chase. I’m not supposed to have access to those documents as they haven’t legally been entered into the record. And as for how I know the doctor was coerced, if I even attempted to bring that forward, then Henry would know I have connections and I can imagine that wouldn’t end well for me. Besides that, I can’t risk burning my sources on something that will at worst lead to a fraud charge. That wouldn’t do me, Melissa, Jackson, or you any good.”

“Right.” The navy suddenly seemed like a simple system in comparison.

“But—” my eyes popped open at Matt’s voice. “We do have a sliver of good news. It looks like the FBI hasn’t stopped looking into Henry. My PI has spotted several undercover agents sniffing around even though the death of his mistress has been pinned on the pilot who was flying the plane. I don’t know how to get into any of the details of the case, as my sources don’t have connections there and they won’t talk to a PI. But the fact they’re still hanging around, even though they supposedly have their man, tells me one of two things. One, there are some questions about their main suspects guilt or, two, that they found something else that Henry has been getting into.”

I snorted. “Shocking, considering he’s such a standup guy and all,” I muttered sarcastically.

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Matt gave a dark chuckle. “So, for now, we stand by the original plan. You have to keep Melissa and Jackson safe while we see how this plays out. I’m working my channels over here to gather witnesses and documentation that can combat Henry’s claims about Melissa. Do you have a plan for where to go next?”

I thought about the tracker I dropped into the cargo of the produce shipment. If Henry was changing strategies, then it wasn’t likely he’d send his thugs looking for us, and even if he did, it would take them a while to realize that she wasn’t in Los Angeles. The box of fruit the tracker had been dropped into would eventually be unloaded in Los Angeles and the boxes shipped to a local grocery store. Even if they tracked the device to the store, it wasn’t likely they could pinpoint the exact location. They wouldn’t know it was in a box of fruit. At which point, they could assume that Melissa had found the tracker while at the store and ditched the purse or the tracker by itself.

In any case, we’d be days away and they would no longer have any indication of where to start searching for us. All of which meant that we could take a few days in Manzanilla to come up with a more permanent residence and wait out the rest of the legal war that was raging back in Los Angeles.

“I have a plan,” I replied, my tone more confident than before. Since we didn’t know if the line was secure, I wasn’t going to get into the details, but Matt trusted me and I knew he wouldn’t ask questions. If I said I had a plan, that was all he needed to know. “We’ll probably be out of cell phone range for a while though. But I’ll keep checking every other day so if you need to get a hold of me, leave me a message and I’ll call you as soon as I get back to a hotspot.”